No, that's not what I am. Rather it's a band I really like (been a fan since 2013, when they did a concert at @america and I was the official US representative) that just released a new album. Sounds great right? It is...if you live in Indonesia and can actually get a hold of one of their CDs. Only the single is on their youtube/soundcloud and so far there doesn't seem to be any other way to get the album proper. But hey, album+shirt+concert is only like $15 if you happen to be in the right area.
So yeah, it makes me happy, but also sad because I want listen. Word on the street is that it is good. It was hard enough finding their last album, Balada Joni dan Susi.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Language Profile: Knənʔtəəʔ
Name:Knənʔtəəʔ
Alternative Names: Toúījāb Shbīmut, The fishermen's language
Family: Kntic (also known as Gulf Islands), in the Central Islands branch. Probably distantly related to the now-extinct languages of the West Bay. This is in turn has been linked to the hypothetical Gulf family, which includes the Neaso family and sometimes Towwu Pũ Saho. Closely related to the inland languages on their island
Location: On the north coast of the largest island between TbKt land and Uxlots.
History: They have lived in villages on the island for thousands of years. Recently a large Kikxotian outpost was founded on their island. Knənʔtəəʔ has become the largest and most prominent of its family from this, and is now a common third language throughout the Gulf islands.
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:
Origins: June 2017. I had recently learned about Aslian languages and wanted to do something like that
History: I was gonna do it for a two hour (and did do it eventually, though I never posted it) but then a new one was posted, so I did a two hour challenge on my own after doing Akm. Then like I week later I posted the outcome
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it, including in a relay. It's a pretty fun one to work with
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes: I like to look through my birding books and turn the bird calls into words. Another source of vocabulary is typos on the internet
9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on i
4/21/18- Remembered to update morphosyntactic alignment to "split-ergative" from nom-acc
Alternative Names: Toúījāb Shbīmut, The fishermen's language
Family: Kntic (also known as Gulf Islands), in the Central Islands branch. Probably distantly related to the now-extinct languages of the West Bay. This is in turn has been linked to the hypothetical Gulf family, which includes the Neaso family and sometimes Towwu Pũ Saho. Closely related to the inland languages on their island
Location: On the north coast of the largest island between TbKt land and Uxlots.
History: They have lived in villages on the island for thousands of years. Recently a large Kikxotian outpost was founded on their island. Knənʔtəəʔ has become the largest and most prominent of its family from this, and is now a common third language throughout the Gulf islands.
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:
- Word order: SVO, with VSO (sort of) in some intransitive clauses
- Alignment: Split ergative
- Morphological:Analytic with some agglutinative features
- Incopyfixation
- Reduplication in general
- Minor syllables
- Crazy vowels
- 2 lengths
- 3 phonations (modal, creaky, and breathy)
- 9 qualities
- Relatively analytic (so I get the best of both worlds)
- Many derivational patterns
- Overly specific lexical items
- Expressionals (maybe eventually)
- Verbs
- Subject (sometimes)
- Aspect
- Voice-ish
- Pluractionality
- Nouns
Origins: June 2017. I had recently learned about Aslian languages and wanted to do something like that
History: I was gonna do it for a two hour (and did do it eventually, though I never posted it) but then a new one was posted, so I did a two hour challenge on my own after doing Akm. Then like I week later I posted the outcome
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it, including in a relay. It's a pretty fun one to work with
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes: I like to look through my birding books and turn the bird calls into words. Another source of vocabulary is typos on the internet
9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on i
4/21/18- Remembered to update morphosyntactic alignment to "split-ergative" from nom-acc
Language Profile: Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
Name:
Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
Alternative Names: Dravidlang
Family:The Maruttom languages spoken in the north and interior of the Southern Continent. Might in turn be related to the heavily dependent marking and phonologically similar languages of the West Coast and interior, but that has not be proven yet.
Location:Along the North Coast of the Southern Continent and used as a lingua franca throughout the region. Despite their relatively close locations, it is firmly out of the TbKt sphere of influence.
History: I haven't really fleshed out their history at all except that they are the Kikxotians democractic rivals to the south
Writing system: Have a local alphabet
Typological information:
Origins: June 2017 for a two hour challenge.
History: I was gonna do the previous two hour challenge with an Austroasiatic lang and then this one got posted so I did it.
