Composition Challenge

There are frequently translation challenges of various sorts on conlang forums, but I haven't seen what I propose: a composition challenge.

Here's how it works:

1. Choose a topic. It could be anything: daily life in your conworld, a famous person, unique cultural practices, arts, history, etc.

2. Compose one paragraph in your conlang. Preferably, don't write it in English (or your native language) first. Rather, compose it entirely in your conlang.

3. Post the result here, with a translation into English.

To get you started, I'd like to propose the first topic as: A Scene from Daily Life in your Conworld (or wherever speakers of your conlang exist).

Here's my contribution in Paiodd:

Amir goshía abb as. Amizhir ó fazrir aerim vieoc. Sunthudd zhuró tusor ashidmríé sídh íasem. Amir miosía miram ciaum. Wesetlugélía algg as ruebir císenía. Chizen sidh veoc elgía lugélía vusía. Tim darir lodd éau ómurizé zhibb sem elgmré.

ˈam.ɪr ˈgoʃ.iː.a ab as| ˈamiʒ.ir oː ˈfaz.rir ˈæerɪm ˈvʲe.oc | ˈsun.θudd ʒuroː ˈtu.sor 
ˈa.ʃid.mriˌeː sɪð ˈiːaˌsem| ˈam.ir miˈosiːa ˈmi.ram ˈkʲɔm| ˌwe.set.luˈgeːliːa alg as ruˈɛb.ir kiːˈsɛn.iːa.|ˈxiz.en sið ˈvɛ.oc ˈelg.iːa luˈgeːliːa ˈvus.iːa | tɪm ˈdar.ir lod eːɔ oːmuˈrizeː ʒɪb sɛm ɛlgˈmreː |

The sun rises over the mountains. In the cities and the fields, people begin to awaken. A mother prepares the morning meal while her children sleep. Above the fire a kettle begins to boil. The smell of Southdrink rises throughout the house. Now the children awake to the smell of the warm drink. But the man remains in bed until he smells the meat.

If you have a conscript, feel free to share that, too. Here's mine:

I just updated this because I noticed I had the wrong form in the word "omir". It should have been "amir", as it is now.

Non-Linear Morphology and Language Change

I've been sitting on this one a while, trying to do some more research for it, but, as ever, the time just isn't available. Maybe one day someone will pay me to do this, and I can write more substantive blogs. Nonetheless, I will post what I have so far, which aims to dig a little deeper and get more substantive, addressing one of the central theses of this blog's existence: that conlanging can be of value to Linguistics. 

As a matter of fact, I recently listened to the conlangery podcast episode "How to Read Linguistics Papers", and it made me realize what should have been a very obvious fact: what I mean when I say that conlangs can be of value to Linguistics is that they can be of value to Linguistic Theory. The entry pasted below suggests one way that might happen.

The main constructed language, or conlang, I have worked on is the language of wider communication throughout the nations descended from a former empire, a bit like Latin in the centuries after the Fall of the Roman Empire. This naturally implies that there are other languages spoken at the time my stories take place, many of them presumably descendants of the main language, Paiodd. I have sketched out bits of notes considering what kind of changes might have occurred in each language, and how they might differ from the parent language and each other, but one of the issues that I have come across in doing so is what Paul Kroeger (2006) refers to as 'non-linear morphology'. That is, indicating grammatical relationships in words not by affixes or word order, but by changes to the stem word itself. We see this in English with many of our irregular verbs: run - ran, see - saw, etc. In other languages, this might take the form of a tone change, nasalization of a vowel, voicing or de-voicing of consonants, and other changes of features that do not involve adding or subtracting from a word stem.

In fact, the English system was the inspiration for the Paiodd system, prompting me to wonder what a language would be like if all verbs were 'irregular'. To be fair, the system in Paiodd is in fact regular, based on a vowel hierarchy which is always consistent. But I went a step beyond that as well, since nouns also undergo vowel changes, based on the same hierarchy, and moreover also experience voicing and devoicing, as well as fricativization of final consonants. All of these changes indicate different grammatical relationships. When we consider this historically, however, we have a bit of a problem.

