Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Praat
Monday, February 20, 2017
Slavery among the People of Kikxo: A President's Day Special
I'm doing this instead of homework because I can't focus on homework right now because my face is numb. Silly dentist fixing my teeth.
I wanted to do a whole big article on the political system of the úīkmo Kīkxot, but I do have plenty of homework to do and really am not feeling up to it. So I'll talk about something more minor but still president's day related: slavery.
The úīkmo Kīkxot are, if nothing else, xenophobic. Not necessarily in the "hatred of foreigners" way so much as the "hatred of strangers" way. You can figure out the difference for yourself. And they do love their slavery. They take from whoever sells and from the people they conqueror. Their religion proscribes only one rule: No follower of Kīkxo may enslave fellow travelers. The different sects interpret this in very different ways, with an extreme few saying that forbids all slavery all the way to the sects that think that means even enslaving members of other sects is okay. But for most people, it means non-followers of Kikxot are fair game.
Most people do not own slaves but those that do use them for a variety of tasks. Agriculture, manufacturing, running a household, teaching and whatever else. Slaves can even have fairly high status, personal wealth and other things that we wouldn't associate with slaves in our culture. They are (in theory) to be cared for and protected, sometimes even like a family member. But they are not free (whatever that means) and ultimately report and execute the will of their owners.
Slavery is a highly valued and protected institution among the Úīkmo Kīkxot, which may be hard to understand for a westerner. It stems from their religious beliefs ultimately. To them, Kīkxo is the ultimate protector in the fight between Good and Evil. One who worships and submits to Kīkxo is accepting his protection. When a follower of Kīkxo enslaves someone, Kīkxo's protection extends over that slave. To the followers of Kīkxo, slavery is a means of extending Kīkxo's good will and love to the ignorant savages who refuse to accept it on their own. To the followers of Kīkxo it is inhumane to free slaves and release them from the protection Kīkxo offers them. It is the evil one who tells slaves they want to be free, that deludes people into wanting to free slaves. Now of course, in theory if a slave converts to Kīkxo, they should be freed, though many slaveowners, reasonably fearing it is simply a deception to seek freedom and betray Kīkxo and the forces of good, do not accept such conversions. At least, that's what their reasoning is.
Theologians and scribes often debate the role that slavery plays in spreading the truth to other lands ("Are our neighbors converting just to avoid slave raids? Should such deceitful traitors be enslaved to teach them a lesson?" or "Are we really only spreading the religion as an excuse to expand and take more slaves?" Things like that) they almost always agree that it is a good thing and an essential part civilized life.
Happy Presidents Day
I wanted to do a whole big article on the political system of the úīkmo Kīkxot, but I do have plenty of homework to do and really am not feeling up to it. So I'll talk about something more minor but still president's day related: slavery.
The úīkmo Kīkxot are, if nothing else, xenophobic. Not necessarily in the "hatred of foreigners" way so much as the "hatred of strangers" way. You can figure out the difference for yourself. And they do love their slavery. They take from whoever sells and from the people they conqueror. Their religion proscribes only one rule: No follower of Kīkxo may enslave fellow travelers. The different sects interpret this in very different ways, with an extreme few saying that forbids all slavery all the way to the sects that think that means even enslaving members of other sects is okay. But for most people, it means non-followers of Kikxot are fair game.
Most people do not own slaves but those that do use them for a variety of tasks. Agriculture, manufacturing, running a household, teaching and whatever else. Slaves can even have fairly high status, personal wealth and other things that we wouldn't associate with slaves in our culture. They are (in theory) to be cared for and protected, sometimes even like a family member. But they are not free (whatever that means) and ultimately report and execute the will of their owners.
Slavery is a highly valued and protected institution among the Úīkmo Kīkxot, which may be hard to understand for a westerner. It stems from their religious beliefs ultimately. To them, Kīkxo is the ultimate protector in the fight between Good and Evil. One who worships and submits to Kīkxo is accepting his protection. When a follower of Kīkxo enslaves someone, Kīkxo's protection extends over that slave. To the followers of Kīkxo, slavery is a means of extending Kīkxo's good will and love to the ignorant savages who refuse to accept it on their own. To the followers of Kīkxo it is inhumane to free slaves and release them from the protection Kīkxo offers them. It is the evil one who tells slaves they want to be free, that deludes people into wanting to free slaves. Now of course, in theory if a slave converts to Kīkxo, they should be freed, though many slaveowners, reasonably fearing it is simply a deception to seek freedom and betray Kīkxo and the forces of good, do not accept such conversions. At least, that's what their reasoning is.
Theologians and scribes often debate the role that slavery plays in spreading the truth to other lands ("Are our neighbors converting just to avoid slave raids? Should such deceitful traitors be enslaved to teach them a lesson?" or "Are we really only spreading the religion as an excuse to expand and take more slaves?" Things like that) they almost always agree that it is a good thing and an essential part civilized life.
Happy Presidents Day
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Intesification in Indonesian?
Random question of the day. Has anyone done a study/published a paper on the indonesian infix -w- (alternatively -u-). Like in panas vs pwanas and bagus vs bwagus. I think it comes from javanese, but I can't find any literature about its use in Javanese either.
