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Aríyei

 
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gsteemso



Joined: 20 Oct 2009
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Location: near Seattle, USA

PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:44 pm    Post subject: Aríyei Reply with quote

Hi all. I have previously only posted to the Conscript forum here, so I guess I’m branching out.

I started world-building for the background details of a fan-fiction I’m trying to write, and before I knew it I had invented an entire society and made a small start on nailing down their spoken language. Most of what I have is oriented towards governance, as that was the stuff I needed to nail down to write a story featuring the rulers’ children, but I got interested enough I might continue.

Here’s the pittance I have so far regarding the actual language (the first appearance of a word has an acute accent indicating the most stressed syllable):

- Language: homogeneous across entire world population of ½ million. Named Aríyei. Vocabulary of about ¼ billion words, only about ¾ of which have direct English translations. Phoneme range is similar to Japanese, but with KH, X, and distinct R & L sounds, plus ST, FL, and [consonant]w[vowel] as well as the expected TS and [consonant]y[vowel] compounds. The written form (which I have not yet started on) is uncased, distinctions indicated with letter case in English being indicated with word endings in Ariyei. There are no gender or plural forms in speech, though a plural can be disambiguated in writing by adding a silent sign at the end of the word.

Ariyei affixes catalogued to date:
chi[y]- with o in second following syllable made u : collective form
je[y]- : -cy, -itude, -ness, -ship (etc.)
mwo[y]- : chief amongst
-a : proper noun with theoretically unique referent (e.g. person or locality)
-ei : proper noun with group, category or otherwise non-unique referent
-o (-u in some compounds) : common noun

Words catalogued to date:
- Aríyo: Word. Derivatives:
Aríya (“The Word” — basically a personal belief or philosophy that cannot be disobeyed)
Ariyei (the language used by all living Óromei)
Chiyaríyei (vocabulary)
Chiyaríyo (language)
Jeyaríyo (no direct translation: for asking “is that a real word?”)
Mwoyaríya (“the Law” of the land; obsolete: official doctrine, from the dark times when everyone had to follow a prescribed ariya — usually the reigning monarch’s)
Mwoyaríyo (royal command)

- Báro: Home. Derivatives:
Bára (the name of the planet — the definitive use of “Home”)
Chibáru (town)
Mwochibáru (capital city)

- Óromo: Entity or being. Derivatives:
Oromei (a member of Home’s only native intelligent species — analogous to “human” for us)
Chiyórumei (the species to which oromei belong)
Jeyóromei (the state of being oromei)
Jeyóromo (the state of existing)

- Ríyo: Director (as of a force, animal or machine). Derivatives:
Ríya (Fate or Destiny)
Ríyei (Director — as of people or an organization)
Chiríyei (Council of Directors — a ruling body in Home’s planetary meritocracy-slash-constitutional-monarchy)
Chiríyu (committee — a rather punnish construct often used with irony aforethought)
Jeríyei (Directorship), Jemworíya (Chief Directorship — basically the monarchy)
Jemworíyei (Senior Directorship)
Mwochiríya (the highest chiriyei)
Mworíya (Chief Director — basically King/Queen)
Mworíyei (Senior Director — a member of the mwochiriya or a president of a lesser chiriyei)

Pretty dry stuff so far. Does anyone think I should continue with it?

Regards,
G.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, I think you should continue it.

The name of your language looks familiar. Any chance any of us have seen it elsewhere?
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gsteemso



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PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 11:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thank you for your vote of confidence. I've had a few ideas but have not taken the time to flesh them out yet. I will look into it further on my next day off.

One of the forum members asked me via PM about how to count in Aríyei. I've had so many ideas on what to do there that I have not yet reached any decisions. Will post again when I have something.

As to the name looking familiar, it looked annoyingly familiar to myself as well (though I could not recall why); but if so, it is an accident of parallel evolution — I came up with the content of that post mere hours before publishing it, so if you saw the word somewhere else it was not by my doing.

Regards,
G.
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Baldash



Joined: 19 May 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:43 pm    Post subject: Re: Aríyei Reply with quote

Maybe eldin raigmore is thinking about Ayeri (#2).

gsteemso wrote:
Vocabulary of about ¼ billion words, only about ¾ of which have direct English translations.

3/4 sounds very much! The direct correspondences between English and Swedish are much less, and they are both Germanic languages on Earth. Ofcourse it depends on how willing you are to grant something as a match, e.g. do you consider English "mouse" to match Japanese ネズミ "mouse/rat/gerbil"?

"jeyaríyo" = "wordness"?

