Vreleksá

David · Last edited by David on Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

....suggestions! thanks)

Okay. I am making this new topic instead of just posting in the old one, since this Agishian is the newer version, but it still needs alot of working on and it would be great if I could get some suggestions from youse (Eldin has been helping me out). I'll start with cases for now.

Most cases (or maybe all, not sure yet), have both an animate and inanimate form and a concrete and an abstract form, e.g. I am sitting in the house (concrete), The bird is flying in the sky (abstract).

Anyway here are the following cases and their suffixes:

animate & agentive - ~ik,
inanimate & patientive - ~ug

'~i' and '~u' being the default markings in intrans. sentences.

e.g. The man eats the food: Turug abik ture

animate & patientive - ~uk
inanimate & agentive - ~ig

e.g. The rock hurt me: Ruk zhazig vudze

genitive - ~b

e.g. That is mine!: Rib zug ige (suggestions here??)

dative - ~c

e.g. I give the dog food: Turu ri uje azibic

instrumental - ~f

e.g. I eat food with my mouth: Ribis gomuf turu ri ture

superessive - ~co (anim.), ~jo (inanim.)

e.g. The cat is up the tree: Cetsuco tezibi ige

A few more locative cases to go..

Aeetlrcreejl · Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 553 Location: Over yonder

I like how you have locative cases.
_________________
Tiedämme missä asut.
Tamaqqut qantib.
Selæm ùthakyvl.

David · Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:13 pm Post subject:

David · Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject:

Now some stuff about tense, mood and aspect:

to go ip(e) & to eat tur(e)

present simple - ipe, ture EDIT: the action does happen, but is not necessarily being done at that time

present continuous - baxipe, bature (if verb stem begins with a vowel, an 'x' is placed between the two vowels, as seen underlined) the action is happening at that very moment

present perfect - vaxipe, vature the action has been done/happened quite recently

preterite or past simple - kaxipe, kature the action has been done/completed

past continuous - kabaxipe, kabature the action was being performed, but it isn't anymore

future - taxipe, tature the action will be done, but at an unknown time

future continuous - tabaxipe, tabature it is known for certain that the action will be done

David · Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 3:00 pm Post subject:

tur(e) to eat

can eat - pvature

pva

I can - Ri pvaxe

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may eat - omature

oma

I may - Ri omaxe

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must eat - jovature

jova

I must - Ri jovaxe

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might eat - uvature

uva

I might - Ri uvaxe

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should [place holder]

could [place holder]

would [place holder]

will/want(ing) [place holder]

(negative forms of above aspects)

I'll post the rest and some more in the morning.

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 570 Location: SouthEast Michigan

The stuff on the cases looks really good. The names of the cases fit their meanings, too.

The stuff on the tenses, moods, and aspects, looks really confusing to me. Your "tense-aspect combinations", (at least their names are combinations of a name of a tense and a name of an aspect), don't seem to have either temporal or aspectual meanings/uses.

First: Do you have an "absolute" tense system or a "relative" tense system? Or both?

Among "absolute" tenses are:
Past (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, was before the speech-act)
Future (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, will be after the speech-act)
Present (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, overlaps in time with the speech act.)

Among "relative" tenses are:
Anterior (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, was before some other a/e/p/s/s also spoken of)
Posterior (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, will be after some other a/e/p/s/s also spoken of)
Simultaneous (the action or event or process or situation or state being spoken of, overlaps in time with some other a/e/p/s/s also spoken of.)

Second: Do you distinguish between all three of past/present/future? Or all three of anterior/simultaneous/posterior? And if you do, do you use morphology for all tense distinctions?

Some absolute-tense systems distinguish only "past" and "non-past"; others distinguish only "future" and "non-future".
Some relative-tense systems distinguish only "anterior" and "non-anterior"; others distinguish only "posterior" and "non-posterior".

English's morphology, for instance, only distinguishes between past and non-past. To make a future, English has to synthesize it using a temporal auxiliary verb, "will" or "shall", with the non-past.

Some languages have both absolute tense and relative tense. They might, for instance, have a "posterior past" to talk about a past event which took place after some other past event also spoken of.

Third: Does your tense system have degrees of remoteness?
Some languages distinguish between the recent past and the distant past; and/or between the near future and the far future. And some languages make finer distinctions even than that, among degrees-of-remoteness. Ordinarily, the past is divided at least as finely as, or more finely than, the future. As an example, maybe the past is divided into the hodiernal (earlier today), the hesternal (yesterday), and the pre-hesternal (earlier than yesterday), while the future is divided only into the hodiernal-crastinal (later today, or tomorrow) and the post-crastinal (after tomorrow).

If a language has both absolute tense and relative tense, and if both absolute and relative tenses have degrees of remoteness, this can get complicated and interesting.

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A category of inflection for verbs, which does not indicate past vs non-past, nor future vs non-future, nor anterior vs non-anterior, nor posterior vs non-posterior; shouldn't be called "tense".

Strictly speaking, "tense" communicates when something happened/ happens/ will happen, regardless of how long it took or how many times it happened/will happen or whether it was gradual or sudden or anything like that. Past/present/future, absolute/relative, and degrees-of-remoteness, are the things which can be included in tense; and tense must include either absolute past, or absolute future, or relative past (anterior), or relative future (posterior).