I heard it all the time, especially in East Java, and occasionally I see it written to, but I can't seem to find anything actually about it. Like it is a feature that everyone seems to know and understand when someone else uses it, but no one officially recognizes it as a real thing.
I'm a just crazy thinking that this is an actual productive infixation? Is my analysis of it being an intensifier wrong? Do people actually understand it whenever it is used, or only in lexicalized words? And most importantly, why has no one studied this? It seems like a surely some Malayacist would have done a paper on it by now. If not, I guess I have a possible research paper to write, if I had time and was actually in a lingustics program.
I heard it all the time, especially in East Java, and occasionally I see it written to, but I can't seem to find anything actually about it. Like it is a feature that everyone seems to know and understand when someone else uses it, but no one officially recognizes it as a real thing.
I'm a just crazy thinking that this is an actual productive infixation? Is my analysis of it being an intensifier wrong? Do people actually understand it whenever it is used, or only in lexicalized words? And most importantly, why has no one studied this? It seems like a surely some Malayacist would have done a paper on it by now. If not, I guess I have a possible research paper to write, if I had time and was actually in a lingustics program.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
What is love? A Valentine's Day special
Yeah I'm a couple days late. Actually I didn't even start this post until after Valentine's Day. Didn't even have the idea until afterwards. But it's what I would have done had I not been swamped up in homework.
Anyway, in honor of that special day I detest so much, let's look at words for love in various conlangs I've made. I'll basically only deal with Toúījāb Kīkxot because I think that's the one I have the most info on this for, so maybs not various conlangs. It's not a topic I spend much time on, yannow?
The basic root for love is XYS (I) which is all things relating to the liver (think Indonesian hati, if you happen to know Indonesia). Of course in actual use it rarely is used to refer to the actual liver (xīyso) and generally means "the place where emotions are". While this could mean any emotions, the úīkmo Kīkxot use it almost exclusively to refer to love. If the heart is the base noun, love itself is xoyīs, though in informal and everyday speech many people will simply use xīyso (or given that the standard is different from most varieties, probably something like xīso or sisu or something else like that). This love is more or less equivalent to the English word "love", covering a wide semantic space. In Indonesian terms, xoyīs is kasih, cinta, and sayang all wrapped in one word, which is a bit unusual since this language usually cleaves with Indonesia pretty well, being based of it after all.
TbKt (I need to think of good abbreviations) is a language that loves compounding and this is no different when it comes to love. Xīysoāb Kīkxot (lit. "God's heart") is "charity" or the Greek "agape". It's the love that God (well, not our understanding of God, but I'll use the translation regardless) feels towards his worshipers. More metaphorically it represents an unconditional (strangely enough, considering that Kīkxo's love may seem pretty conditional to a westerner) love, a care and affection so deep that it can't be gotten rid of no matter how awful someone is. It's not pity though (that's kāral), it's a deeper understanding felt towards someone, yannow? Familial love is usually represented in two ways: with a liver+owner compound (ex: xīysoāb mīznot- "motherly love") or with a nominialzation of the roots transitive verb (ex: micna "motherly love). Usage really depends on context and user preference, the first being more likely to be used in a sentence like "Motherly love is so important" while the second in a sentence like "Motherly love makes my children happy."
Verbwise, XYS can be used in the transitive or intransitive and always has a human agent (though some particularly bigoted úīkmo kīkxot would consider it improper to use with a vīggo (tribesman) agent). Intransitive ūxiys has a general meaning of "to have strong emotions/love" and is usually used with a preposition to mark the recipient. This can be used with non-human/inanimate recipients, especially in informal registers, though the more inanimate the recipient the stranger it sounds. Without any compliment, it usually carries a meaning like "in love", "unstable", "crazy (indonesian "gila" or "tergila")" or "overcome by emotions". The transitive verb form xiysa can only be used with a human patient/recipient. It almost always takes the benefactive suffix -ī (the bare stem has a causitive meaning, which is a whole nother can of worms but would have a meaning like "X makes Y fall in love" or more naturally "Y fell in love with X", but it isn't a common construction). Like many verbs of emotion, the habitual form "C(a)-" is used, so xaxiysaī is the most common way of saying "X loves Y". Being a fairly intimate verb, "I love you" would be Yān xaxiysaī ōdan (or xaxiysaīōd) in most cases.
While xoyīs describes a variety of different sorts of love, the verb forms pretty much exclusively refer to romantic and sexual love. This is especially clear with the intensified form, which basically translate to "lust". To say that you love someone in a non-romantic sense, the transitive form of the family roots are generally. Now there is some ambiguity, as these verbs could mean "to consider [patient] a Y (with the implicit "love [patient] like a Y" built into this)" (a semi-causative in nature) or "to care for [patient] in a Yly role". It most cases, agent focus is the second translation while patient focus is the first translation, but as always context rules. As examples, Yān dichha ōdan would probably translate to something like "I care for you like a sibling" (or more likely "I'm babysitting you/I admire you" depending on the relative ages of the speakers) while Ōdan dadaxichha yān would be "I love you (like a sibling)" (lit. "You are considered a sibling by me"). Just like other verbs of emotion, these often are in the habitual aspect, but unlike XYS, do not take the benefactive. Unlike the familial love verbs kikxa is always treated like a causative. Humans are considered unable to love someone like God loves someone, so it would be absurd for the verb to ever mean "to love someone like God loves people". Kikxa means "to consider someone God" or more regularly (and less blasphemously) "to adore someone". It is usually in patient-focus, because why would God(-like beings) not be the focus of the sentence. Therefore Ōdan kakaxikxa yān would mean "I adore you" or "I love you fully (and unconditionally)" or even "I love you in the most platonic and totally non-romantic way" (Also, kakaxikxa is quite the mouthful considering it has only two consonant phonemes). These constructions are fairly informal (and highly intimate, though as seen previously not necessarily romantic (though it usually is despite coming from the root for God)) in nature and form a nice contrast with the intensified xiysa-xiysaī, "to lust after someone".