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it. The verb system still needs a ton of work, and nouns can definitely be expanded on. Also I want to make it more unique (which I think is already happening since I haven't really looked at Dravidian grammars while working on it (for this reason) since the challenge)
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes:
9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Alternative Names: Dravidlang
Family:The Maruttom languages spoken in the north and interior of the Southern Continent. Might in turn be related to the heavily dependent marking and phonologically similar languages of the West Coast and interior, but that has not be proven yet.
Location:Along the North Coast of the Southern Continent and used as a lingua franca throughout the region. Despite their relatively close locations, it is firmly out of the TbKt sphere of influence.
History: I haven't really fleshed out their history at all except that they are the Kikxotians democractic rivals to the south
Writing system: Have a local alphabet
Typological information:
- Word order: SOV
- Alignment:Nominative-Accusative
- Morphological: Agglutinative
- Lots of non-finite verbs
- No relative clauses
- Case system that is sort of European-like but also not
- Phonology stuff
- No phonemic fricatives
- Lots of sandhi
- Many point of articulation
- Many suppletive verb forms for marking moods
- Verbs
- Participial endings
- Directional
- Other derivationals
- Voice
- Tense
- Aspect
- Subject
- Mood (sometimes)
- Evidentials
- Nouns
- Gender
- Case
- Other postpositional clitics
Origins: June 2017 for a two hour challenge.
History: I was gonna do the previous two hour challenge with an Austroasiatic lang and then this one got posted so I did it.
Status: In-development. I often do translates in it. The verb system still needs a ton of work, and nouns can definitely be expanded on. Also I want to make it more unique (which I think is already happening since I haven't really looked at Dravidian grammars while working on it (for this reason) since the challenge)
What I'm doing with it and why:
Other Notes:
9/7/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Language Profile: Towwu Pũ Saho
Name:
Towwu Pũ Saho
Alternative Names: The Language of the Mountain Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Kmurīt
Family: Isolate. Some (TbKt) linguists feel that it is a distant relative of TbKt and therefore an isolate branch of the Western Plains family. Others have tried to link them to the Kntic languages or even the hypothetical Gulf family, but the evidence is mostly typological in nature. Some also hypothesize that there are relatives living in the rainshadow desert, however this area is mostly unexplored and uninhabited.
Location: In the mountains and plateaus north of the Kikxotian plains. Basically, their villages start popping up as the hills start appearing. Many of them living alongside the cliffs, or even have villages built into the cliffs (think Dogon or Pueblo peoples sort of thing).
History: As far as anyone is aware, they have always lived in their area. They might once have been more spread out before being absorbed by the Kikxotians in the lowlands, however people are pretty sure that the coasts were once inhabited relatives of the Kntic languages, not of Towwu Pũ Saho
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:
Origins: Late 2016 after I decided to start conlanging again. A lot of the initial work was done in a hotel room in Cairo after being stranded there an extra day due to flight stuff
History: I wanted to do something new and had never done an analytic language before and I wanted to try my hand at a real Austronesian-alligned language. I don't remember if I had an idea for this language before the hotel room, but that's definitely where I started sketching it out. I honestly can't say what influenced it most. Obviously I was looking at Guarani for nasal harmony (I didn't know about Gê languages until later) and in world building I was definitely thinking of the Dogon. I know (at least) some Dogon languages are isolating, but I don't think that was an influence on this language, because I couldn't find any good information on them. I was reading a lot about austronesian alignment too. The direct inverse system came from me reanalyzing my attempt at an Austronesian alignment when I realized that what I had didn't really work as an austronesian system but with a couple tweaks it was (mostly like) direct-inverse.
Status: In-development. I work on it fairly often, since it is different than a lot of my other languages. Plus it just looks weird, which is great for showing to other people
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it.
CALS link:
Other Notes: I love getting people to say what languages it reminds them of. I once posted a story of it on facebook and got some good results.
9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Alternative Names: The Language of the Mountain Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Kmurīt
Family: Isolate. Some (TbKt) linguists feel that it is a distant relative of TbKt and therefore an isolate branch of the Western Plains family. Others have tried to link them to the Kntic languages or even the hypothetical Gulf family, but the evidence is mostly typological in nature. Some also hypothesize that there are relatives living in the rainshadow desert, however this area is mostly unexplored and uninhabited.
