Detail #117: Several Degrees of Definiteness vs. Lexical Distinctions

In a language with two levels of definiteness (definite vs. indefinite), a third level (specific) could be semi-present for some constituents by means of lexicalized distinction on verbs:

I look for a car (any car)

I search for a car (a specific car; I know which one it is, you probably don't)

I search for the car (that I mentioned earlier, and thus you know of it now too) 

Maybe this is done by some change in congruence on the verb - maybe all specific-or-definite verbs have a certain marking, while only definite nouns have a marking, or vice versa. Or maybe only certain verbs where the distinction is felt to be significant enough have pairs where the difference is meaningful. I would imagine the pairs would tend to look similar but not have any regular formation going on.

 

Detail #116: Some Unusual Things to Grammaticalize

Distinguish a few types of relative size of subject to object with regards to kinetic verbs! (May be distinguished by differential object marking? Or by some verb marking? Or by a weird auxiliary?)

I.e. 'John harvests(small-to-large) the field', 'David killed(medium-to-big) Goliath', 'The villain kicked(medium-to-small) the puppy',

One could also perhaps grammaticalize the amount of premeditation of first person future verbs by some way.

Detail #115: Local Cases

This is basically an idea that takes what is sort of present already (to some extent) in Finnish and puts it on steroids.

Imagine a case system of about six local cases. In Finnish, these are conventionally arranged as {on/by, in} * {towards, at, from}. However, let us not give them all that clear names yet.

Let's rather go by {A, B} * {1, 2, 3}. Now, we have this set: {A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3}. And now for the fun: let directionality of the different numbers vary with the verb and its aspect!

Type 1 verbs have the perfect aspect cause the cases to map thus: 1 → origin, 2 → location, 3 → direction (and A vs. B maintain the distinction 'in' vs. 'at'/'by'/'on'). The imperfect aspect, however, gets A1 → entirely unused, B1 →direction, A2 → direction, B2 → location , A3 → location, B3 → origin ... and the 'in' vs 'at'/'by'/'on' distinction is only partially preserved, where i.e. B3 conflates origins at/by/on or in the noun thus marked, and so on.

Of course, these mappings may be specific to classes of verbs, even unique to some verb (and most mappings may actually ignore most of the cases entirely), and the mappings may conflate things in various ways - sometimes, location and origin, sometimes location and direction, sometimes in and on/at/by, sometimes maybe even part of the on/at/by gets transferred to in and vice versa.

In part this is an exaggeration of case and adposition usage differences in reality - in some languages, a painting hangs on the wall, in some it hangs in the wall. In some, the mail slot in your door is on the door, in some it is in the door.

In English, the phrasal verbs likewise form a complex of preposition-verb pairs where the meaning is not trivially related to the preposition's usual use, and we can find languages where aspect does change the sense of location/direction - if you were heading somewhere, perfect aspect sort of implies you've gotten there somehow, and if you are coming from somewhere, you have been there.

Grammaticalizing and having a bunch of complications with regards to this is no big stretch, I imagine.

Detail #114: Aspect Shenanigans

Imagine a language that distinguishes punctual from non-punctual, but which exact type of punctuality is being discussed is not normally specified - so perfect and inchoative are marked the same in most circumstances - although there may be optional periphrastic ways of specifying further aspectual distinctions.

Of course, this might seem somewhat unrealistic, so how about restricting having only this particular distinction to only, say, irrealis moods?

Detail 113: Imperative as a Case

Imagine a case that marks out a specific noun as an answer to a question or as a suggestion or order.

I.e.

Which one should I take? That.CASE.

 Would you pay your debts.CASE.

Should I bring the red or the white wine? White.CASE.

Now, this could easily develop into a situation where nominal verbs marked with such a case serve as imperatives.

 

On Bringing Kids up in Conlangs (Index, Introduction and statement of purpose)

Time to invite some controversy, I guess.

During my stints on the facebook conlang group, one topic that has regularly popped up has dealt with children. Specifically, whether there is anyone teaching a conlang to their children.

Few do this, but it is, I feel, my obligation to present an argument why conlangers should avoid doing it - there should be even fewer doing it out there than there is. There are several partial arguments to why, each argument contributing different reasons to avoid it. There are arguments from a number of fields - just ethics in general, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition-related, etc.

So, let me present to you the several partial arguments why you should not teach a conlang to your child.

1. Your constructed language is less adapted to human needs than you think

Some comments on responses to #1.

2. You don't speak your conlang natively, reducing the ability to bond with your child

3. Introducing a child into a situation with an artificial lack of a speaker community to support its language learning seems rather peculiar (notice: this differs from teaching a child your native language if your native language's speaker community has dwindled away, due to reason #2)

4. Your child's language acquisition could be used for something more useful

5. Your child's language acquisition skills may be somewhat affected

6. Your child's hearing may be affected

7. Your child is not yours to do what you want with, a kid isn't an art project - unlike your conlang

8. Being an example to other conlangers, so as not to inspire linguistic ignoramuses from doing this in potentially harmful ways even if you could pull it off in a harmless manner

I will elaborate on each of these, probably giving each a post of its own, with literature to back most of the points up. However, it will be a slow going project, as I will have to fish up some sources - literature I have read years ago, etc. Other partial topics may appear as well.

However, I ask people who object to my reasoning to wait until the relevant post before responding with their objections.

Plans for the next twelve months

This blog is just about to turn two years. I figure presenting some plans for the incoming year may be a good idea.

So, here's the main things I will strive to develop:

• More reviews of linguistic works; this far only one book has been reviewed, although I intend to write a review soon of Newmeyer's Possible and Probable Languages.
• More pragmatics, and especially I'd like to get into information structure, a topic that I am not particularly knowledgeable about but want to get into. Information structure-related concerns seem to have potential for some great conlanging ideas.
• More details from real-world languages, mostly presented in relation to original ideas. Basically as a way of introducing some real-world typology into the blog.
• More Dairwueh, Barxaw, Tatediem, Bryatesle and Ćwarmin. (For the simple reason that they're getting to a point now where they are solid generators of ideas.)
• Some observations and thoughts on the analysis of structures in conlangs (and structures in languages more generally), especially with regards to typologically uncommon (or even unattested) structures or absences of structures.
• Some light controversy. I intend to write a detailed argument regarding bringing up children in conlangs.
• Presenting a model for linguistics, and analyzing its benefits and drawbacks as well as some more general implications about linguistics. Not going to have any controversial stances there, so no attempt at a Chomskyan revolution from an amateur linguist, but rather an attempt at understanding what linguistics is about from another angle.

So there, some things to look forward to in 2015 (as well as the two months left of 2014). If I hadn't written this out, it's possible I might've forgotten some of these ideas or not just bothered to carry the ideas out. Now, I am at least somewhat committed to writing these things.