The normal word for "boyfriend/girlfriend/lover" is xāyas and this word is rarely used to describe one's spouse. Instead one's spouse is usually referred to as a ōmazhnzō/ōmazhnzun, which literally means "reflection". Increasingly, this is used by unmarried lovers to describe that person they just /know/ is the one, and it is also highly common for any description of a "lover" in literature and poetry. Xāyas can also mean "loving" as an adjective, and in this case is used with spouses. Which can lead to sentences like Ōmazhnzō xāyas mōnak nazinitra-nitra omazhnzunmā "A loving husband shouldn't beat his wife", though a wife saying this to her husband might use fis or even mavox instead of -mā, depending on the circumstances. One final bit of (naughtier fun). A vulgar slang word! Sasās means "horny", coming from a dialect that indicates intensity with a back reduplication (xāyas-xāyas -> saxāyas), and has sound rules that go something like this: x->s and deletion of y between the same vowel āya->ā. So saxāyas->sasāyas->sasāas->sasās. Pretty cool, huh?
I think that is enough for the valentine's special. Really makes me think about how little my conlangs care about this topic. Also, be glad that I didn't go all anthropological and talk about the complex courtship and marriage customs of the úīkmo kīkxot. Let alone their opinions on PDA.
Anyway, in honor of that special day I detest so much, let's look at words for love in various conlangs I've made. I'll basically only deal with Toúījāb Kīkxot because I think that's the one I have the most info on this for, so maybs not various conlangs. It's not a topic I spend much time on, yannow?
The basic root for love is XYS (I) which is all things relating to the liver (think Indonesian hati, if you happen to know Indonesia). Of course in actual use it rarely is used to refer to the actual liver (xīyso) and generally means "the place where emotions are". While this could mean any emotions, the úīkmo Kīkxot use it almost exclusively to refer to love. If the heart is the base noun, love itself is xoyīs, though in informal and everyday speech many people will simply use xīyso (or given that the standard is different from most varieties, probably something like xīso or sisu or something else like that). This love is more or less equivalent to the English word "love", covering a wide semantic space. In Indonesian terms, xoyīs is kasih, cinta, and sayang all wrapped in one word, which is a bit unusual since this language usually cleaves with Indonesia pretty well, being based of it after all.
TbKt (I need to think of good abbreviations) is a language that loves compounding and this is no different when it comes to love. Xīysoāb Kīkxot (lit. "God's heart") is "charity" or the Greek "agape". It's the love that God (well, not our understanding of God, but I'll use the translation regardless) feels towards his worshipers. More metaphorically it represents an unconditional (strangely enough, considering that Kīkxo's love may seem pretty conditional to a westerner) love, a care and affection so deep that it can't be gotten rid of no matter how awful someone is. It's not pity though (that's kāral), it's a deeper understanding felt towards someone, yannow? Familial love is usually represented in two ways: with a liver+owner compound (ex: xīysoāb mīznot- "motherly love") or with a nominialzation of the roots transitive verb (ex: micna "motherly love). Usage really depends on context and user preference, the first being more likely to be used in a sentence like "Motherly love is so important" while the second in a sentence like "Motherly love makes my children happy."
Verbwise, XYS can be used in the transitive or intransitive and always has a human agent (though some particularly bigoted úīkmo kīkxot would consider it improper to use with a vīggo (tribesman) agent). Intransitive ūxiys has a general meaning of "to have strong emotions/love" and is usually used with a preposition to mark the recipient. This can be used with non-human/inanimate recipients, especially in informal registers, though the more inanimate the recipient the stranger it sounds. Without any compliment, it usually carries a meaning like "in love", "unstable", "crazy (indonesian "gila" or "tergila")" or "overcome by emotions". The transitive verb form xiysa can only be used with a human patient/recipient. It almost always takes the benefactive suffix -ī (the bare stem has a causitive meaning, which is a whole nother can of worms but would have a meaning like "X makes Y fall in love" or more naturally "Y fell in love with X", but it isn't a common construction). Like many verbs of emotion, the habitual form "C(a)-" is used, so xaxiysaī is the most common way of saying "X loves Y". Being a fairly intimate verb, "I love you" would be Yān xaxiysaī ōdan (or xaxiysaīōd) in most cases.