Location: In the mountains and plateaus north of the Kikxotian plains. Basically, their villages start popping up as the hills start appearing. Many of them living alongside the cliffs, or even have villages built into the cliffs (think Dogon or Pueblo peoples sort of thing).
History: As far as anyone is aware, they have always lived in their area. They might once have been more spread out before being absorbed by the Kikxotians in the lowlands, however people are pretty sure that the coasts were once inhabited relatives of the Kntic languages, not of Towwu Pũ Saho
Writing System: Not a written language, they use TbKt for writing purposes
Typological information:
- Word order: SOV (but based on animacy and definiteness as well)
- Alignment: Direct-Inverse (strangely enough)
- Morphological: Analytic
- Many many (TAM) particles
- Well, sort of. They are particles that mark TAM but they also have many other functions depending on the POS they precede or follow
- Nasal harmony
- Contentive POS (not that I knew this word or classification when I started the language)
- Strong analytic tendencies (but allows compounding and some derivation)
- Direct-inverse alignment and definiteness of arguments marked with a portmanteau particle
- Detailed animacy hierarchy
- Complicated deixis/demonstrative system
- Visible vs invisible
- Proximal vs Medial vs Distal
- Above vs same level vs below
- It's isolating so they are more of particle markings!
- Verbs
- Aspect (preposition)
- Modality (preposition)
- Causative (reduplication)
- Nouns
Origins: Late 2016 after I decided to start conlanging again. A lot of the initial work was done in a hotel room in Cairo after being stranded there an extra day due to flight stuff
History: I wanted to do something new and had never done an analytic language before and I wanted to try my hand at a real Austronesian-alligned language. I don't remember if I had an idea for this language before the hotel room, but that's definitely where I started sketching it out. I honestly can't say what influenced it most. Obviously I was looking at Guarani for nasal harmony (I didn't know about Gê languages until later) and in world building I was definitely thinking of the Dogon. I know (at least) some Dogon languages are isolating, but I don't think that was an influence on this language, because I couldn't find any good information on them. I was reading a lot about austronesian alignment too. The direct inverse system came from me reanalyzing my attempt at an Austronesian alignment when I realized that what I had didn't really work as an austronesian system but with a couple tweaks it was (mostly like) direct-inverse.
Status: In-development. I work on it fairly often, since it is different than a lot of my other languages. Plus it just looks weird, which is great for showing to other people
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it.
CALS link:
Other Notes: I love getting people to say what languages it reminds them of. I once posted a story of it on facebook and got some good results.
9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Language Profile: Neaso Uxlotsuz
Name: Neaso Uxlotsuz
Alternative Names: The Language of the Sea Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Gfutīt
Family: Neaso family (which might be part of a broader hypothetical Gulf family, though the links are shaky at best, especially with most of the family being extinct)
Location: In the city of Uxlots on the big delta of the big river on the northeast part of the bay and it's surrounding areas. Also serves as lingua franca in the eastern bay area. In reality, it forms a dialect continuum with other Neaso languages, which are spoken up and down the coast (to the mountains at least), along the rivers and more southernly plains and basically all over the eastern side of the bay.
History: While always an important trading center, the last couple of hundred years have boosted Uxlots importance and gave it more political power in the region, hence the choice of its language to showcase the broader features of its family.
Writing System: Modified version of the Kikxotian logography, mostly used as an alphabet with some logographs.
Typological information:
Origins: Mid to late 2015, in Indonesia while on my mission and after writing up a letter on TbKt and realizing how much I missed conlanging.
History: As mentioned, after I wrote my first letter about TbKt, I was having so much fun so I decided to make another language, to be a neighbor of TbKt that was really different than it. I wanted to do things with loan words and try out fusionality. And weird verbal things for some reason. Also a vaguely germanic feel? In retrospect, it's almost like it was meant to be a Germlang but also not at all a Germlang. Well I stopped conlanging before I sent the letter with this one so (I still have all the materials and) my friend has no idea of it and it sat around until I started again. I had a much harder time going back to this one because the idea was just more nebulous and more difficult, but I do want to eventually fix up and flesh it out more. Now it is important for worldbuilding, but it itself is still very underdeveloped.