In English, and perhaps in most languages that exhibit non-linear morphology, these changes were originally motivated by the effects of neighboring sounds. The i-umlaut of English, which is where our irregular plurals men and women come from, among others, occured due to the presence of a palatal vowel in the plural suffix, which in Proto-Germanic was *-iz (Smith 1896). This vowel caused the vowel in the stem to move towards its own place of articulation, changing /a/ to /ε/, ultimately resulting in our modern pronunciation of men. Likewise, I have heard of work going on in some of the Mixtec languages of Mexico analyzing their tone systems historically. It may well be that apparent irregularities in the tone system there are due to the phenomenon of 'floating tone', or tone sandhi, which in this case results in a different phonetic form for a different grammatical meaning, even if the difference is only one of tone. This raises the question of whether all such non-linear morphology is the result of historical processes. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the answer to that, since many of the languages exhibiting such features are minority languages either without any written tradition, or with one which has been lost or suppressed.

When it comes to my fictional language of Paiodd, however, the question is reversed. As far as I know, these non-linear forms are not the result of historical processes but simply the method which the language employs to show grammatical relationships. Thus, considering what kind of changes might occur in the daughter languages of Paiodd leads me to believe that these vowel changes would in fact be fairly stable. That is, the daughter languages would still show vowel alternation in stem words indicating grammatical relationships or meanings.

However, what those relationships or meanings are could very well change. If a 'weakened' vowel in Paiodd verbs indicated a very general irrealis state, perhaps a daughter language uses a weakened vowel to show only one specific irrealis state, say the future, as in Ex. 1 below, where PO represents Paiodd, and PoD represents a Paiodd Daughter language:

1) PO ta 'put', te irrealis 'may put' > PoD ta 'put', te 'will put'

Another thing that could change is the nature of the hierarchy itself. That is, the daughter languages might have merged some of the vowels that Paiodd considered distinct, which would have two possible results: either the relative strength and weakness of the vowels would shift to accomodate the missing vowels, as in 2a, or the stem would no longer change at all, as in 2b.

2a) PO hierarchy: ludd 'dog', uninflected > lod- weakened, lut- no change

PoD hierarchy, u merges with o: lodd 'dog' > lad weakened, lot no change

2b) PO hierarchy: vur 'speed, haste' > vor- weakened, vul- no change

PoD hierarchy: vor > vor, vol no vowel change in either form

In the first scenario, whatever the original vowel was would now change to an entirely different vowel from its ancestor language, as indeed happens in 2a. The second scenario would have to result from a merger of two vowels that were stronger or weaker than each other into one, so that the vowel simply doesn't change at all, because both historical vowels have changed into the one modern vowel, as in 2b.

Examples 2a and 2b were both examples of nouns, which also show vowel change to indicate grammatical relationships, and which would also change in the daughter languages. So where Paiodd uses a weak vowel and a voiced consonant to indicate adverbial force, this form could come to have a more specific meaning, such as only indicating the manner of the action, as in 3a, or a more general one, such as becoming the form for nominative and accusative nouns, rather than only adverbial.

3a) PO: levodía daemm sem armes. dagger.VBL-INSTR bread 3p cut

He cuts bread with a knife.

PoD: *levod daemm sem armes. dagger.VBL bread 3p cut

He cuts bread daggerly.

3b) PO: Piviría tuoss dhaia. king.VBL-with/of poem sing

The poem sings of the king.

PoD: *Pivir tuaz dhaia. king.NOM/ACC poem.NOM/ACC sing.

The poem sings the king.

Another thing that is quite likely to happen in the development of the Paiodd noun system is the loss of suffixes and affixes, at least in certain cases, so that the inflected forms of nouns would actually result in creating new parts of speech: adjectives and adverbs! We've seen this to some extent in Examples 3a and 3b. But here are some further examples:

4a) PO: lodd hapía. man size.NML-with

The man is big.

PoD: lodd hap. man big.

The man is big.

4b) PO: hapía lodd dhaia. size.NML-with man sing

The big man sings.

PoD: hap lodd dhaia. big man sing

The big man sings.

These changes don't even begin to touch on things like semantic drift, other phonological changes, or innovations. But most of these lie outside the specific concern of this blog post, which is non-linear morphology, and how it might affect and be affected by historical change.

In sum, then, the point is this: in some natural languages, grammatical relationships or meanings are indicated by changes of stems that do not involve adding prefixes or suffixes, but some other change to a word's stem. In at least some of these cases, these changes are historically motivated. However, in the case of my constructed language, there is no historical motivation for such stem-changing, non-linear morphology, and the language later split into several daughter languages. Such stem changes being so important to the grammar of the parent-language, it seems likely that they would remain somewhat stable, in form if not in meaning.

