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Parts of Speech other than Noun/Verb

 
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 6:39 am    Post subject: Parts of Speech other than Noun/Verb Reply with quote

Hello all,

I'm wondering how you make up words that are not nouns and verbs - do you make them up the same way you do nouns and verbs, derive them, or something else entirely?

For the oligosynthetic one I'm working on, I'm not yet sure if there will be some basic adjectives or not, but there will be no basic adverbs.

Most adjectives and all adverbs will be derived phrasally, eg for adjectives:

NOUN-REL-X: eg grass-ATTR-colour 'grass-coloured/the colour of grass'*
other relationship markers can be used to mean 'exactly like,' 'similar to,' etc.
*ATTR: attributive, having X as an attribute/feature/property

Adverbs:
there are two types of adverbs that I've come across so far:
speaker-oriented (eg. probably), expressed as 'it is probable (Noun) that X'
and subject-oriented (eg. intelligently), expressed with an instrumental case 'with/using intelligence (he did X)'

Prepositions and several other linguistic markers are affixes to the base noun/verb, in a complex morphological template that I have listed in the 'Logical Languages' thread.

So for my conlang, it's reasonable to say that there are two main types of lexical items, namely nouns and verbs; and that only a few adjectives exist non-derivationally.

I look forward to hearing about others' systems!
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2013 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking but I tend to have huge problems with the simplest words like "yes". "No" is relatively easy – you need some kind of negation anyway and then you can just derive from that. But "yes" is something very strange and hard to derive at first glance. The pressure is doubled because it seems like such an every day word and I never want to feel like I've somehow got it wrong.

There are a couple of ways I've found that get me around this problem.

1. Make the phrase/word/sentence that would literally mean "it is so". Condense it to a single syllable or two syllables if necessary.
2. Alternatively you can just use the word "so" in the previous meaning.
3. If you can bear without having a special "yes" word at all, there is no actual need for it. Latvians used to just repeat the verb of the question before using the german "ja" became modern and stylish.
4. When in doubt, wiktionary.

Again, not sure if any of this helps you but I just thought I'd throw in my two cents for what they are worth.
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 8:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's great! I did the same with 'hello': made a phrasal greeting and then a reduced form that seemed likely over time.

I know that several languages use the verb from the previous sentence (with person marking/etc) to indicate 'yes' or 'no' - almost like English 'do' but with any verb. I think Irish does this, and it's really interesting the constructions it comes in!
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eldin raigmore
Admin


Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan

PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very good posts, Aert. Very good post, Kiri.

I actually haven't decided.

I think that all or almost all word-roots are going to have surface forms for all or almost all of nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs.

I expect this to mostly be by ablaut/apophony. I expect to have just a few prefixes and suffixes; and no surface form to have more than one prefix nor more than one suffix.

I don't expect to need many adpositions; there'll be some grammatical cases for the nouns that will between them cover most of the function adpositions would cover. If there are a few adpositions, we could combine various adpositions with various cases and get many more uses out of the nouns. Some cases and/or some adpositional phrases will act like adverbs, and some like adjectives.

If there are adpositions they'll probably be particles, and not take inflection. Or maybe I will let them inflect to agree with their objects. And/or, to agree with whatever the adpositional phrase modifies.

Pronouns will be sui generis or ad hoc or whatever the Latin or Greek phrase should be for "just made up". They'll probably take inflection.

Conjunctions will also be "just made up". They'll probably be particles, and not take inflection.
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 8:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
That's great! I did the same with 'hello': made a phrasal greeting and then a reduced form that seemed likely over time.


Fun fact: The English word "goodbye" supposedly comes from Medieval chatspeak "God b w ye" (God be with you)

So basically – another baffling example of "natlang dun it before ya" (I'm sorry, my street slang is way off)
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