I think you should continue with it, I like the morphology.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:27 pm    Post subject: Re: Aríyei Reply with quote

Baldash wrote:
Maybe eldin raigmore is thinking about Ayeri (#2).
Oh, yeah, right! Embarassed

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

@gsteemso;
I hope this doesn't discourage you. It's meant to encourage you. This is just me saying, at length, what I want to see more of and why I want to see more of it.

gsteemso wrote:
Vocabulary of about ¼ billion words, only about ¾ of which have direct English translations.
Surprised Shocked Confused Exclamation Question

English doesn't have three-sixteenths of a billion words. (one-quarter billion is 250,000,000 -- three-quarters of that is 187,500,000).

English has around 1,000,000 words; a given "unabridged" English dictionary probably has between 225,000 and 625,000 entries.

If you are counting "actual words" instead of "lexicon entries" --- that is, if any inflection or derivation done to a word counts as a distinct, brand new word --- then English probably has several times that million words. But it probably doesn't have 187.5 times that million words; I doubt (thinkn't) there are 187 legal combinations of English morpholgical processes (I suppose I could be wrong).

Of course, some words in Aríyei may be translatable only as phrases in English, not as single words. And, there may be enough "polysemy" in Aríyei that some Aríyei words require more than one English translation. (Well, maybe an English speaker would consider it "polysemy", and maybe an Aríyei-speaker wouldn't.)

Likewise, some English words may be translatable only as phrases in Aríyei, not as single words. And, there may be enough "polysemy" in English that some English words require more than one Aríyei translation. (Again, maybe an Aríyei-speaker would call it "polysemy"; and maybe an English-speaker wouldn't.)

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

In English dictionaries of English, usually there's only one entry per root word. If the same spelling of a word has two different pronunciations with different meanings, they frequently (usually?) are in separate entries. Likewise, if some words related to that entry are one part-of-speech (aka word-class) and others are a different part-of-speech, words that aren't the same word-class (aka part-of-speech) will go in different entries in the lexicon. And the dictionary in question may use a finer set of word-classes than some other books use; for instance, instead of just "verbs", it may have "intransitive verbs" and "transitive verbs".

It's those entries that are counted in the 225,000 to 625,000 entries in unabridged dictionaries, and in the 1,000,000 "words" (actually, lexical entries) English probably has.

For Aríyei to have 250,000,000 lexical entries would be quite unusual. English has more different lexical entries than any other natlang; and Aríyei would have 250 times that many.

For Aríyei to have only 1,000,000 lexical entries, but 250,000,000 different words, would still be unusual. I don't know of any natlangs that can inflect or derive every root 250 different ways, not even by applying two different derivations or inflections.

(For instance, suppose you had 15 optional derivations, and 15 optional inflections, and you could apply any derivation (or none) and then apply any inflection (or none). That would give you 256 combinations.
Or, you could apply any one (or none) of six possible derivations; you could then apply any one (or none) of six possible "inner inflections"; and then you could apply any one (or none) of six possible "outer inflections". That would give you 343 different combinations.
Or, if you had 23 possible inflections and you could apply none or any one or any two of them, that would give you 254 combinations; if you had 12 possible inflections and you could apply none or any one or any two or any three of them, that would give you 299 combinations.)


In natlangs, there are ordinarily strong restrictions about which combinations of derivations and/or inflections can be applied.
Ordinarily, all derivations (if any) which will be applied, must be applied before any inflections (if any) which will be applied.
Since some derivations and inflections can only be applied to certain parts-of-speech, and changing part-of-speech is usually done via some derivation, there are usually some inflections which cannot be applied unless one of certain derivations has been applied first, and some which can never be applied if any of certain derivations have already been applied.
Also, there are usually "slots" into which certain inflections "fit", and they can be either "left empty" or filled with just one of a particular set of values. For instance, maybe the "grammatical number" slot of some noun can be empty (for singular) or be filled with "dual" or "plural"; it can't be both singular and dual or both singular and plural or both dual and plural. And a verb's "tense" slot may be left empty ("present") or filled with "recent past", "remote past", "near future", or "far future"; it can't be both "recent past" and "near future".
Finally, the slots which are filled, usually have to be filled in a particular order. For instance, if "negation" is an inflexional affix of the verb, it's likely to be closer to the verb-root or verb-stem than any other inflexional affix.

When two or more of the same type of inflexion can be applied in the same word, there is often a limit to how many such inflexions may be applied -- typically two, sometimes three, or four. Also, if the same value of that accident may be applied more than one time in a word (typically it can't), there is often a limit -- typically, two. Also, when two or more such accidents' inflexions may be applied in the same word, usually; (a) some values have to be applied first, if at all; (b) some values have to be applied last, if at all; (c) for each which can be applied non-first, there is usually a small minority of values it can immediately follow; (d) for each which can be applied non-last, there is usually a small minority of values which can immediately follow it.