While xoyīs describes a variety of different sorts of love, the verb forms pretty much exclusively refer to romantic and sexual love. This is especially clear with the intensified form, which basically translate to "lust". To say that you love someone in a non-romantic sense, the transitive form of the family roots are generally. Now there is some ambiguity, as these verbs could mean "to consider [patient] a Y (with the implicit "love [patient] like a Y" built into this)" (a semi-causative in nature) or "to care for [patient] in a Yly role". It most cases, agent focus is the second translation while patient focus is the first translation, but as always context rules. As examples, Yān dichha ōdan would probably translate to something like "I care for you like a sibling" (or more likely "I'm babysitting you/I admire you" depending on the relative ages of the speakers) while Ōdan dadaxichha yān would be "I love you (like a sibling)" (lit. "You are considered a sibling by me"). Just like other verbs of emotion, these often are in the habitual aspect, but unlike XYS, do not take the benefactive. Unlike the familial love verbs kikxa is always treated like a causative. Humans are considered unable to love someone like God loves someone, so it would be absurd for the verb to ever mean "to love someone like God loves people". Kikxa means "to consider someone God" or more regularly (and less blasphemously) "to adore someone". It is usually in patient-focus, because why would God(-like beings) not be the focus of the sentence. Therefore Ōdan kakaxikxa yān would mean "I adore you" or "I love you fully (and unconditionally)" or even "I love you in the most platonic and totally non-romantic way" (Also, kakaxikxa is quite the mouthful considering it has only two consonant phonemes). These constructions are fairly informal (and highly intimate, though as seen previously not necessarily romantic (though it usually is despite coming from the root for God)) in nature and form a nice contrast with the intensified xiysa-xiysaī, "to lust after someone".
The normal word for "boyfriend/girlfriend/lover" is xāyas and this word is rarely used to describe one's spouse. Instead one's spouse is usually referred to as a ōmazhnzō/ōmazhnzun, which literally means "reflection". Increasingly, this is used by unmarried lovers to describe that person they just /know/ is the one, and it is also highly common for any description of a "lover" in literature and poetry. Xāyas can also mean "loving" as an adjective, and in this case is used with spouses. Which can lead to sentences like Ōmazhnzō xāyas mōnak nazinitra-nitra omazhnzunmā "A loving husband shouldn't beat his wife", though a wife saying this to her husband might use fis or even mavox instead of -mā, depending on the circumstances. One final bit of (naughtier fun). A vulgar slang word! Sasās means "horny", coming from a dialect that indicates intensity with a back reduplication (xāyas-xāyas -> saxāyas), and has sound rules that go something like this: x->s and deletion of y between the same vowel āya->ā. So saxāyas->sasāyas->sasāas->sasās. Pretty cool, huh?
I think that is enough for the valentine's special. Really makes me think about how little my conlangs care about this topic. Also, be glad that I didn't go all anthropological and talk about the complex courtship and marriage customs of the úīkmo kīkxot. Let alone their opinions on PDA.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Bad Conglanging Ideas: A link
Just a fun little link that I found on reddit (r/badlinguistics is such a blast)
badconlangingideas.tumblr.com
badconlangingideas.tumblr.com
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Adventures in Indonesian translation pt 1
What I perceived as a very poor translation on Facebook has lead me to start submitting translations for Google again (it's interface is more userfriendly than facebook's. Also, it lets me do Indonesian to English, which they might need more than english to indonesian. But I like to do both) and I've been submitting translations for English from Indonesian.
For those that don't know, the way this works is I am given a phrase or sentence (with no context) and then asked to give a translation. Not having context can make it pretty hard, and man do I get some funny things. What follows is some funny ones I've got, or ones that provide good translation notes.
Other random translation note. -nya and dia are really difficult because I never know if to translate them to he or she, or if a straight singular they is best. I NEED CONTEXT TO TRANSLATE. Google's advice? "If you feel you need more context (like gender or formality), go ahead and translate as best you can". This is why Google Translate (and all machine translations) suck. Machines can't understand the context and pragmatics of a statement.
Well that's enough for tonight. Translation is a really fun exercise.
For those that don't know, the way this works is I am given a phrase or sentence (with no context) and then asked to give a translation. Not having context can make it pretty hard, and man do I get some funny things. What follows is some funny ones I've got, or ones that provide good translation notes.
- "Hidup bebas di dalam air laut dan tawar."
- I can't tell if this is some sort of saying or word of wisdom or if it is information about a fish. Is it an advertisement offering a way to free yourself from the perils of water? I eventually decided it was probably about a fish.
- "Berita tertangkapnya tuyul tersebut membuat banyak orang penasaran."
- Tuyul, a small spirit of the familiar sort. Where does Google get these to translate? Tuyul can't even be translated into english without a translator's footnote, imo. Penasaran is an interesting word too. Here (and most other places) it is being used like an adjective, even though the wordform itself is a noun. I translated as curious (since that's how I almost always see it being used, and makes sense in this case), but my dictionary says that it literally means "angered" or "anxious to find out something". I guess the second one could mean curious, but why not just say that? Tertangkapnya is also an interesting word being a nominalization. I have an article about -nya nominalizations somewhere, I should probably read it again sometime.
- "Einstein dengan teori relativitas khusus dan umumnya."
- This, as far as I can tell, is a fragment in English and Indonesian. It's easy to translate (you probably don't need to know indonesian to translate it), but it NEEDS MORE CONTEXT
- "Begitu mereka terjerumus, adalah masalah besar di kemudian hari."
- Terjerumus appears to be a new word for me. I think in this case it is definitely being used like "to fall into sin". Also, this appears to be a case where "adalah" means"ada-lah" not "is".
