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Davin

 
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Zearen Wover



Joined: 09 Apr 2009
Posts: 42

PostPosted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:10 am    Post subject: Davin Reply with quote

This is still very much a work in progress, but I think the forum could use this. I was working with Exyan, and there were a lot of things that bothered me about it. Thus I created Davin recycling the ideas I liked and discarding the restrictions that created such verbosity in Exyan.

Davin is written with Davin Script
Consonants
1: p b f v
/p b p\ B/
2: t d s z
/t d s z/
3: þ ð ʃ ʒ
/T D S Z/
4: k g x ɣ
/k g x G/
5: r m n ŋ
/r\ m n N/

Vowels
y ɪ a i e o u
/V I { i E o u/

"Semivowels"
l h j w
/l h j w/

If need be, {þ, ð, ʃ, ʒ, ɣ, ŋ, ɪ} can be written {T, D, c, Z, q, N, I}.
Common diphthongs (Some values change):
ej: /ei/
aj: /ai/
ow: /oU/
aw: /aU/
ah: /ah/
None of which surprising save the last one where {a} changes value to /a/

Now that we have the boring stuff done with, let's get on with the fun bit: grammar. If you're familiar with RPN (Reverse-Polish Notation), this will go much faster. However, I will use a standard and a stack based explanation.

To begin, Davin is an SOV language. Ok, that exhausts my linguistic knowledge, so I'm going to just explain things and you can tell me what the linguistic equivalent is as we go along.

First, the simplest kind of word is an aŋtah, which is essentially equivalent to a noun. They are very similar to poesehs in Exyan in that they are primarily names. However, the owpaŋtah or pronouns are used more often, and of course form a crucial part of the language. For those familiar with RPN, these are always pushed. It is easy to recognize nouns for the always begin with a consonant, and pronouns begin with a semivowel. An noun by itself can be a whole sentence. Here are some examples:

wit:I
ziren:Zearen
losanʒyliz: Los Angeles

Secondly, and most importantly comes the owpys, which serve as verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Every owpys is defined transitively, using he and ji to refer to the subject and object respectively. They can be recognized easily as they always start with a vowel. Sample definitions are:

ihɪt - he hits ji
efɪs - he is faster than ji
ɪʒalp - he is a tree of species/kind ji

By default, an owpys is intransitive, where ji is assumed an elliptical (what you would expect) value. To make the owpys transitive, you nazalize the first syllable. When nazalization is impossible, such as with group 5 or semivowels, one adds a leading l (Which may lead to some ambiguity with pronouns).

lihɪt
emfɪs
ɪnʒalp

An owpys comes after a noun to tell something about its properties. Clearly, by default there should be at least one noun before an intransitive owpys and two before a transitive one. More than one owpys can modify the same noun simply by being placed after the first. For those with knowledge of RPN, an owpus is an operator that pops either one or two values and pushes one back. Examples:

arad - he is bigger than ji

ziren efɪs.
Zearen is big.

ziren teren lihɪt.
Zearen hits Tearen.

wit ɪʒalp arad.
I am a big tree.

But if most of what we express in English as nouns are an owpys in Davin, how does one talk about things like "a rock"? To solve this, Davin provides two owpaŋtah that represent general ideas. Let, glossed as "The", refers to a thing or things in context. Hum, glossed as "A", a states that such a thing or things exists.

iʃik - he is a rock of variety ji

hum iʃik.
A rock

zearen let ɪʒalp lihɪt.
Zearen hits the tree.

let ʒɪm larad.
The thing bigger than Jim.

Further, what if we don't want want to talk about an actual thing, but the property of being that thing? For this, we use raising. To do this, one uses the syntactical words eb, yp, and up. Eb raises a single owpys where yp and up raise an entire phrase. The missing argument becomes the property. This is glossed by placing [] around the word or phrase. They are often used with the owpys yf which is irregularly nazalized as yv. Yv indicates an elliptical relationship, similar to "of" in English or "de" in French.

aŋbok - he is a bank storing ji
ukyp - he is a child immature by standard ji

let iʃik eb efɪs iŋɣor.
The rock grows in fastness.

let yp ɪʒalp arad up laŋbok.
The big tree bank.

Finally, there are two miscellaneous words to mention. The first is e, which turns an aŋtah into an owpus. The second is es which swaps the object and the subject.

wit e Zearen
I'm Zearen

let es ihɪt
The hitted

That's enough for now, most of what remains is vocabulary. The only grammar left to cover is questions, lambdas, and lists.
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Last edited by Zearen Wover on Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:30 pm; edited 1 time in total
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice so far.

My languishing conlang Arpien's syntax is also RPN-based. (That's where the name Arpien comes from; it has nothing to do with any famous Mexican restaurant-bars in Ankara, nor the Finnish word for scars, nor any mystic angel corresponding to Mikael.)

Lojban grammars usually use grammatical terms in Lojban for their word-classes, rather than use more-widely-used, more traditional, and cross-linguistic terms such as "noun", "verb", "adjective", "adverb", "adposition", "pronoun", "conjunction".
I see you've adopted that habit, and are using Davin words for Davin's word-classes.
I'm not sure that's a good idea.

But Marc Okrand in his grammar for tlhIngan Hol, although he uses the terms "verb", "noun", "adverb", "pronoun", and "conjunction", does not use any of the terms "adjective" (tlHiNgan doesn't have them -- but it has nouns and verbs that can accomplish their purpose), nor "adposition" nor "preposition" nor "postposition" nor "inpositon" (tlHiNgan has no adpositions), and does use the tlHiNgan grammatical term "chuvmey" ("leftovers").