For instance, in Hindi, you can causativize a verb, and then causativize the result, but that's the end; you can't have a triple causative. And in Hindi and Turkish, you can passivize a verb, and then passivize the result, but that's the end; you can't have a triple passive.
And in some languages with Suffixaufnahme (suffix-uptake), you can't stack more than four case-endings; or, no case-ending can occur twice in a row in the stack; or, no case-ending can occur more than twice in the stack. Frequently, also, only the genitive ending can precede or follow any other case-ending in the same stack.

So, I'd like to know how you get 250 different "actual words" off one and the same lexicon entry or "root word".

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

One possibility, of course, is compound words. It could be that Aríyei has a very productive set of compounding processes, such that nearly any two words of the appropriate class(es) can be compounded into a new word of some class.

Using English's word-classes, there are four open classes: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. There is one largish closed class which has lexical content; adpositions (in English, mostly prepositions). There is another largish closed class which has grammatical content; pronouns. Then, there are several small closed classes with grammatical content, the most famous of which is "conjunctions"; but to avoid being too restrictive I think I'll expand it to "particles". Finally there is a large, open "class", namely the "interjections", which are not important syntactically nor semantically, though they may (and often do) make a pragmatic difference -- anything from subtle to huge.

Assuming you can combine a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, or adposition, with a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, or adposition, to come up with a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, or adposition; you could have as many as 125 different kinds of compounds, in a very coarse or gross classificaton (part-of-speech-1 + part-of-speech-2 --> yields resulting-part-of-speech).
I don't think anything other than adposition+adposition is likely to yield a new adposition; and there should be few enough of those that they could all be added to the class "adpositions" without deciding that this kind of compounding is productive. See e.g. into, within, without, etc.

But, anyway; if you can do a lot of compounding, you could start with a million roots, and even if there were only 125,000 (only one-eighth, or 12.5%) of the roots could be compounded, each with any one of 2,000 of the others, you could easily come up with a quarter-billion (250 million) words. (Or, 15,812 words each of which could be compounded with each of the others. Or, if each two roots could be compounded only in one order, 22,362 such word-roots.)

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

You'd need at least eight accidents each having at least two values; or at least six accidents, of which at least four have at least three values; or at least four accidents each having at least four values; or at least three accidents, at least one having at least seven values, and the other two each having at least six values; or at least two accidents each having at least sixteen values; to come up with 250 ways of inflecting a given word-root. And even that would depend on each accident being independent of the others.

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

I hope this doesn't discourage you. It's meant to encourage you. This is just me saying, at length, what I want to see more of and why I want to see more of it.

I want to know how many roots you have.
I want to know whether the roots can function as "surface" words, or have to be derived and/or inflected before they can actually be spoken as part of a clause.
I want to know whether the roots are restricted to certain word-classes; e.g.,
  • some roots only make verbs, some only make nouns, some only make adjectives, some only make adverbs;
  • or, some only make verbs, some only nouns, and some only modifiers (adjectives and adverbs);
  • or, some only make verbs, and some only make nouns and modifiers;
  • or, some only make nouns, and some only make verbs and modifiers
Or, can any root can be the root of a word in any open word-class?
I want to know what kind of word-class-changing derivations you have. I'm betting they only change from one large open class to another.
And, I want to know what kinds of compounding you have.

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

Thanks! Very Happy

And, good luck! Very Happy
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Last edited by eldin raigmore on Fri Apr 16, 2010 4:55 pm; edited 1 time in total
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gsteemso



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 12:58 am    Post subject: Whoops! That’ll teach me. Reply with quote

Well, guys, when I rattled off that throwaway line about the size of the lexicon, I was operating from an apparently incorrect memory of something I read in a 60-year-old dictionary. I understood English to have a vocabulary of 1/4 billion words, a large number of which were chemistry-related. I thought making Aríyei have a similar number of words was reasonable given the length of time (several millennia) that the óromei have been in contact with alien worlds (recall my story takes place in a highly implausible fantasy setting). I guess I must have misremembered — presumably I should have thought ‘million’ rather than ‘billion.’

As far as the correspondence with English words/phrases — I did not realize that even other Germanic languages correspond so poorly to English. The only natlangs with which I have any real familiarity are English and French, and I haven’t encountered that many words in those languages that are untranslatable from one to the other. I don’t know, maybe that’s just my limited vocabulary at work. I make the assumption that since I only know those two languages at all well, Aríyei is inherently going to be biased in a similar direction as far as underlying worldview and so on.