- "Saya membeli kertas, pena, dan tinta."
- This is the one where I realized I was translating most things into the past tense. Probably accurate, but context is really important for translations and even more so for Indonesian, where tense is so context based.
- "Bonus dihitung dan diberikan secara harian."
- I realized I've been doing a similar sort of thing with things that could be singular or plural. I think in this case it is plural. Honestly, I've gotten pretty bad at marking plurals in english sometimes, it just doesn't seem important anymore.
- "Saya raba seluruh bagian tubuh yang sensitif"
- This is the second translation that I think it pulled from a porn site. I'm translating these as unerotically as possible. "I groped all the sensitive body parts".
- "Apa sih penyebab tubuh kita bisa merasakan gatal?"
- I don't get many translations that use particles like "sih". Kind of hard to translate, but not too bad overall, though I did a pretty liberal translation on this one.
- "Cara menghilangkan jerawat yang aman adalah secara tradisional."
- I'm looking at this one and seeing reasonable translations. First I thought it would be "a safe and traditional way to remove acne", but then I noticed the adalah. The best translation would probably be "A safe way to remove acne is traditionally" and play on the fact that English does allow (I think) adverbs in the predicate like that.
- "Tak pernah secuilpun kudengar kabar tentang dirinya."
- Who even uses language like this? I guess I should try to preserve the formality of it. Trying to decide if I change the word order or preserve it for poetic sake.
- "Kamu wonderwoman, yang membuatku ngerasa jadi superman"
- I don't want the context on this one. Hopefully it's a song or a poem.
Other random translation note. -nya and dia are really difficult because I never know if to translate them to he or she, or if a straight singular they is best. I NEED CONTEXT TO TRANSLATE. Google's advice? "If you feel you need more context (like gender or formality), go ahead and translate as best you can". This is why Google Translate (and all machine translations) suck. Machines can't understand the context and pragmatics of a statement.
Well that's enough for tonight. Translation is a really fun exercise.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Symmetrical Voice in Toúījāb Kīkxot
So I read an article about the Totoli language of Sulawesi today (For reference it is "Symmetrical Voice and Applicative Alternations: Evidence from Totoli" by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Sonja Riesberg). Interesting stuff, mostly focusing on how Totoli has significant features of both symmetrical voice languages (its own typology) and Philippine-type languages (a relative of the symmetrical voice languages of course). Some things I liked included the authors getting slightly annoyed with Philippinists (for assuming everything is like Philippine languages, I guess) and the general overall topic. I'm always looking for info about obscure languages of Indonesia. My general feeling is that it is really hard to find such info, especially online. A lot of the examples used seemed pretty natural to me as an Indonesian speaker, so I guess I do understand this applicative suffixes after all :p. I was interested that the benefactive/instrumental suffix (-kan in indonesian, -an in Totoli, for the actor voice) can have a iterative function...which is a function of the locative suffix (-i in both languages) in Indonesian. Or maybe I don't, as I didn't quite get what exactly their conclusion that there was a locative voice in opposition to an undergoer voice with a goal applicative suffix meant, though the proposal seemed reasonable enough.
Anyway, this reminded me a lot of Toúījāb Kīkxot and how it came to have the typology it has. When I was learning Indonesian I thought the voicing system of Indonesian (which I later learned is called symmetrical voice) was cool and a feature I didn't see often, if ever in conglangs (sure, austronesian alignment appears lots, but Indonesian is pretty much ignored by everyone so yeah). I also decided I wanted to do something with triconsonantal roots (but had no knowledge of Arabic at the time and no access into any materials, so we get what wonderful mess we have), but that's not super relevant right now.
Now, with my Indonesian grammar book (The Sneddon one, I highly recommend it), I saw that suffixes like -i and -kan could do cool things with objects and marking arguments. I didn't quite get it at the time (let alone know that these are called applicatives) but I decided that Toúījāb Kīkxot should have them too. Originally there were 2-3 (locative, "benefactive" and an optional patient), later I added a third instrumental/causative. They were pretty much as classic applicative suffixes, as far as I can tell, marking the role of the direct object (often raising the transitivity of the verb, requiring a change of verb form) or the subject in the undergoer voice. I'll cover what they actually do in another post, since the benefactive form is especially confusing, but that's how they came about. It's one part of the language I am really proud of, as it gives a very different flavor than English and can do some pretty cool things. Plus it really helps with focus and showing what is most important in a sentence.
Anyway, this reminded me a lot of Toúījāb Kīkxot and how it came to have the typology it has. When I was learning Indonesian I thought the voicing system of Indonesian (which I later learned is called symmetrical voice) was cool and a feature I didn't see often, if ever in conglangs (sure, austronesian alignment appears lots, but Indonesian is pretty much ignored by everyone so yeah). I also decided I wanted to do something with triconsonantal roots (but had no knowledge of Arabic at the time and no access into any materials, so we get what wonderful mess we have), but that's not super relevant right now.