Status: In-development. I work on it sometimes but it usually gets shelved (because it is hard and its verbal system is a mess)
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it. It's weird romanization (and eventually orthography) has proved useful in justifying decisions for Papualang though.
CALS link:
Other Notes:This is probably one of my least impressionistic conlangs (so most unique :p ). I feel like it's really hard to pin the inspirations and stuff on it. Which is cool I guess.
9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Alternative Names: The Language of the Sea Peoples, Toúījāb Vīggo Gfutīt
Family: Neaso family (which might be part of a broader hypothetical Gulf family, though the links are shaky at best, especially with most of the family being extinct)
Location: In the city of Uxlots on the big delta of the big river on the northeast part of the bay and it's surrounding areas. Also serves as lingua franca in the eastern bay area. In reality, it forms a dialect continuum with other Neaso languages, which are spoken up and down the coast (to the mountains at least), along the rivers and more southernly plains and basically all over the eastern side of the bay.
History: While always an important trading center, the last couple of hundred years have boosted Uxlots importance and gave it more political power in the region, hence the choice of its language to showcase the broader features of its family.
Writing System: Modified version of the Kikxotian logography, mostly used as an alphabet with some logographs.
Typological information:
- Word order:VSO with secondary SVO
- Alignment:Active-Stative (mostly split-S but it has some fluid elements)
- Morphological: Fusional
- Active stative alignment, of course
- Only stative verbs, no adjectives
- Umlaut
- Fusionality (since I've never really done that before)
- European(ish) case system
- Marked definiteness
- Multiple declensions
- Finite vs non-finite verbs
- Lots of constructions are made with an auxillary + non-finite form
- Strong division between Parts of Speech, especially nouns and verbs
- Limited compounding
- Willingness to loan
- Verbs
- Agreement (one suffix)
- Tense
- Aspect
- Subject Person
- Subject Number
- Non-finitity (suffix)
- Infinitive
- Stative
- General non-finite
- Nouns (all on one suffix)
- Definiteness
- Case
- Number
Origins: Mid to late 2015, in Indonesia while on my mission and after writing up a letter on TbKt and realizing how much I missed conlanging.
History: As mentioned, after I wrote my first letter about TbKt, I was having so much fun so I decided to make another language, to be a neighbor of TbKt that was really different than it. I wanted to do things with loan words and try out fusionality. And weird verbal things for some reason. Also a vaguely germanic feel? In retrospect, it's almost like it was meant to be a Germlang but also not at all a Germlang. Well I stopped conlanging before I sent the letter with this one so (I still have all the materials and) my friend has no idea of it and it sat around until I started again. I had a much harder time going back to this one because the idea was just more nebulous and more difficult, but I do want to eventually fix up and flesh it out more. Now it is important for worldbuilding, but it itself is still very underdeveloped.
Status: In-development. I work on it sometimes but it usually gets shelved (because it is hard and its verbal system is a mess)
What I'm doing with it and why: Sitting on it mostly :p . One day I'll figure out more uses for it. It's weird romanization (and eventually orthography) has proved useful in justifying decisions for Papualang though.
CALS link:
Other Notes:This is probably one of my least impressionistic conlangs (so most unique :p ). I feel like it's really hard to pin the inspirations and stuff on it. Which is cool I guess.
9/2/17- Probably enough for now. One day I'll get a CALS page and other stuff on it
Isolating polylang?
I've already complained about polysynthesis before. I still think it's a stupid term. Anyway, here's one (very strict) definition I've seen for it:
1) polypersonal agreement
2) noun incorporation
3) extensive derivational synthesis
4) pervasive head-marking
5) verb-marking more than noun-marking
There's nothing about the phonological coherence in this one. Which, if I understand correctly, allows for the mythical "isolating polysynthetic language". Now this is a concept I've heard about before, in the back corners of internet forums and the like. I never understood how it was possible.
Then I met Abui. The author describes it as polysynthetic. Yet it sure doesn't look it. I think the most morphemes I've in a (phonological?) word is 5 and most of 2-3. Yet it's serial verbs allow for very complex verb phrases. While it's not isolating by any means (it's squarely in the agglutinating camp), it does show the diversity of "polysynthetic" languages and how the term really doesn't do justice. I'm sure if the average amateur (con)-linguist looked at it (even with glosses) they'd probably not label it as polysynthetic. Yet the author of this grammar was confident in doing so and I haven't seen anything disputing this. (Another fun one that I keep seeing brought up as polysynthetic (including by experts in the field like Michael Fortescue) with no discussion as to why it is classified as such. From my skimmings of the grammar, it sure doesn't look it).
