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quirky or clear?

 
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Kiri



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

PostPosted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:37 pm    Post subject: quirky or clear? Reply with quote

Are your conlangs quirky and full of irregularities like natlangs, or are they clear and based on unchangeable rules, that always apply?

I'm asking, because my Vaijerīna was all for clearness up until recently, when it started to get some quirky features. I'm just not sure, whether to be happy or try to avoid it Very Happy
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mine are designed to be natlang-simulations, so they're about average. Emitare is agglutinative so it has less than the average level of irregularities, but it's not totally devoid of them.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have some built-in "requirements" for irregularities, but the 'lang is going to be mostly pretty predictable.
It starts as a "global auxiliary" language, which is developed on a planet that hasn't had as much time for its original language to differentiate as Earth's languages have had.
Then it becomes the language of a multi-species interstellar union which includes some AIs (Artificial Intelligences), so the need for learnability is high, and there's a "force" tending to keep it consistent and easy to "compute" the meaning of any given utterance and to "compute" how to say any given meaning.
So I've got in-story reasons to make it not be as irregular as a natlang.
Most of the irregularities will be "regularly irregular"; that is, once one knows the specific reasons a particular root is "irregular", one will know which "irregular" paradigm (declension or conjugation) it goes in.
Some roots may be "doubly irregular"; in which case either their paradigms are defective or their paradigms are suppletive.
There may also be some "triply irregular" roots; their paradigms will probably be both suppletive and defective.
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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Location: in front of my computer. always.

PostPosted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
Most of the irregularities will be "regularly irregular"; that is, once one knows the specific reasons a particular root is "irregular", one will know which "irregular" paradigm (declension or conjugation) it goes in.


Like Classical Japanese? It has 4 irregular conjugations, 3 of which have 2 or more verbs in them - 1 has 1, 2 have 2, and 1 has (I think) 6 and a bunch of suffixes.

How do you get the suppletion to work with the paradigm format? Do you memorize both roots (as in, this defective verb and this other defective verb go together), or do you do something else?
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 8:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
Like Classical Japanese? It has 4 irregular conjugations, 3 of which have 2 or more verbs in them - 1 has 1, 2 have 2, and 1 has (I think) 6 and a bunch of suffixes.
No, more like Hebrew or Arabic.

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
How do you get the suppletion to work with the paradigm format? Do you memorize both roots (as in, this defective verb and this other defective verb go together),
Yes.
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
or do you do something else?
I hadn't thought of another way to do it. You mean you have? What?
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 18, 2009 9:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
Like Classical Japanese? It has 4 irregular conjugations, 3 of which have 2 or more verbs in them - 1 has 1, 2 have 2, and 1 has (I think) 6 and a bunch of suffixes.
No, more like Hebrew or Arabic.

Ah. I don't know how those work.

Quote:
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
How do you get the suppletion to work with the paradigm format? Do you memorize both roots (as in, this defective verb and this other defective verb go together),
Yes.
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
or do you do something else?
I hadn't thought of another way to do it. You mean you have? What?

No, I was just wondering if you had ^_^
After I typed it I realized I'm not sure if it's possible to do it any other way.
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Baldash



Joined: 19 May 2009
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Location: Sweden

PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My conlang is very regular, much more so than e.g. Esperanto. I have played around with the thought that some day derive a diachronic daughter lang, though, but without any significant semantic drift or leveling through analogy, the former which will make it less irregular than a typical diachronic lang, the latter which will make it seem more irregular.

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
Like Classical Japanese? It has 4 irregular conjugations, 3 of which have 2 or more verbs in them - 1 has 1, 2 have 2, and 1 has (I think) 6 and a bunch of suffixes.
No, more like Hebrew or Arabic.

Ah. I don't know how those work.

There are regular roots of three consonants. Then there are roots with weak radicals, such as pharyngeals or semi-vowels, that may disappear and/or trigger another paradigm than the regular one. So there are rules like "If the first radical is /j/ or /w/ then this paradigm applies". Weak roots may also be weak because the second and third radical are the same. /n/ is also considered weak if it appears as the first radical. (All this is about Biblical Hebrew, I don't know the details of Arabic)
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achemel



Joined: 29 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Most of my conlangs are pretty regular, just because I came up with almost all of them within a couple of years and I never got beyond the basics. But recently I've started putting in irregulars, especially in ra cel and Hemnalg. Hemnalg's irregulars have a sort of regularity to them, though - for example, most irregulars in the past tense end in /l/, and often the 1st and 2nd person are the same (e.g. "to stop" /bors/ --> I stop /bor/ and you stop /bor/, or "to use" /gram/ --> /glam/ for "used" in all persons). Ra cel's irregulars come from the vowel conversions, which are rather regular in themselves (always e-->i or a-->o) but there are other irregularities which come from differences in the stems and roots of verbs, and then the whole deal with adjective particles.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Baldash wrote:
Tolkien_Freak wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
No, more like Hebrew or Arabic.
Ah. I don't know how those work.
There are regular roots of three consonants. Then there are roots with weak radicals, such as pharyngeals or semi-vowels, that may disappear and/or trigger another paradigm than the regular one. So there are rules like "If the first radical is /j/ or /w/ then this paradigm applies". Weak roots may also be weak because the second and third radical are the same. /n/ is also considered weak if it appears as the first radical.
What Baldash said.
Baldash wrote:
(All this is about Biblical Hebrew, I don't know the details of Arabic)
It's quite similar.
In Adpihi and Reptigan, a regular root C1-C2-C3 is three consonants.

