Paiodd Discourse

Currently taking a Discourse Analysis class. It's got me thinking about how some of these things work in Paiodd. Normal word-order for Paiodd is OSV, though there is some wiggle room, so long as the S and V are directly adjacent (a weird quirk left-over from my pre-linguist days, when it seemed like the subject had a much more important connection to the verb than any objects; in other words, before I understood properly what a linguistic predicate was). Anyway, given that this is the standard, default word-order, it would suggest that generally, the comment, or new information is part of the predicate, the O, while the known information is the S, and perhaps the V as well. Yet I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, as I think it is possible to translate the following with indefinites:

(1)   Selor pivar weloun. 'A king commands a soldier.'

Actually, seeing it now, I don't think it does work. This sentence would normally be interpreted as 'The king commands a soldier', though 'The king commands the soldier' is also possible. So it would seem that my intuition is probably correct. New information CAN go into the O slot, though it is possible that it may be old information as well.

            If we consider the other logically possible orders, given the strict rule for SV adjacency, we have: VSO, OVS, and SVO. VSO is almost always the word-order for dependent clauses, as in (2):

(2)   Guír pivar oz eusé selor zir. 'The king saw his wife when the soldier entered the hall.'

In this case, the VSO clause is the second clause. It is possible to reverse the order, however, so that the dependent clause comes first, while the main clause is postposed to second position, as in (3):

(3)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar guír.

The meaning is roughly the same, though it sounds to me as though the wife is the soldier's, not the kings now. That's pretty interesting! To specify that it was the king's wife, I would simply use the possessive pronoun:

(4)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar íasem guír.

Well, I've just discovered something about Paiodd discourse, even though I can't entirely understand why that is. It does seem, however, that in the case of (3), the focus (comment, or new information) is on the wife, connecting her to the initial topic (known information) of selor 'the soldier'. In (2), however, both the king and his wife are the known entities (part of the topic), while the entry of the soldier is the comment/focus/new information, and there is an implication that the wife had a noticeable reaction to this new event. In (3), however, the implication is that the king was impressed by the soldier's wife.

This is an excellent example of how conlangs take on a life of their own, as well, since I did not intentionally think these things through, but I find them to be true in the language nonetheless. It certainly may be due to some influence from my native language or others that I'm familiar with, but it was not a conscious decision. I will no doubt continue to think through these things, and I hope to either update this post later or write another focusing on the use of other possible word orders and their effect on discourse.

A New (ish) Conlang: Ittanyo

Spending the afternoon reworking the former Ittahoe, which, under the new rules, is now Ittanyo. Even got it to a good enough point to translate the Lord's Prayer. So here it is!

The Lord's Prayer

Ran madibanyo tadoga mo ri.
Tia pina saroba.
Padira ye padoga naginal ko ye ndaristal anocha talo.
Adia tarobanyo tat yeda tidat,
ye ngadia ndanochanyo tap tipta sa,
wo madia ndanochano tap mbalombe adia lanocha tap tapto tipta sa.
ye parolan tia tila sa,
tu pidabo tia talo.

You are our father in heaven.
We praise your name.
On earth and in heaven, let your kingdom come and your will be done.
Give us today our bread of the day,
and do not charge our bad deeds to us,
as we do not charge the bad deeds of those who incur debt against us against them,
and do not lead us into temptation,
but free us from evil.

The Old Version

The original version was based on two main ideas: 1. that every inflectional form would be accomplished by changes in syllable structure (retaining the same phonemes, but re-ordering them into different syllable structures without adding or taking away anything), and 2. That the main inflections would be for "valency" of both nouns and verbs. That is, verbs would rearrange their syllable structure depending on how many arguments they took, and nouns would rearrange theirs depending on how many verbs to which they acted as arguments. I kind of liked how this made relative clauses extremely easy, so that you could say something like: Man woman love see = The man sees the woman (whom) he loves. You could tell that 'man' was the subject of both verbs by its form, and 'woman' was the object of the same two verbs. It was a cool system, but I wanted to try a slightly different approach.