Now, with my Indonesian grammar book (The Sneddon one, I highly recommend it), I saw that suffixes like -i and -kan could do cool things with objects and marking arguments. I didn't quite get it at the time (let alone know that these are called applicatives) but I decided that Toúījāb Kīkxot should have them too. Originally there were 2-3 (locative, "benefactive" and an optional patient), later I added a third instrumental/causative. They were pretty much as classic applicative suffixes, as far as I can tell, marking the role of the direct object (often raising the transitivity of the verb, requiring a change of verb form) or the subject in the undergoer voice. I'll cover what they actually do in another post, since the benefactive form is especially confusing, but that's how they came about. It's one part of the language I am really proud of, as it gives a very different flavor than English and can do some pretty cool things. Plus it really helps with focus and showing what is most important in a sentence.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Dialectal variation among the Speakers of Toúījāb Kīkxot: Part 1
Just some thoughts I had earlier.
So I've always wanted Toúījāb Kīkxot to have dialects, because it is supposed to be a somewhat natural language and also because that's a thing I haven't really explored before. Well, I haven't actually documented or really even thought up what dialectal variation there would be yet, but I was thinking about it more today.
What I was realizing is that culturally, the Úīkmo Kīkxot consider Toúījāb Kīkxot to be a sacred language, the language of God (Kīkxo) himself. Now this isn't unusual, but then I remembered that I wanted their religion to have a sizeable history and that even the first revelations would be given in Toúījāb Kīkxot. What this does is give the language itself a long history, putting it in a similar situation as Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, really.
So the conclusion that I came to was that Toúījāb Kīkxot continues to be the liturgical and literary language of the Úīkmo Kīkxot. It also is the lingua franca of the region, but like MSA no one really speaks its natively. There are more conservative dialects than others, but none are exactly the same as the original Toúījāb Kīkxot as it was first understood. Like with Arabic, pretty much everyone considers themselves to simply be speaking dialects of Toúījāb Kīkxot, even when the differences are enough that two varieties aren't mutually intelligible. The dialects are, in general, more open to loanwords than the standard, though still
Toúījāb Kīkxot is written with a logographic system and the standard continues to dominate the written word, so dialects are very rarely written out. In my transliterations, I respect these by leaving the roots and inflections intact and follow them as they would be used in the standard. However, I will occasionally refer to a dialect and in those cases, all assimilation and sound changes will be written out to give a better feel of the differences between dialects and the standard.
Well, hopefully this all works out.
So I've always wanted Toúījāb Kīkxot to have dialects, because it is supposed to be a somewhat natural language and also because that's a thing I haven't really explored before. Well, I haven't actually documented or really even thought up what dialectal variation there would be yet, but I was thinking about it more today.
What I was realizing is that culturally, the Úīkmo Kīkxot consider Toúījāb Kīkxot to be a sacred language, the language of God (Kīkxo) himself. Now this isn't unusual, but then I remembered that I wanted their religion to have a sizeable history and that even the first revelations would be given in Toúījāb Kīkxot. What this does is give the language itself a long history, putting it in a similar situation as Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, really.
So the conclusion that I came to was that Toúījāb Kīkxot continues to be the liturgical and literary language of the Úīkmo Kīkxot. It also is the lingua franca of the region, but like MSA no one really speaks its natively. There are more conservative dialects than others, but none are exactly the same as the original Toúījāb Kīkxot as it was first understood. Like with Arabic, pretty much everyone considers themselves to simply be speaking dialects of Toúījāb Kīkxot, even when the differences are enough that two varieties aren't mutually intelligible. The dialects are, in general, more open to loanwords than the standard, though still
Toúījāb Kīkxot is written with a logographic system and the standard continues to dominate the written word, so dialects are very rarely written out. In my transliterations, I respect these by leaving the roots and inflections intact and follow them as they would be used in the standard. However, I will occasionally refer to a dialect and in those cases, all assimilation and sound changes will be written out to give a better feel of the differences between dialects and the standard.
Well, hopefully this all works out.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Murder: The semantics of killing people
Last night I got in a debate about ethics. But one interesting thing that our debate briefly looked at the word murder (context: At one point, I was arguing that when you use the word murder in debate of course murder is evil, because our language encodes said value judgement in the word itself, he was saying that murder is evil, but because killing is evil). I don't quite remember how to do these semantic things but the word murder in english looks something like this:
That was more difficult than it should be and now the html is even more or a mess. Anyway, my point is that the primary division here between "humans" and "non-humans". Volition isn't really considered, though intent is. It reflects a cultural idea that using something is better than not using something and that the ends justify the means.
In the current draft, I have one root so far related to this: pëntov "to die". Presumably this lines up with with the human form of death. Pënsočov is "to kill" lit "to cause to die". I'm guessing this is the neutral "kill". As for the others, there currently is no way to express intent, but conidering this is meant to be a constructed language, it falls within reason that the constructor would create roots for each row. By analogy the base root would mean "to die", and then a causative lets it fill space on this table. This leaves me with up to seven more roots to create, as I want to maintain the human/non-human split.
Osogkum:
This language does not have any roots at all yet relating to death or killing. So I'll look at the more theoretical approach of how I'd derive words from a hypothetical root. Osogkum has two grammatical functions that are relevant to this discussion, I feel: a volitive mood and a causative voice. The volative mood in this case marks a verb as explicitly intentional, or it could mean that the subject wants to do the verb (yay ambiguity, though I think that a desire is more likely in certain aspects/voices and volition in others, like the perfective. But ambiguity sill remains). The causative voice raises the valency of the verb marking the new subject as causing the old subject (now marked as the indirect object) to do the verb to the object. But I think that this is almost entirely for constructions like "He made her read the book" in Osogkum. So I feel that the split between death and killing would be separate roots (and using the causative would mark the separation between the subject and the cause of the object's death, as opposed to the use "to kill"). Then volition (either desire or intentionality) can be expressed, so the difference between murder and manslaughter would be morphological in nature. I think that's how this will work in this language.