In other news, I'm looking forward to the release of the Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis which comes out in a few months.
1) polypersonal agreement
2) noun incorporation
3) extensive derivational synthesis
4) pervasive head-marking
5) verb-marking more than noun-marking
There's nothing about the phonological coherence in this one. Which, if I understand correctly, allows for the mythical "isolating polysynthetic language". Now this is a concept I've heard about before, in the back corners of internet forums and the like. I never understood how it was possible.
Then I met Abui. The author describes it as polysynthetic. Yet it sure doesn't look it. I think the most morphemes I've in a (phonological?) word is 5 and most of 2-3. Yet it's serial verbs allow for very complex verb phrases. While it's not isolating by any means (it's squarely in the agglutinating camp), it does show the diversity of "polysynthetic" languages and how the term really doesn't do justice. I'm sure if the average amateur (con)-linguist looked at it (even with glosses) they'd probably not label it as polysynthetic. Yet the author of this grammar was confident in doing so and I haven't seen anything disputing this. (Another fun one that I keep seeing brought up as polysynthetic (including by experts in the field like Michael Fortescue) with no discussion as to why it is classified as such. From my skimmings of the grammar, it sure doesn't look it).
In other news, I'm looking forward to the release of the Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis which comes out in a few months.
Diachronic conlangs
Yeah, I've been really lazy about updating. Still doing plenty of conlanging, as can be seen on reddit, just not updating here. I've been working on a big "papualang" project. But I'm getting on to do a minor, inconsequential rant about conlanging.
One thing that many conlangers like to do is diachronics, so deriving languages from other languages. That's cool and all, especially when done a posteriori (and well) or for a conlang family. Even I'm part of a diachronics project. My problem isn't with diachronics.
No it's the whole thing where you create a proto-language for only one daughter language and even more the idea that this makes the daughter lang inherently better. Why does this bug me? Because it doesn't make the language actually more realistic, especially since many of the sound changes and grammatical changes found in the daughter langs might have been a stretch to occur naturally. Also it leads to this weird idea that proto-languages were more regular than daughter langs, which isn't actually true. The other thing that bugs me about this is that the proto-lang itself is still a conlang. It's not like you made the conlang less constructed. If you have no plan on making a language family, why do the protolang. You're getting all the features you wanted anyway, but now you are taking extra steps. Just make the language without those steps.
It's a minor gripe. I'm not going to discourage people from making proto-langs, not at all. It's mostly harmless. But I do wish more people understood that proto-langs are reconstructions and aren't what people actually spoken. Are they close? In many cases, yes, probably, at least somewhat. Of course there's dialects in real protolangs, something not often reflected in constructions, academic or otherwise (at least as far as I have seen). That's okay, it's difficult to do, but people gotta remember this.
One thing that many conlangers like to do is diachronics, so deriving languages from other languages. That's cool and all, especially when done a posteriori (and well) or for a conlang family. Even I'm part of a diachronics project. My problem isn't with diachronics.
No it's the whole thing where you create a proto-language for only one daughter language and even more the idea that this makes the daughter lang inherently better. Why does this bug me? Because it doesn't make the language actually more realistic, especially since many of the sound changes and grammatical changes found in the daughter langs might have been a stretch to occur naturally. Also it leads to this weird idea that proto-languages were more regular than daughter langs, which isn't actually true. The other thing that bugs me about this is that the proto-lang itself is still a conlang. It's not like you made the conlang less constructed. If you have no plan on making a language family, why do the protolang. You're getting all the features you wanted anyway, but now you are taking extra steps. Just make the language without those steps.
It's a minor gripe. I'm not going to discourage people from making proto-langs, not at all. It's mostly harmless. But I do wish more people understood that proto-langs are reconstructions and aren't what people actually spoken. Are they close? In many cases, yes, probably, at least somewhat. Of course there's dialects in real protolangs, something not often reflected in constructions, academic or otherwise (at least as far as I have seen). That's okay, it's difficult to do, but people gotta remember this.
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