The New Version

In the new version, I took some inspiration from Bantu noun-class prefixes, and another (though similar) idea I had had before: to create a language where nouns in relative clauses would have different case-marking than those in main clauses. I used prefixes inspired by Bantu noun-classes to indicate this. It is somewhat similar to the previous version, in that the important feature of noun inflection is which verb or verbs it is an argument for, but prefixes, rather than rearranged syllable-structure indicate this now. A good example is the first sentence of the Lord's Prayer above.

Ran        ma-             diba  -nyo  ta-            doga    mo                  ri.
You       nom/nom-  father -our  obl.REL- heaven  be.located      are

nom/nom = nominative of both verbs.
obl.REL = oblique argument of the verb in the relative clause.

Note: I realized after posting that I forgot an entire line: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. I'll fix that and post the corrected version when finished.

Linguistic Feature of the Week!

In an effort to keep this blog at least moderately active, I'm going to try to at least post an interesting linguistic feature once a week. This week: Switch reference! Here's what wikipedia has to say about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_reference

Applying Total Physical Response Techniques to Learning Your Own Conlang

       A popular (for good reason) technique in language teaching in recent decades has been what is known as the Total Physical Response (TPR) method. This method involves very hands-on, practical, game-like activities that force you to actually use the language you're learning. Although it shouldn't necessarily be used exclusively, it is extremely useful in the early stages of language learning. I'm currently taking a class on Second Language and Culture Acquisition (SLACA), in which we are using these techniques to learn a minority language, and already, after only two sessions, I can attest to its effectiveness.
As a conlanger, I've been wondering how we can apply some of these methods to learning our own conlangs. Although he is not the originator of TPR, I will base much of this post and subsequent ones on the ideas of Greg Thomson, some of whose work can be found at his blog: https://growingparticipatorapproach.wordpress.com/. Thomson identifies six phases of language (and culture) learning, a rough outline of which is available here: https://growingparticipatorapproach.wordpress.com/an-idealized-program-six-phases-of-super-charged-activities/. The initial stage is referred to as the “Here and Now” phase, in which the goal is to begin learning vocabulary that is entirely practical, and refers to things that are concrete, “here-and-now”. I will begin by describing how to apply TPR to these “here-and-now” words in a normal language learning situation, then describe some of the problems for that approach to learning your own conlang, and suggest some modifications that will help to counter some of these problems.
In our first language learning session, directed by our SLACA instructor, who explained to our language consultant what to do, the goal was to learn what Thomson calls a “dirty dozen”, that is, roughly a dozen to fifteen words which are concrete and practical. We were not allowed to repeat these words or write them down. Our job was to hear them, and be able to identify the correct items when called upon. At this point, we just want to hear the words, and learn their meanings, without analyzing anything more. That part comes later.
We learned basic actions, such as “sit”, “stand”, “walk”, and “run” by our language consultant demonstrating the actions. We began with just two, “sit”, and “stand”, which were repeated several times. Then we added a third, which forced us to choose and listen more carefully, and then finally the fourth word. We also learned “lie down”, so the exact number is somewhat flexible. The key is to begin with just two, with lots of repetition, the slowly add more words into the fray.
To learn words for basic objects, the first step was again to take two words, which were, in our case, “man” and “woman”. Our teacher elicited these words from our language consultant (a native speaker), by placing two dolls on the table, one a man, one a woman. The native speaker gave us the words for each, then asked us to indicate one or the other, depending on the word she said. We could point to them, but pointing may not be appropriate, depending on the culture, so instead, we were told to extend our open hands toward the appropriate item. After several repetitions, another item was added, a “boy”, this time. Now, we had to choose between three different items, man, woman, or boy. Again, after some repetition, we add a “girl” to the mix, and again we have to indicate the appropriate items based on what the native speaker says.
At this point, since we were in a small group, our language consultant began to call on us individually to indicate the various items, taking turns. Thus, we could now actually pick up the dolls representing each item. After doing this for a while, we began to add figurines of various animals, and the whole process was repeated. By the end, we had roughly a dozen words with which we were familiar. To be sure, we had not necessarily memorized these words, but we had enough familiarity with them that we could recall them the next session, two days later. This same format can be used for many other types of vocabulary, so long as it is concrete, “here-and-now” vocabulary. As a learner, you can take responsibility to set goals for yourself about what you want to learn. I'll post further ideas in the coming weeks, I hope, but this gives you an idea of how TPR activities work.