The Tundra Afrit language:
Barely has a phonology and smatterings of morphology. I don't even have a name for it yet. So we'll skip it for now
Toúījāb Kīkxot:
So so far I have one root relating to death PJP. As often works, the change in transitivity makes this a causative so āpjāp "to die" becomes pījūp "to kill". Judging from their culture and the general feel of the language, I think that most differentiation in volition and value judgements will come from modifiers, compounds and reduplication (I think I already have the intensitive translated as "murder" and pījūp-pujip should translate to "manslaughter") or even syntax. That being said, I do feel a specific root meaning "to die a martyr/to martyr someone" is probably in order, as that seems like the sort of thing this language would have. And it probably would fall in class 1 (human) instead of class 3 (inanimate).
Nounwise, it is very easy to express the difference between dying and killing, and compounding should work to cut up the semantic space.
The sea people's language:
I really need to derive a name for this. Anyway, I have a root, gepom, which means things relating to dying. Because of the way this language works gepok would have some meaning like "dead", gepor would mean "to die", and the conjugated for would mean "to kill". As far as volition and the like goes, I feel like would have a lot to do with the choice of verb form, noun case and syntax. I think that manslaughter would probably be represented in a sort of sentence like "Dies X[absolutive], Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]", while murder would be simple "Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]" Active-stative languages are weird. An intentional death would most likely have X in the nominative, after all. I really don't know man. That's part of why I started other projects and keep hopping between languages while skipping this. I'll get back to it one day. The nouns, staying a very seperate class from verbs would probably cover the concepts separately and use loans as needed to further differentiate them. I can totally see the Sea People's borrowing the Kikxot word pajpo (lit. killing) to mean "murder" in our sense.
The mountain people's language.
Also needs a name. It has separate words for "to die" mẽwĩẽ and "to kill" ẽmẽtõ. There is a grammatical causative, but I doubt it applies in this case. I think it has more to do with adjectives or other things. I dunno. At the very least the ideas are lexically different here. The differences in volition are really easily expressed in this languages using verbal particles, but for the nouns (I just now realized that I've been ignoring nouns, which is a big part in the semantic differences of english death verbs. Oh well, I'll try to add a bit) it is probably a bit trickier. Verbs and nouns convert a lot, then a construction using pũ (I swear the language isn't entirely nasal!) could make such distinctions. So for example ẽmẽtõ would mean "killing" but ẽmẽtõ pũ "desire" (lit. killing's desire) would mean "murder" and ẽmẽtõ pũ "accident" (lit. killing's accident) would mean "manslaughter". Of course, in actual spoken language, people might just try to make the verb the core of the sentence instead of a noun.
And that's my first actual language post. What a big step! Most probably won't be this involved, but hey, semantics is fun.
Murder
=death
[+caused]
[+intentional]
[+bad]
[+bad]
Or in other words, murder is a form of death which was caused by another person, intentionally, and is bad. If we negate the intentional, it becomes a different word in english, manslaughter. Remove the bad and it becomes something like justified killing or self-defense or just plain killing. If it isn't caused by another person/thing, it isn't a cut into the field of killing itself, just part of the larger space of dying. In english, we represent a lot of these different semantic divisions lexically, but after the debate I started thinking, how do I do this in my own languages. Which ones make semantic divisions we don't? Are said division more morphological/derivational in nature or lexical? So let's take a look at what I have so far and what visions I have for said languages, and go from there!
Ǩüttǩarrą Roś:
So there's actually two drafts of this language and in the first draft (must be from like 6 or 8 years ago, wow), I actually have a discussion of this issue. I haven't reapplied it to the second draft yet (though I probably will), but clearly how I wanted to divided the roots was animate vs inanimate, with english translations sort of like this:
Ǩüttǩarrą Roś:
So there's actually two drafts of this language and in the first draft (must be from like 6 or 8 years ago, wow), I actually have a discussion of this issue. I haven't reapplied it to the second draft yet (though I probably will), but clearly how I wanted to divided the roots was animate vs inanimate, with english translations sort of like this:
| category | human | non human |
| end a life | kill | kill |
| kill for the sake of resource harvesting | manhunt | hunt |
| no reason | murder | slaughter |
| self-defense or honor | avenge | slay |
That was more difficult than it should be and now the html is even more or a mess. Anyway, my point is that the primary division here between "humans" and "non-humans". Volition isn't really considered, though intent is. It reflects a cultural idea that using something is better than not using something and that the ends justify the means.
In the current draft, I have one root so far related to this: pëntov "to die". Presumably this lines up with with the human form of death. Pënsočov is "to kill" lit "to cause to die". I'm guessing this is the neutral "kill". As for the others, there currently is no way to express intent, but conidering this is meant to be a constructed language, it falls within reason that the constructor would create roots for each row. By analogy the base root would mean "to die", and then a causative lets it fill space on this table. This leaves me with up to seven more roots to create, as I want to maintain the human/non-human split.