Considering such issues also raises the question of whether non-linear morphology in natural languages is always the result of historical phonological processes. As far as I know, this is not a question many people, if any, have pursued. Of course, there at least two good reasons for this. First, many languages that exhibit this are minority languages about which little is known today, and even less the farther back in time we try to go. Due to suppression and the influence of more dominant languages, these tongues may not have a long written tradition, and speakers may not value their own language at all. This makes it difficult to learn anything about the language at all, much less its historical development.

The second reason is that it's not an easy task to collate and analyze data from multiple, unrelated languages. The old saying, 'Jack of all trades, master of none' applies quite well here. Most historical linguists focus on a language family, for obvious reasons, while the kind of work it would take to answer this question requires vast knowledge of very unrelated languages. It may not be impossible, but it is certainly difficult, and would really have to be the result of collaboration between experst in multiple fields. There is the field of typology, which makes some attempt to do this, but I'm not as familiar with typological methods as I would like to be, so I can't sufficiently evaluate their effectiveness.

Nonetheless, the question of the origins of non-linear morphology is an intriguing one, and I think it should be pursued, if it hasn't already been. If anyone knows of studies pursuing this kind of question, or even just work being done on non-linear morphology or languages that exhibit it, I'd love to hear from you! I'd also love to hear about examples from other natlangs or conlangs of non-linear morphology, so feel free to comment with any you know about!
I close with this: it is an ongoing central thesis of this blog post that 'Hypothetical Linguistics', as I call it, can prove useful to the field of Linguistics as a whole. I hope this entry serves as an example of how that might work. By thinking about the historical implications of a particular feature in my conlang, I've come across an intriguing, and, so far as I know, unanswered question in Historical Linguistics. This is precisely one of the most important ways that I believe Hypothetical Linguistics can serve General Linguistics - simply rephrasing questions from the opposite direction. That is, rather than asking 'What do languages do?', we can ask 'What could a language do?' and from that arrive at further questions, which could serve to shape future research in Linguistics.

Works cited:

Kroeger, Paul R. 2005. Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics).

Smith, C. Alphonso. 1896. An Old English Grammar and Workbook (Kindle Edition)

Paiodd Adjective Clauses

Adjective clauses involving 'to be' or 'to have' in English are very simple. You just use the nominal form of the modifying noun with an appropriate suffix:

haunir lodd ot. The man in the forest is speaking.

dar haunir lodd ot. The man in the forest is speaking to the animals.

We could also translate these sentences as 'the man who is in the forest'.

sor levutía lodd fé. The man with a dagger attacks the enemy.

It gets much more complex when the adjectival clause involves another subject or object. There are, in that case, three possibilities for clause types:

1. The noun in the adjective clause is the subject of one clause and the object of another.

2. It is the subject of both clauses.

3. It is the object of both clauses.

There are multiple strategies to form adjectival clauses in each of these cases.

Type 1: Subject of one clause, object of another.

This is the most straightforward, it seems to me.

gué ozía lodd sem ot. She is speaking to the man who saw me.

In this case, lodd is the object of ot and the subject of oz. oz is in the subordinated clause, so it is marked with the relativizing suffix -ía. We could just as well flip it around, however:

gué oz lodd sem otía. The man whom she is speaking to saw me.

Here lodd is the subject of oz and the object of ot, and ot is made subordinate with -ía.

In this case, however, Paiodd would prefer a different word order, though the above is acceptable. In general, it is preferable to begin with the adjectival clause. So:

otía sem lodd oz gué. The man whom she is speaking to saw me.

This form, using the subordinating suffix -ía is quite the most common, but there are other options available for type 1 adjectival clauses as well.

- The first is to use the relative pronoun siman:

gué oz siman lodd sem ot. She is speaking to the man who saw me.

We could also rearrange the clauses, placing the main clause first:

ot sem lodd siman oz gué. She is speaking to the man who saw me.

- Second, we can simply form compound sentences using the conjunction ó:

gué sem oz ó lodd sem ot. He saw me and she is speaking to the man.

This is not quite as clunky and displeasing as its direct translation into English implies. It is a perfectly legitimate way to form type 1 adjective clauses. Again, rearranging the clause order is possible:

lodd sem ot ó gué sem oz. She is speaking to the man and he saw me.

