(This line most recently modified 2001-10-24.)
This is intended as a collection of questions I asked Mark Rosenfelder in the process of trying to understand his Almean languages, and the answers he gave. Some of them were prompted simply by reading his pages, others by my attempts at codifying some rule or other in a Perl module of mine, or just popped into my head.
Over the course of time, some questions got asked repeatedly. To try to cut down on this, I decided to put up this page, so that I could have a look and see whether I'd asked Mark a certain question before. But you're welcome to look here, as well. Perhaps you'll see some minor grammatical point clarified, get some inspiration for your own conlang, or see questions that never entered your own mind :).
Some of the points here spring not from questions I asked Mark, but from comments he made himself. Also, some questions came not from email but from postings on the Virtual Verduria Message Board. I'm including them here as well, and tried to put them in a question-and-answer form.
At the moment, this page is still pretty empty, but I'll try to fill it more and more with questions from my email archives as time goes on. Feel free to check by every once in a while.
This line was most recently modified on 2001-10-24.
These are questions which I've asked Mark but for which I don't think I've received an answer yet. They're roughly in chronological order, newest first.
Some questions apply to code I've written that tries to inflect words in some Almean language. I don't always get around to including a certain grammatical feature into the code, however -- perhaps because I don't yet fully understand it, or perhaps because it's a pretty hairy problem. This section is where those questions go that have an answer but that still need an action to be taken on my part. As such, it's more of a reference to myself.
These are questions that have been answered and for which no action is necessary -- either I already made the appropriate correction (say, for an irregular verb I was made aware of), or because none was necessary.
These questions will be grouped by language. If the number of questions should grow too big, I'll have to think of a way of subdividing them.
There are two different possibilities, depending on whether combining characters are allowed or not. (Only the lowercase letters are listed; the uppercase variants can easily be determined.)
| Letter | No combining characters | Example | With combining characters | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| sh | U+0161 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CARON | š | U+0161 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CARON | š |
| ch | U+010D LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON | č | U+010D LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON | č |
| rh | U+0159 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CARON | ř | U+0159 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CARON | ř |
| zh | U+017E LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON | ž | U+017E LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON | ž |
| î (in Verdurian) | U+012D LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH BREVE | ĭ | U+012D LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH BREVE | ĭ |
| î (in Barakhinei) | U+00EE LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX | î | U+00EE LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX | î |
| dh | U+010F LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CARON | ď | U+010F LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CARON | ď |
| th | U+0165 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CARON | ť | U+0165 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CARON | ť |
| kh | U+0125 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH CIRCUMFLEX | ĥ | U+0068 LATIN SMALL LETTER H + U+030C COMBINING CARON | ȟ |
| d, | U+1E0D LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH DOT BELOW | ḍ | U+0064 LATIN SMALL LETTER D + U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW | d̦ |
| t, | U+1E6D LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DOT BELOW | ṭ | U+0074 LATIN SMALL LETTER T + U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW | ț |
| l, | U+1E37 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOT BELOW | ḷ | U+006C LATIN SMALL LETTER L + U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW | l̦ |
| s, | U+0282 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH HOOK | ʂ | U+015F LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA | ş |
| z, | U+0290 LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH RETROFLEX HOOK | ʐ | U+007A LATIN SMALL LETTER Z + U+0327 COMBINING CEDILLA | z̧ |
| h' | U+1E23 LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH DOT ABOVE | ḣ | U+0068 LATIN SMALL LETTER H + U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT | h́ |
| r" | U+1E59 | ṙ | U+0072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R + U+0329 | r̩ |
| l/ | U+0142 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE | ł | U+0142 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE | ł |
| s' | U+015B | ś | U+015B | ś |
| z' | U+017A | ź | U+017A | ź |
| gamma | U+0263 | ɣ | U+0263 | ɣ |
Sample
Sample
Sample
Via the expression "E nish", colloquially meaning "No problem" (or "You're welcome". From an expression of reassurance in the face of difficulties, it wasn't far to becoming an all-purpose positive.
A similarly startling expression occurs in Brazilian Portuguese: "Pois não", literally "So no", but meaning "Sure". I don't know how it came about, though!
Yes, either are possible:
> On http://www.zompist.com/ismain.htm , you state:
>
> "The following verbs have irregular present forms... lyvec 'love': lo ly
> lyvê lyvn lo lyvo"
>
> but then, under "Constituent order", you give the example phrase "Lyvo _s_u
> 'I love her'", as if lyvec were regular.
>
> Was this intentional? Are both conjugations possible?