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Aspect, OTOH, communicates the "internal temporal consistency" of the action, event, process, situation, or state; regardless of when it took place or takes place or will take place.

The fundamental distinction in Aspect is between perfective and imperfective.
In using a perfective aspect, the speaker communicates that he or she does not intend to talk about the internal temporal structure of the event. Perhaps it has no internal structure (it was a point in time); perhaps it had one but the speaker doesn't think it's important at the moment.
"Simple past" is sometimes thought of as "perfective past".
"Simple present" is sometimes thought of as "perfective present".
"Simple future" is sometimes thought of as "perfective future".

In using an imperfective aspect, the speaker indicates that he or she is talking about the event's internal structure; for instance, perhaps, about its beginning, or about its end, or about its middle.

Progressive, habitual, continuous, repetitive, inchoative, terminative, resumptive, etc., are imperfective aspects.

The meaning a given aspect-marking has, depends somewhat on which kind of verb it is on; on the verb's "aspectual class" or "aktionsart" or "inherent aspect" or "lexical aspect". There are only four such aspectual classes, though, so that isn't too tough.

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Any marking which mostly communicates something else, other than the above, shouldn't be called "aspect".

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It looks like a lot of the things your calling tenses and aspects, don't qualify either as tenses nor as aspects, when you look at their meanings (semantics) and uses (pragmatics).

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Another category for verbs is modality, or mode, or mood. The definition of this category hasn't firmly been agreed-upon. Also in a given language there tend to be more strategies used to indicate modality/mode/mood than to indicate tense or aspect.

But one thing that is agreed on is this; The fundamental division in mood, is between realis and irrealis. Realis mood is used when the speaker means to say that this thing actually happened, or is actually true, or actually will be done. Irrealis mood is used when the speaker is talking about a hypothetical, or a conditional, or some such thing.

(Notice that it's hard to imagine future realis. Some think the future is always irrealis. And in some languages it is.)

Just as there are more past and future tenses than present tenses; and more imperfective aspects than perfective aspects; there are more irrealis moods than realis moods.

There are deontic moods and epistemic moods. (and others.)
Deontic moods are about whether it should or shouldn't be so;
epistemic moods are about how sure we are whether or not it is so.

I'm not sure some -- maybe even the majority -- of your "tense/aspect" combinations, haven't been given primarily modal meanings and uses.

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Other categories of verbs include:
Polarity (affirmative or negative)
Voice (active, passive, middle, etc.)

David · Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:15 am Post subject:

Okay thanks for that. Smile

I'm going to print it off and have a good read of it. Then I'll answer your questions.

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 570 Location: SouthEast Michigan

BTW please don't be discouraged by the fact that I spent so much more typing on criticizing your verbs than on praising your nouns. That's just what people do; they spend less effort on praise than on criticism. I really, really like what you've done with the nouns.

Do different genders of nouns behave differently when inflecting for certain cases? You seem to have two genders: animate and inanimate. And you seem to especially differentiate how they inflect for agentive vs patientive cases, which would make sense. But you also have two genders: concrete and abstract: that inflect differently for some of your "-essive" cases. I imagine "animate" and "inanimate" are subgenders of "concrete".

Is all of that true? Or have I misread some of it? Or have I misread all of it?

How about your system of grammatical numbers (viz. singular and plural and so on, not "1, 2, 3, ..." etc.)? Often case and number are fused into one inflection; also, often different genders inflect differently for number.

What other accidents do nouns have, and sometimes inflect for?

Case

Gender = concordial noun-class; that is, it's other words that have to agree with the noun's gender; the noun itself doesn't have to. (Animate, inanimate, human, non-human, masculine, feminine, neuter (neither masculine nor feminine), epicene or common (something both of two or more of masculine or feminine or neuter), concrete, abstract, living, nonliving, edible, inedible, hard, soft, small, large, etc.)

Grammatical number (singular, plural, dual, paucal, trial, etc.)

Pragmatic status: Definite; specific&referential but not definite; and non-specific.

Quality = proper (e.g. a name) or common

Pronouns also have:
Clusivity (inclusive of 1st&2nd person vs exclusive of first and/or exclusive of 2nd) in the 1st and/or 2nd person pronouns for non-singular numbers.

And pronouns have person -- 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. Also: obviative; long-distance anaphors; reflexive; reciprocal; indefinite.

(In some languages nouns can have person! But that seems unusual; not to mention rather useless. Similarly I don't see the point in having gender in 1st & 2nd person pronouns.)

Have you handled all of these, or alternatively, have you decided your language won't involve the ones you won't handle? (Because of course it doesn't have to involve all of them.)

And, I don't guarantee these are all the accidents nouns and/or pronouns have; and I didn't even attempt to be exhaustive about the values these accidents could have.

I like the way you've handled the cases, very much; and I don't want to screw you up by getting you to be too fancy with the other things nouns can inflect for.

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 570 Location: SouthEast Michigan

David · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:12 pm Post subject:

I have also printed all this off, but I won't be able to answer it or post anything more until sometime next week or the week after, since I go back to school on the 30th and have to get all my stuff ready.

I'll reply then, and thanks for the replies by the way. Wink

David · Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 1:42 am Post subject:

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 570 Location: SouthEast Michigan