I am still working on this language. I owe you all many thanks for your encouragement. I would have given up by now without your input, as my mental state has not been as good as I would like over the last few weeks and I have had enormous trouble focussing.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 16, 2010 5:28 pm    Post subject: Re: Whoops! That’ll teach me. Reply with quote

gsteemso wrote:
I understood English to have a vocabulary of 1/4 billion words, a large number of which were chemistry-related.
If you were to include all IUPAC names of all named chemical compounds as "words", then I suppose written English could have a nine-figure number of "words". But (1) I think most of them are more "phrases" than "words" and (2) I don't think they are part of spoken English, since it's not a bit obvious how to pronounce them, and finally (3) even if they count as written-English words and are pronouncible, when pronounced they are pronounced as phrases, so they still don't IMO count as spoken-English "words".

gsteemso wrote:
I thought making Aríyei have a similar number of words was reasonable given the length of time (several millennia) that the óromei have been in contact with alien worlds (recall my story takes place in a highly implausible fantasy setting).
That seems entirely reasonable. For instance, if we run into very many diverse alien ecologies, our biological nomenclature is plausibly to start looking like our organic-chemical nomenclature already does. If that were to be the case, though, I would still hesitate to call them "words" in the óromei's spoken language. But perhaps they'd write them as "words" but pronounce them as "phrases", which IMO is what we do with IUPAC names.

gsteemso wrote:
I guess I must have misremembered — presumably I should have thought ‘million’ rather than ‘billion.’
250,000 to 1,000,000 different "lexical entries" in the lexicon of spoken English seems reasonable now; perhaps 60 years ago it would have been less. And if you really were to include the IUPAC and Ring Index names, probably about 250,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 would be reasonable (but IMO including those IUPAC etc. names as "spoken words" is not reasonable).

gsteemso wrote:
As far as the correspondence with English words/phrases — I did not realize that even other Germanic languages correspond so poorly to English.
I am not certain what you mean. Could you elaborate/elucidate/clarify for me?

gsteemso wrote:
The only natlangs with which I have any real familiarity are English and French, and I haven’t encountered that many words in those languages that are untranslatable from one to the other.

It's accepted as not really requiring proof, that anything that can be said in any natlang can also be said in any other.
But that doesn't by any means imply that what can be said with one word in one natlang could be said by one word in another. For instance, in languages with lots of cases, some nouns have to be translated into English as prepositional phrases instead of as one-word nouns.
Also, if the main meaning of a word in one natlang is the main meaning of a word in another natlang, that doesn't mean that those two words share all (nor, even, any) of their secondary meanings. For instance, translate "lie" from English to French. Is the "lie" in "lie down and go to sleep" translated the same as the "lie" in "you lie to us"?
If you make an English-to-Aríyei / Aríyei-to-English "dictionary", (or a French-to-Aríyei / Aríyei-to-French "dictionary"), you'll find that, in the Aríyei-to-English side, each Aríyei word is probably going to have to appear more than once, since it could have more than one English translation; and some of those translations are going to be phrases rather than single words. And then, in the English-to-Aríyei side, each English word is probably going to have to appear more than once, since it could have more than one Aríyei translation; and some of those translations are going to be phrases rather than words.

Take a look at Larousse's or anyone else's reputable, not-too-abridged French-to-English/English-to-French dictionary, and see to what degree that is true.

gsteemso wrote:
I don’t know, maybe that’s just my limited vocabulary at work.
I don't see why that's so; I don't even see why you call your vocabulary "limited".

gsteemso wrote:
I make the assumption that since I only know those two languages at all well, Aríyei is inherently going to be biased in a similar direction as far as underlying worldview and so on.
In my experience this is likely to be the case. As "grown-ups" we're now aware that there are other worldviews, but that doesn't make it easy to try them on. For instance, I want Adpihi to have a good deal of religious variety, but since most of my religious experience is with Christianity, most of what I can write into Adpihi is going to look Christian-ish. (It's all ethical-monotheistic by my own design; it's overwhelmingly Abrahamic because that's what I know; to a lesser, but still probably "overwhelming", degree, it's Christian; a little less firmly, Western Christian; still less firmly, Protestant; and I had the greatest, but still limited, success, in making it not be all American Protestant.)

gsteemso wrote:
I am still working on this language. I owe you all many thanks for your encouragement.
Very Happy Thanks! Cool

gsteemso wrote:
I would have given up by now without your input, as my mental state has not been as good as I would like over the last few weeks and I have had enormous trouble focussing.

Too bad. Sad I hope everything improves for you.

I look forward to reading more, whenever you get around to it!
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gsteemso



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PostPosted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 7:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The reference to "other Germanic languages" was in response to Baldash’s comment about correspondences between English and Swedish.
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