Problems for learning your conlang

However, there are several issues with applying this to learning your conlang. Perhaps the most glaring is that there are no native speakers to consult. Quite likely, you are the only one who speaks the language. This means that manipulating objects and saying the names for them is relatively easy, but how are you going to respond to someone else indicating objects or giving commands? Fortunately, modern technology gives us some options. By recording yourself saying the names of various objects or actions in random sequence, and listening to this recording at another time, you can still get the benefit of TPR activities for learning your own conlang. Here's what I suggest!

Suggestions to Compensate

First, you should plan a significant amount of time. In my SLACA class, our sessions are about 40 minutes to an hour. I suggest no less than 20 minutes, but probably at least half and hour. You'll have to plan accordingly, with two or three different activities or sets of a few words each to learn. For example, in the first session, you might want to have four to five actions, four or five words for people, and another four or five words for animals.
On your first day, or your first session, simply focus on saying the words for actions and objects  while doing or manipulating them. Break it up into sections, if you prefer, beginning by saying and doing the actions at the same time. In a 30-minute session, spend perhaps 5 minutes doing this. Then record yourself saying the actions in a random sequence. You can perform them as well while you are recording, which will further help you remember the words, but it isn't strictly necessary. The goal is to listen to this recording at your next session, and do the actions as you listen.
After you've recorded about five minutes of saying the actions in random order, move on to identifying objects, using the same method. That is, using dolls, action figures, or simple pictures of the people (or animals, or objects) in question, say the word for each item while picking it up or pointing to it. Do this for about five minutes again, then record yourself saying the words in random order. Again, it will be helpful if you continue to do the actions while you record, but the goal is to listen to the recording again at another time, and perform the actions then. Then, once again, move on by adding animals (or 4-5 more words of whatever your target vocabulary set is), and perform the procedure again.
By now, you should have 12-15 words to work with. Depending on how much time you allot yourself, this is probably a good place to stop. If you have more time, or want to take more time, you can combine the actions you have learned with the people and animals. So, for example, you might say in your conlang, “The horse is walking” (or “The horse walks”, to keep it simple if your conlang has progressive forms), and use the figurine or picture of the horse to make it walk. Then you might say, “The man is sitting”, and again make the figurine or picture of the man sit (if you use pictures instead of dolls or figurines, you might want to have a picture of a man, or woman, child, dog, etc, sitting, and others of him walking, running, and standing; you will then pick up or point to the appropriate picture as you say the sentence). Once again, after doing this five to ten minutes, record yourself saying appropriate sentences in a random order.
The next step is to give it a rest! You've been hard at work, and your brain needs time to process all this information! Take a break, relax. Then, the following day or a couple of days later, listen to your recordings and respond to the sentences appropriately – sit when you hear yourself say “sit”, make the figurine of the man stand when you hear yourself say “The man stands”, or simply point to or pick up the figurine or picture of the rooster when you hear yourself say the word for it.
After listening to the recordings and responding to them appropriately, you might wish to add some new words, using the same type of activities described above. Or perhaps you might spend an entire session reviewing the recordings to solidify what you learned the last time. You'll have to decide what works best for you. I intend to post a video demonstrating these techniques soon, and in the coming weeks and months, as I have time, I'll describe other activities that can help you learn your conlang in fun, interactive, and engaging ways. In addition, for other ideas, I'd encourage to check out Greg Thomson's blog linked above! Until then, happy conlanging!

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.