This runs the risk of confusion, however, as it could also mean that 'she' is the subject of both verbs. There is a way to make this clearer, however.

- Demonstrative suffix -an

gué lodd oz ó ladan sem ot. The man saw me and she is speaking to that man.

A less rigid translation would yield 'I saw the man she is speaking to.'

This makes it much clearer that it is the same man who sees me and who is spoken to by her. Again, a different order is possible:

ot sem lodd ó gué ladan oz. She is speaking to the man and that man saw me.

A less rigid translation does reveal a slight difference in force between the two, however: 'She is speaking to the man who saw me'.

- A fourth method is to use the de-verbal noun in nominal inflection, but so far, at least, it isn't possible to use this construction when the noun in the adjective clause is both subject and object. We will see this construction in type 3.

- The fifth option also does not apply to type 1 clauses, so you'll have to wait until we get to types 2 and 3.

Well, then, maybe it isn't so straightforward after all! But there's no rest for the weary - let's soldier on!

Type 2 adjectival clauses involve a noun that is the subject of both clauses.

The basic form of a sentence with type 2 clauses is as follows:

gué ozía lodd ot sem. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

lodd is the subject of both oz and ot. As is almost always the case, the clauses can be switched in order.

sem ot lodd ozía gué. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

The -ía suffix marks the subordinate clause, so if we moved it to ot, we would have a slightly different meaning:

gué oz lodd otía sem. The man who is speaking to her saw me.

sem otía lodd oz gué. The man who is speaking to her saw me.

Once again, there are other options for expressing the same general sense.

- First, as with type 1 clauses, we can use siman:

sem ot lodd siman oz gué. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

gué oz siman lodd ot sem. (same meaning)

- Compoounding is an option here, as well:

gué sem oz ó sem lodd ot. He saw me and the man is speaking to her.

sem lodd ot ó gué sem oz. (same)

Again, though, to make it clearer that the man who saw and the man who is speaking are one and the same, we can use the demonstrative suffix. See below.

Before that, however, since the noun in the type 2 clause is the subject of both verbs, we can actually leave it out the second time.

gué lodd oz ó ot sem. The man saw me and is speaking to her.

sem lodd ot ó oz gué. (same)

It is optional, but sometimes preferred for clarity's sake, to attach the -ía suffix to the subordinate verb in this case:

gué lodd ozía ó ot sem. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

sem lodd ot ó ozía gué. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

- The demonstrative suffix

gué lodd oz ó sem ladan ot. The man saw me and that man is speaking to her.

sem lodd ot ó gué ladan oz. (same)¹

Again, the de-verbal noun in nominal inflection isn't possible with type 2, as far as I know, so you'll have to wait until type 3.

However, it is possible to use

- De-verbal noun in verbal inflection:

gué assimía sem lodd ot. The man who saw me is speaking to her.

Here, assimía is the verbal inflection of assem 'sight', and it modifies the verb. We could think of it as meaning something like 'With sight (of) me, the man is speaking to her', but the best translation is as above.

This brings us to type 3. In this case, the noun in question is the direct object of both clauses. The most usual method of forming this kind of sentence is below:

oz gué lodd sem ot. She is speaking to the man I saw.

We could use the -ía suffix to clarify which clause is subordinate:

ozía gué lodd sem ot.

Otherwise, switching the order of clauses in this case changes the meaning:

ot sem lodd gué oz. I saw the man whom she is speaking to.

If we use -ía, the order doesn't matter so much, however.

ozía gué lodd sem ot. She is speaking to the man I saw.

ot sem lodd gué ozía. (same)

otía sem lodd gué oz. I saw the man she is speaking to.

oz gué lodd sem otía. (same)

Other options:

- siman

oz gué lodd siman sem ot.I saw the man whom she is speaking to.

ot sem siman lodd gué oz.

In the latter sentence, we could also use senan, the nominal inflected form of the relative pronoun:

ot(ía) sem senan lodd gué oz.

This makes the -ía suffix optional.

- ó

oz gué sem ó lodd sem ot. I saw him and she is speaking to the man.

lodd sem ot ó sem gué oz.

- -an

oz gué lodd ó ladan sem ot. I saw the man and she is speaking to that man.

- Nominal inflection

íagué assenía lodd sem ot. She is speaking to the man of my seeing.