*Stems are formed by optionally duplicating one of the consonants, and inserting vowels:
C1-V1-C2-V2-C3
C1-V1-C1-V2-C2-V3-C3
C1-V1-C2-V2-C2-V3-C3
C1-V1-C2-V2-C3-V3-C3

Words are formed by optionally attaching a prefix and/or optionally attaching a suffix.

For the regular paradigm to work unambiguously,
C1 has to be different from C2
C2 has to be different from C3
C1 has to be different from the last consonant of any prefix
C3 has to be different from the first consonant of any suffix.

Also, some consonants are hard to distinguish in some places. Between vowels, it's easy to "lose" a glottal or epiglottal or laryngeal or pharyngeal consonat, such as [ ? ] or [ h ]. And semi-vowels can likewise be hard to detect, for instance, a [ j ] between two high vowels or a [ w ] between two rounded vowels. Try saying a word with a [iji] sequence in it where neither syllable is accented and you're talking fast; are you sure you'll always hear the [ j ] sound? Do the same with [uwu]. Actually I think [ j ] might be hard to say properly, or hard to hear properly, between two vowels if either of them is high (close); likewise, [ w ] might be hard to hear intervocallically if either vowel is rounded.

And there are, in fact, some bi-consonantal roots ("hollow roots", properly so-called in the strict sense; that is, roots without a middle consonant). And there are some tetra-consonantal roots. In both cases, the regular paradigm would run into problems or ambiguities.

So;

If C1 is the same as the last consonant of some prefix, we use a different "regularly irregular" paradigm; which one depends on which consonant. (For instance, suppose the regular plural prefix ended in [ m ] or [ n ]. For any noun that began in [ m ] (or [ n ], as the case may be), we'd need to worry about mixing up an [mVm] that was due to pluralization, with an [mVm] that was due to duplicating the first consonant.)

If C3 is the same as the first consonant of some suffix, we use a different "regularly irregular" paradigm; which one depends on which consonant. (For instance, suppose the regular plural suffix starts in [ m ] or [ n ]. For any noun that ends in [ m ] (or [ n ], as the case may be), we'd need to worry about mixing up an [mVm] that was due to pluralization, with an [mVm] that was due to duplicating the third consonant.)

If C2 is the same as C1, we need to worry about sequence [C1-V-C1-V-C1] that are due to duplicating the first consonant, getting mixed up with those that are due to duplicating the second consonant.

If C2 is the same as C3, we need to worry about sequence [C3-V-C3-V-C3] that are due to duplicating the third consonant, getting mixed up with those that are due to duplicating the second consonant.

If one of the consonants is "weak", we need to worry about losing it. For instance, if [a?a] or [e?e] or [i?i] or [o?o] or [u?u], or [aha] or [ehe] or [ihi] or [oho] or [uhu], occur where neither vowel is stressed, in rapid speech the consonants may be just missed. Likewise for [iji] or [uwu]. So cells in the paradigm where that might happen may need to be expressed by an alternate means.

Or maybe one of the consonants is just plain missing; maybe the root is C1- -C3, missing the C2.

Or, maybe there are already four consonants, in which case the four lines mentioned back there* can't all be distinct; there's really just one way to form the stem, and that's C1-V1-C2-V2-C3-V3-C4.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In essence, the problems faced by Hebrew and Arabic are similar to those above, and similar to each other. One of those Semitic natlangs cares about [ m ], one cares about [ n ].

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Adpihi and Reptigan, for each single problem a root might face, if it faces just that problem and no other, there is an alternative paradigm, that allows every cell to be filled; I called these "regularly irregular".

If a root faces exactly two problems, a couple of solutions might happen. Maybe only one alternative "regularly irregular" paradigm is chosen, and the root fills it out in either a defective way (some cells not filled) or an ambiguous way (same thing in two different cells) or both. Or, two different roots are used, which don't face the same problems as each other, so that between them they can have unique entries in each cell of the paradigm. That would be "suppletion".

(For example, maybe the root is /m-h-h/ or /h-h-m/ where neither /m/ nor /h/ occurs in any affix; or maybe it's /j-m-w/, or /m-j-m-f/, or something like that.)

If a root faces exactly three problems, odds are its paradigm will be suppletive, and defective, and ambiguous. In other words, one or more partial solutions may exist, but no complete solution exists.

If a "root" faces more than three problems I'll probably declare it illegal and ungrammatical in my 'lang.
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 9:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just learned an amazing amount about the grammar of tri-consonantal langs.

I'm sorry I don't have a more substantial comment, but I did just learn a LOT.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
I just learned an amazing amount about the grammar of tri-consonantal langs.

I'm sorry I don't have a more substantial comment, but I did just learn a LOT.
Don't forget that some of what I said was about my conlang, rather than about real-live 3Cons natlangs. (For instance, Semitic languages never geminate any consonant except the middle one in the root.) It's just that a lot of it was inspired by my attempt to understand natlangs with triconsonantal root systems.
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