>
> Hm... the same thing appears to happen with Cadhinor.
> http://www.zompist.com/native.htm uses liubec as its paradigmatic verb for
> the -ec conjugation and gives "liubao / liubes liubeos / liubont liubous /
> liubom", but later notes under "Exceptional verbs" that "Some verbs, for
> brevity, have shortened forms"; one of the examples is liubec: "luo / lius
> luos / luont liuboos / liubom".
>
> Are the shortened forms optional in Cadhinor for the listed verbs? An
> explanation would clear things up, I think. ("Some verbs, for brevity, have
> shortened forms that may be used alongside the standard, regular forms" or
> something like that, perhaps?)
I'm pretty sure the shortened forms are optional in Cadhinor, but that
_lyvo_ was a mistake in Ismain.
It's sloppiness, really; but I compounded the mistake by choosing a verb
for the native grammar of Cadhinor that turned out to be irregular.
(The linguistic grammar in precadh.doc uses _elirec_ 'to live', but I
thought it would be a bit suspicious if Shm Revouse chose the same example.)
I'm not eager to go back and change all those tables, so I'm leaning
toward the idea of an alternation. There's no such excuse for Ismain,
however.
The deeper problem is that I have no good explanation for why Verdurian
has a few irregular verbs. There are systematic irregularities that derive
from sound change; those are fine; but for _lu"bec_ etc. I'd be a lot
happier if I could point to some rare conjugation in Proto-Eastern, or a
source for analogical change, or something. So really this is an area
that needs more work.
Best wishes,
--Mark
Sample
It should be "lo". The forms should be "lo ly lyvê lyvn lo lyvo"; "lyvo" is an error.
> On http://www.zompist.com/ismain.htm , you state:
>
> "The following verbs have irregular present forms... lyvec 'love': lo ly
> lyvê lyvn lo lyvo"
>
> but then, under "Constituent order", you give the example phrase "Lyvo _s_u
> 'I love her'", as if lyvec were regular.
>
> Was this intentional? Are both conjugations possible?
>
> Hm... the same thing appears to happen with Cadhinor.
> http://www.zompist.com/native.htm uses liubec as its paradigmatic verb for
> the -ec conjugation and gives "liubao / liubes liubeos / liubont liubous /
> liubom", but later notes under "Exceptional verbs" that "Some verbs, for
> brevity, have shortened forms"; one of the examples is liubec: "luo / lius
> luos / luont liuboos / liubom".
>
> Are the shortened forms optional in Cadhinor for the listed verbs? An
> explanation would clear things up, I think. ("Some verbs, for brevity, have
> shortened forms that may be used alongside the standard, regular forms" or
> something like that, perhaps?)
I'm pretty sure the shortened forms are optional in Cadhinor, but that
_lyvo_ was a mistake in Ismain.
It's sloppiness, really; but I compounded the mistake by choosing a verb
for the native grammar of Cadhinor that turned out to be irregular.
(The linguistic grammar in precadh.doc uses _elirec_ 'to live', but I
thought it would be a bit suspicious if Shm Revouse chose the same example.)
I'm not eager to go back and change all those tables, so I'm leaning
toward the idea of an alternation. There's no such excuse for Ismain,
however.
The deeper problem is that I have no good explanation for why Verdurian
has a few irregular verbs. There are systematic irregularities that derive
from sound change; those are fine; but for _lu"bec_ etc. I'd be a lot
happier if I could point to some rare conjugation in Proto-Eastern, or a
source for analogical change, or something. So really this is an area
that needs more work.
Best wishes,
--Mark
Yes, they can:
> http://www.zompist.com/eastern2.html claims under "Phonological constraints" > that "Words (and as a corollary inflections) can end in -t, -r, -l, -n, -m, > -s, -x, -w, or a vowel", but it gives "lu:bek" for "to love" -- which ends > in -k! Heh... I've gotten caught by those things more than once... phonological constraints do a lot to give a language a distinctive feel, but they're hard to keep in mind. Another correspondent pointed out once that the word Wede:i was illegal according to the published constraints (two adjacent vowels). I decided to relax the constraint in that case, and I think I'm going to have to do the same thing here. (A change to proto-Eastern has an enormous ripple effect, as you can imagine.) So a final -k will be allowed. Thanks for pointing this out-- and for your other excellent questions. I don't often get questions that send me to the grammars or the Unicode pages. :) I checked out your "I love you" translations (the grammar is correct throughout, but there's a few quibbles), and I'll reply to that and the other questions later. Best wishes, --Mark
Comments, suggestions, or feedback to philip@newton.digitalspace.net.