Osogkum:
This language does not have any roots at all yet relating to death or killing. So I'll look at the more theoretical approach of how I'd derive words from a hypothetical root. Osogkum has two grammatical functions that are relevant to this discussion, I feel: a volitive mood and a causative voice. The volative mood in this case marks a verb as explicitly intentional, or it could mean that the subject wants to do the verb (yay ambiguity, though I think that a desire is more likely in certain aspects/voices and volition in others, like the perfective. But ambiguity sill remains). The causative voice raises the valency of the verb marking the new subject as causing the old subject (now marked as the indirect object) to do the verb to the object. But I think that this is almost entirely for constructions like "He made her read the book" in Osogkum. So I feel that the split between death and killing would be separate roots (and using the causative would mark the separation between the subject and the cause of the object's death, as opposed to the use "to kill"). Then volition (either desire or intentionality) can be expressed, so the difference between murder and manslaughter would be morphological in nature. I think that's how this will work in this language.
The Tundra Afrit language:
Barely has a phonology and smatterings of morphology. I don't even have a name for it yet. So we'll skip it for now
Toúījāb Kīkxot:
So so far I have one root relating to death PJP. As often works, the change in transitivity makes this a causative so āpjāp "to die" becomes pījūp "to kill". Judging from their culture and the general feel of the language, I think that most differentiation in volition and value judgements will come from modifiers, compounds and reduplication (I think I already have the intensitive translated as "murder" and pījūp-pujip should translate to "manslaughter") or even syntax. That being said, I do feel a specific root meaning "to die a martyr/to martyr someone" is probably in order, as that seems like the sort of thing this language would have. And it probably would fall in class 1 (human) instead of class 3 (inanimate).
Nounwise, it is very easy to express the difference between dying and killing, and compounding should work to cut up the semantic space.
The sea people's language:
I really need to derive a name for this. Anyway, I have a root, gepom, which means things relating to dying. Because of the way this language works gepok would have some meaning like "dead", gepor would mean "to die", and the conjugated for would mean "to kill". As far as volition and the like goes, I feel like would have a lot to do with the choice of verb form, noun case and syntax. I think that manslaughter would probably be represented in a sort of sentence like "Dies X[absolutive], Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]", while murder would be simple "Kills Y[nominative] X[absolutive]" Active-stative languages are weird. An intentional death would most likely have X in the nominative, after all. I really don't know man. That's part of why I started other projects and keep hopping between languages while skipping this. I'll get back to it one day. The nouns, staying a very seperate class from verbs would probably cover the concepts separately and use loans as needed to further differentiate them. I can totally see the Sea People's borrowing the Kikxot word pajpo (lit. killing) to mean "murder" in our sense.
The mountain people's language.
Also needs a name. It has separate words for "to die" mẽwĩẽ and "to kill" ẽmẽtõ. There is a grammatical causative, but I doubt it applies in this case. I think it has more to do with adjectives or other things. I dunno. At the very least the ideas are lexically different here. The differences in volition are really easily expressed in this languages using verbal particles, but for the nouns (I just now realized that I've been ignoring nouns, which is a big part in the semantic differences of english death verbs. Oh well, I'll try to add a bit) it is probably a bit trickier. Verbs and nouns convert a lot, then a construction using pũ (I swear the language isn't entirely nasal!) could make such distinctions. So for example ẽmẽtõ would mean "killing" but ẽmẽtõ pũ "desire" (lit. killing's desire) would mean "murder" and ẽmẽtõ pũ "accident" (lit. killing's accident) would mean "manslaughter". Of course, in actual spoken language, people might just try to make the verb the core of the sentence instead of a noun.
And that's my first actual language post. What a big step! Most probably won't be this involved, but hey, semantics is fun.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Musing as I get things started
As I establish this, there's a couple things on my mind.
1) Do I scrub this of all PII? Obviously right now a stumble uponer could get my name and uni real easy. They can also know a smattering of the places I've lived and people who know me. Does this really matter? No, since there will be few stumble uponers, but I'm paranoid nonetheless.
2) I have lots of ling stuff, in a variety of nbs and word docs. What gets on here and what not? Probs, I'll just straight jump in the conworld blogging, and over time make fuller profile for each lang. Confusing, but this is mostly a catharticize so whatevs. Of course, I also need to decide if I upload the raw prof-doc ref-grams I use on my comp or keep them inwraps.
3) Do I keep playing the Englang as I do these or are is the angle too large on these abbvs and new words? It funs me though
1) Do I scrub this of all PII? Obviously right now a stumble uponer could get my name and uni real easy. They can also know a smattering of the places I've lived and people who know me. Does this really matter? No, since there will be few stumble uponers, but I'm paranoid nonetheless.
2) I have lots of ling stuff, in a variety of nbs and word docs. What gets on here and what not? Probs, I'll just straight jump in the conworld blogging, and over time make fuller profile for each lang. Confusing, but this is mostly a catharticize so whatevs. Of course, I also need to decide if I upload the raw prof-doc ref-grams I use on my comp or keep them inwraps.
3) Do I keep playing the Englang as I do these or are is the angle too large on these abbvs and new words? It funs me though
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)