In this case, the verb is changed into a noun, and the possessive suffix is used to indicate the 'subject' of the action. The deverbal noun is used in nominal inflection to show its relationships to lodd 'the man', which is then free to be the object of the verb ot. Although the literal translation is as above, this is one way to express the idea in the original sentence: She is speaking to the man I saw.

Note that, because it is important to stress that 'of my seeing' modifies 'the man', the word order cannot change as much here. We could, however, have the following:

ot sem lodd assenía íagué.

In which the word order is exactly reversed, yet the meaning remains the same.

- Verbal inflection

íagué assimía lodd sem ot. With my seeing, she is speaking to the man.

Here, the principle is the same as above, but the deverbal noun assem is used in the verbal inflection. This emphasizes that it is related to the verb of the main clause, giving it a meaning much like the translation offered above. However, this method is also employed to form relative clauses, such that the meaning is really the same as the original sentence. Of all the strategies mentioned, I like this one least, so it may well change or be discontinued. But I'll keep it around for a while and see if it grows on me at all.

Another conlang article

Another little article about conlanging!

http://www.thelanguagejournal.com/2012/04/conlangers-creators-of-new-languages.html

News from Virestia

Well, I've been away from this blog for a while, and while there are many topics I would like to discuss (and hope that I will, eventually), I thought I would at least use this as a platform to share the latest news from the Virestian world.

First, I finally completed my translation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' around mid-January, just before starting back to teaching a rather busy semester. I'm working on editing this and putting the first part into Paiodd script, hopefully for publication in an upcoming edition of Aequinox, an online publication that features the work of conlangers in their constructed languages.

I've also translated the entire first chapter of the Gospel of John. Until now, although I am a Christian, I have resisted translating very much of the Bible, since (as you will see below) the Virestians are not Christians, and of course it is a fantasy world where Christianity has never existed at all (in fact, that made for some interesting challenges in Coleridge, as well). However, a fellow conlanger started a group devoted to translating the Bible into conlangs, the idea being that the Bible provides a wealth of material apt for exploring the capabilities of one's conlang - or expanding them.

Meanwhile, particularly this week, I've been thinking about cultural issues in the former empire. I've devised two different card game systems, one of which I spent the entire evening Thursday creating a usable deck on the backs of some old business cards. The games are both based on the mythology and religion of Virestia, but different aspects of it.

The first is based on the phases of the moon, which provide the basis for the four 'suits', since Virestia uses a lunar calendar, and values the changes of the moon as continual reminders of the story of Creation, Binding, Mediation, and Scattering, which are the basis of Virestian mythology. In each suit, there are numerals 1-5, but since there are multiple ways to form some of the numerals in Paiodd script, there are multiple cards for 1 - 4. Most games played with this deck involve collecting hands of the same suit or all 5 numerals.

The second is based on the three principle deities of earth, sky, and sea, each of which has their own suit in this deck, with five 'actions' dictating how the cards can be used to construct a hand or played in a common hand, and six 'positions' which represent stages of life. The goal is usually to construct a hand that forms a complete cycle of these positions, a complete lifespan, so to speak. The inspiration for this game actually comes from an old conscript I developed way back around the same time as I started creating Paiodd. This script was meant to be a sort of holy language, and as such was somewhat philosophical, expressing abstract concepts by means of what are now the three suits, the five actions, and the six positions. I did attempt to work out some phonology to it, but there was never any grammar, as it wasn't necessarily meant to truly be a language.

Lastly, I've begun the process of transferring some of my notes on Paiodd, Virestia, and related subjects from a spiral notebook to a word document. Among these are notes about the histories of the various nations fragmented from the empire's fall, which have led me to realize that I need more languages! There are four daughter languages of Paiodd spoken around the empire, and I have at least some ideas of what those are like - indeed, one entry I would like to write here would be about the historical development of the High Speech into these four languages - but because Virestia has quite a large coastline, it stands to reason that there are traders and others from lands across the sea that come and go, and these would not speak Paiodd or any of the common tongues natively. I may not need to develop these languages as fully as Paiodd, but I should at least work out some phonology and basic grammar, so as to have some idea of how the languages would interact. Surely the Coastal-Speech derived from Paiodd would have strong influence from the languages of the Southlands!

I will attempt to make a regular habit of updating this blog with at least brief news flashes having to do with my language or languages. I will try once a week, but that may not work out practically.