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The Alurhsa Word for Constructed: Creativity in both scripts and languages
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Serali
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
Posts: 929
Location: The Land Of Boingies
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 Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:00 am Post subject: |
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| Tolkien_Freak wrote: | | I'm actually still an admin there (is that an accident?). |
Well David told me that ( I'm at camp at the time ) since I'm at camp he made you temp admin there. Something like that. David: Can I have my mod powers back please? 
Correct me if I have anything wrong, but I'm sure that's right.
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Tobo deu ne lenito sugu? - You kissed a frog?! |
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StrangeMagic
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
Posts: 640
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:16 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | How are "yes" and "no" ("jaj" and "naj") used to answer "negative questions", like, "didn't you go to school today?" |
Right, okay, this is one of the biggest ambiguities in languages I think...
Using Eldin's questiong, Didn't you go to school today?
You could answer
Yes (that's right, I didn't go)
Yes (no that's wrong, I did go)
No (no I didn't go to school)
No (no, I did go to school)
That is really confusing, especially if you just say 'yes' or 'no'. I believe I saw a conlang that had no 'yes' or 'no' but instead, 'that is' or 'that isn't'.
My own conlang still has this little ambiguity to sort out.
| Quote: | | Icelandic is famous for its "quirky" cases. Does your conlang have case? |
I'm assuming your not sure what cases are?
Well there are many that are used in languages, and they are for nouns. They change the noun so for example.
Locative case, will mean 'at the' house or 'at the' park
Possesive case, will mean child's, person's
Look here for more cases and their uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case
| Quote: | | Does it have any non-canonically marked subjects and/or objects? |
I'm not entirely sure what this means.... sorry,
| Quote: | | How do you express an imperative? |
Imperatives are exclamations, how would you differentiate this from a question or a statement? |
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eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:59 pm Post subject: |
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| StrangeMagic wrote: | | Quote: | | How are "yes" and "no" ("jaj" and "naj") used to answer "negative questions", like, "didn't you go to school today?" |
Right, okay, this is one of the biggest ambiguities in languages I think...
Using Eldin's questiong, Didn't you go to school today?
You could answer
Yes (that's right, I didn't go)
Yes (no that's wrong, I did go)
No (no I didn't go to school)
No (no, I did go to school)
That is really confusing, especially if you just say 'yes' or 'no'. I believe I saw a conlang that had no 'yes' or 'no' but instead, 'that is' or 'that isn't'.
My own conlang still has this little ambiguity to sort out. |
Some languages have four different words; for instance "oui" is yes to a positive question but "si" is yes to a negative question. Some languages are like English. Some languages do have just two words but, in answer to negative questions, they mean the opposite from what they mean in English. Some languages (for instance Ancient Latin, IIUC) don't have any words for "yes" and "no". For instance, in Welsh, instead of answering with "yes" or "no", one "repeats" or recapitulates the sentence in a short form (the verb, maybe a pronoun subject, and maybe the negator).
| StrangeMagic wrote: | | Quote: | | Icelandic is famous for its "quirky" cases. Does your conlang have case? |
I'm assuming your not sure what cases are?
Well there are many that are used in languages, and they are for nouns. They change the noun so for example.
Locative case, will mean 'at the' house or 'at the' park
Possesive case, will mean child's, person's
Look here for more cases and their uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case |
(I've seen that list; it's a good one.) No, I know what cases are; my question was a little too vague. I meant "do your nouns have morphology that marks their case"?
And, as long as we're talking about cases:
What are the morphological cases your language has for its nouns?
And, do adjectives have to agree with the case of the nouns they modify?
Also, do certain adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, impositions, etc.) and/or certain verbs "govern" certain cases?
| StrangeMagic wrote: | | Quote: | | Does it have any non-canonically marked subjects and/or objects? |
I'm not entirely sure what this means.... sorry, |
In some languages certain verbs "govern" certain cases. The commonest examples are, for instance, transitive verbs in which the object must be dative rather than accusative, or transitive verbs in which the subject must be dative rather than nominative.
But there are some verbs in some languages that require the subject to be accusative or genitive; and there are some verbs in some languages that require the object to be nominative or genitive. There are even some verbs in some languages that require an accusative subject and a nominative object!
In Russian and some other Slavic languages, a negative verb requires its object to be in the partitive (if the language has one) or in the genitive (if the language has no partitive), even though the corresponding affirmative verb would take an accusative object.
If subjects must or can be marked with cases other than the cases that are usually used for subjects, those are "quirky subjects"; if objects must or can be marked with cases other than the cases that are usually used for objects, those are "quirky objects". Any time the case required is not the case one would expect to be required, that's "quirky case".
| StrangeMagic wrote: | | Quote: | | How do you express an imperative? |
Imperatives are exclamations, how would you differentiate this from a question or a statement? |
No, those are "exclamations". "Imperatives" are commands ("Emperor" meant "commander") and/or requests, like "Close the door!".
(The three main illocutionary forces are declarative (making a statement), interrogative (asking a question), and imperative (giving a command); some languages split imperatives between rogations (making a request) and imperatives-proper (giving a command). You've obviously heard of exclamations; they are to sentence-types what interjections are to parts-of-speech, they don't really participate in the language to the degree the other types do.)
"Imperatives" are commands ("Emperor" meant "commander") and/or requests, like "Close the door!". Hortatives are commands in the first-person-plural, like "Let's close the door". Some languages have third-person imperatives, like "The door must be closed" or "It is necessary to close the door" (or maybe "Il faut ouvrir la porte"?).
For some languages with both imperatives and optatives (an irrealis mood for wishes and hopes), the third-person imperative and the third-person optative are different. ("The door must be closed" vs "I wish the door were closed".)
For some languages, 1st-person-plural imperatives, 2nd-person imperatives, and (if it has them) 3rd-person imperatives don't appear to be related. For others, they are obviously all part of the same mood.
I don't know of any language that has 1st-person-singular imperatives.
3rd-person imperatives are just not there in some languages.
If a language distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive in the 1st-person-plural, it has 1st-person-inclusive-plural imperatives; it probably has 1st-person-exclusive-plural imperatives if and only if it has 3rd-person imperatives.
Last edited by eldin raigmore on Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:41 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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StrangeMagic
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Joined: 18 Apr 2007
Posts: 640
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Oh yes, of course! Sorry about the incorrect definition of 'imperatives'. |
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eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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| I am looking forward to reading the answer(s) to one or more (any or all) of the questions I've asked that you haven't answered yet. Of course there's no need to hurry, but, have you made some decisions already that you just haven't told us about here? |
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langover94
Joined: 21 Aug 2007
Posts: 509
Location: USA
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| Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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sorry about the wait... i'll get to those questions as soon as i can. my mom doesnt like me on the computer during school nights (but i do anyway sometimes) and my math teacher gives us more homework than any of us need. sry 
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