So it's certainly OK for the word-classes that don't have names in major real-life natlangs, and for smaller or less cardinal or pivotal or crucial word-classes.

But I really think that nouns and verbs ought to be called nouns and verbs, for maximal ability to communicate with your readers.

Although I don't intend to call Arpien "verbs" by the term "verbs". (I do intend to call its nouns "nouns".)

Maybe the ordinary terms would just be misleading?
If so, how and why? and give examples.

It's not clear so far that your aŋtah couldn't just be called nouns, nor that your owpaŋtah couldn't just be called pronouns.

You have given us at least a hint why owpys aren't just called verbs.

Is owpus a mis-spelling of owpys?

Also, there's a cognitive road-bump between "Every owpys is defined transitively" and "By default, an owpys is intransitive".

Your two miscellaneous words, referred to in "Finally, there are two miscellaneous words to mention. The first is e, which turns an aŋtah into an owpus. The second is es which swaps the object and the subject.", are kind of the point of Arpien.

In Arpien "intransitive verbs" and "monotransitive verbs" and "ditransitive verbs" are three different parts of speeh. Also, a verb which requires a clause or sentence as an argument, is a different part-of-speech from one which can't take a clause nor a sentence as an argument. So the word "verb" doesn't really describe any of Arpien's parts-of-speech.
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Zearen Wover



Joined: 09 Apr 2009
Posts: 42

PostPosted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 1:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
Nice so far.

Thanks and thanks for the questions and comments.

eldin raigmore wrote:
My languishing conlang Arpien's syntax is also RPN-based.

Do tell. I am very interested in seeing this.

eldin raigmore wrote:
Use noun instead of aŋtah, it's what cool people do.

I changed aŋtah, but kept owpys. Originally this is way I wanted to do it, but I consistency one over for me. I kept owpys though, because I didn't want them to imply an action like "verb" does.

eldin raigmore wrote:
Is owpus a mis-spelling of owpys?

It was >.>

eldin raigmore wrote:
Also, there's a cognitive road-bump between "Every owpys is defined transitively" and "By default, an owpys is intransitive".


It's for the sake of brevity. This way each word only needs to be defined once. Intransitive is the default since it tends to be more common.

eldin raigmore wrote:
Your two miscellaneous words, referred to in "Finally, there are two miscellaneous words to mention. The first is e, which turns an aŋtah into an owpus. The second is es which swaps the object and the subject.", are kind of the point of Arpien.

In Arpien "intransitive verbs" and "monotransitive verbs" and "ditransitive verbs" are three different parts of speeh. Also, a verb which requires a clause or sentence as an argument, is a different part-of-speech from one which can't take a clause nor a sentence as an argument. So the word "verb" doesn't really describe any of Arpien's parts-of-speech.

This sounds really cool. googled it, but I only found this really complicated definition I couldn't understand. Is there an easier reference or samples anywhere?
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zearen Wover wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Use noun instead of aŋtah, it's what cool people do.

That's not quite what I said. :wink:


Zearen Wover wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Also, there's a cognitive road-bump between "Every owpys is defined transitively" and "By default, an owpys is intransitive".

It's for the sake of brevity. This way each word only needs to be defined once. Intransitive is the default since it tends to be more common.

So, if I get what you're saying, you're saying that most verbs' most common (and therefore least-marked) form is their intransitive form, but the form by which verbs are listed in dictionaries, lexicons, vocabularies, and word-books is their transitive form (if they have one).
Is that right?


Zearen Wover wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
.... Arpien ....

This sounds really cool. googled it, but I only found this really complicated definition I couldn't understand. Is there an easier reference or samples anywhere?

So far I only have Arpien's context-free generative grammar.

It's completely "left-branching"; in any production-rule in which the non-terminal symbol on the LHS is one of the symbols on the RHS, it must be the first symbol on the RHS.

It's in Chomsky normal form; every production-rule has exactly two symbols on the RHS.

There are 22 major word-classes (parts-of-speech) and 80 minor ones.

This is still a pretty good description of the current state of the conlang Arpien.

As it says, I don't have any sounds or words picked out yet.

It may contain errors I haven't caught yet.

Is it what you saw?

What did you find hard to understand, and why?

I'll try to do better.
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Zearen Wover



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PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 2:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, so sorry I didn't respond for so long, but I was working on a general document and I'd figure I'd post it here when I was done. It took longer than expected. Some of the language has been changed (not actually changed but described more accurately to be honest). Anyway, here's the document. Note it's only a first draft, so there may be errors.

http://www.mediafire.com/?w1ry4ctttbnteql

And to answer some long standing questions:

eldin raigmore wrote:
So, if I get what you're saying, you're saying that most verbs' most common (and therefore least-marked) form is their intransitive form, but the form by which verbs are listed in dictionaries, lexicons, vocabularies, and word-books is their transitive form (if they have one).
Is that right?


Almost exactly save for the fact that every word must have a transitive form in Davin.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Is it what you saw?

What did you find hard to understand, and why?

I'll try to do better.


It's likely just a lack of knowledge on my part. I took a second look an it's starting to make more sense but it still doesn't fit in my head all at once. Examples would help, but are impossible at this point, obviously.
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