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.
Saturday, September 2, 2017
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.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Language Profile: Toúījāb Kīkxot
Name: Toúījāb Kīkxot
Alternative Names: The Holy Language
Family: The Eastern Group of the West Plains family, though it is quite far from the rest of the West Plains family
Location: Along the western coast of the bay (it makes sense if you've seen the map), along the rivers, up to the mountains and extending out into the plains, plus as a lingua franca around the whole bay area. Also is used as a liturgical language in Kikxo worshiping communities.
History: Some 2000 years prior, nomads from the west swept in the the fertile plains and river valleys near the bay, overtaking the languages that used to be there. Roughly 1000 years ago, with writing of their scriptures and the spread of Kikxoism, TbKt began dominating its neighbors. Presently it has split into a variety of dialects that all claim to be the same language, even when not mutually intelligible. As an important trade and liturgical language, it is widely spoken and a frequent contributor of loan words to its neighbors. There are also various pidgins and creoles based on it, especially in the Bay Islands
Writing System: Self made logography with some syllabic elements
Typological information:
Alternative Names: The Holy Language
Family: The Eastern Group of the West Plains family, though it is quite far from the rest of the West Plains family
Location: Along the western coast of the bay (it makes sense if you've seen the map), along the rivers, up to the mountains and extending out into the plains, plus as a lingua franca around the whole bay area. Also is used as a liturgical language in Kikxo worshiping communities.
History: Some 2000 years prior, nomads from the west swept in the the fertile plains and river valleys near the bay, overtaking the languages that used to be there. Roughly 1000 years ago, with writing of their scriptures and the spread of Kikxoism, TbKt began dominating its neighbors. Presently it has split into a variety of dialects that all claim to be the same language, even when not mutually intelligible. As an important trade and liturgical language, it is widely spoken and a frequent contributor of loan words to its neighbors. There are also various pidgins and creoles based on it, especially in the Bay Islands
Writing System: Self made logography with some syllabic elements
Typological information:
- Word order: SVO
- Alignment: Nom-Acc, technically, but it is pretty irrelevant to the language, seeing as neither verbs nor nouns are marked like that
- Morphological: Agglutinative
- Triconsonantal roots. Like really a really pervasive system
- Reduplication- lots and lots of it
- Full reduplication
- Very productive imitative reduplication
- Partial reduplication
- No person marking on verbs, no plural marking on nouns
- Registers and dialects
- Complicated politeness based pronoun system
- 4 basic categories of Pronouns
- Polite/honorific/superior
- Neutral
- Familiar
- Pejorative
- Fairly open, allowing for names, nouns and other things to act as a pronoun if desired
- Symmetrical voice system and applicative suffixes on verbs
- Marked Transitivity
- Xenophobia and extreme resistance to loan words and foreign influence (in the standard language)
- Verbs
- Mood (prefix)
- Aspect (prefix)
- Valency (transfix)
- Voice (infix)
- Role of patient/theme (suffix)
- Compounding/serial verb markers (suffix)
- Nouns
- Possessed "case" (suffix)
- Animacy/Gender on certain nouns (suffix)
- Compounding markers (suffix)
- Ensuring a strong split between heads, modifiers and adjectives
Introducing Language Profiles
So after having this blog for like half a year, I am finally getting around to creating language profiles. How will this work? Each language will have some in-universe information, followed by out of universe stuff. I'll probably update them as needed and if I do lots of update or it takes a long time, do a new profile. And I'll keep a list of profiles here so that there's something central. Or something like that.
Mythos wyrm universe:
Kixot universe
Mythos wyrm universe:
- Ǩüttǩarrą Roś
- Osogkum
- L'ip'ò
Kixot universe
- Bay area
- Toúījāb Kīkxot
- Neaso Uxlotsuz
- Towwu Pũ Saho
- Knǝnʔtǝǝʔ
- Unnamed-Papualang
- South Continent
- Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
- Kélojùù
- Way far away continent
Edit 9/22: Added some more hyperlinks and also Papualang
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Aslian Language Dump
Here's a dump of links on Aslian languages, since people keep asking me about them. (This is originally taken from a reddit post)
Sadly there aren't tons (and the grammars in the side bar are kind of lacking :/ ). But here's some
The big pile o grammars:
What is good though is that the Temiar grammar has lots of links to new(er) materials, so that's gonna be the bulk of what follows (you might notice a common author):
- Temiar
- Semai
General Information
- General Characteristics from the Encyclopedia of Malaysia
- Aslian: Mon-Khmer of the Malaysian Peninsula
- Why You should Study Aslian Languages
- Orang Asli contains information about the Austronesian Tribes of Malaysia as well
- A guide to pronouncing these languages
- Reduplication in Aslian languages
- Nasal Preplosion in Aslian Languages
- A hipster (?) magazine article on them
- Olafaction in Aslian languages
Specific Languages
Friday, July 14, 2017
The Problem of Polysynthesis
I hold many controversial opinions. One of them is polysynthetic is a bad term, not just because of it's vagueness but because of what it signals, especially in conlanging. Anyway, this argument with some people got out of hand (#selfexaminationhurts) (I said some dumb things too) so I never really got explain why it is bad beyond the vagueness.
Here's the first thing I never sent and then I'll follow up with some other ideas I've had since then:
"Anyway, my point is that even now, the languages we choose to label as polysynthetic (especially taking the large amount of morphemes approach) tend to fall on minority and especially disenfranchised groups. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there was actually an agreed on definition for polysynthesis. But there isn't, because whenever someone tries to come up with something, other people get angry because their language gets excluded (the biggest example of this being Baker and his exclusion of Inuit languages) or because a language they don't consider polysynthetic is included. So we are left with a category that means "lots of morphemes and if feels that way". Which then brings us back to the point that "feels that way", for whatever reason, closely aligns with "languages spoken by minority groups". So we have a category that (like all morphological typologies, mind you) doesn't tell us really much of anything about the languages classified in it, except that 1) they have long words with multiple morphemes; 2) are not placed with the other languages for some reason.
And that's crux of it. The category doesn't tell us anything that synthetic (here being agglutinative and fusional) doesn't already tell us. Yet people defend it so viciously and want their language to be in the category. Why?"
Well, a big part of it is what I call "fetishization of the exotic" (and I am guilty of it too). Polysynthesis is seen as something cool, so you want your language in it (especially for conlanging). It is seen as cool because it is different from IE (and especially English) therefore something you want to be. And that's where the underlying "racism" (for lack of a better term) comes in. It doesn't mean that the linguists/enthusiasts are being racist, but they are, because of the way the terms has been used, perpetuating stereotypes and signaling certain ideas (namely primativity/noble savage/north americanness) through the use of the term "polysynthesis". It is the "exotic" that really binds the different types of polysynthesis together, more so than head-marking, polypersonal agreement or noun-incorporation.
Why is this important? Well, the category "polysynthesis" hurts conlanging and reduces its diversity. How? First of all, since there is little if any actual tendencies that fit for polysynthesis, it isn't signaling features for the most part. Instead it signals that you want your lang to be North American-like, especially in a Salishanesque way. This is fine and all, but it further reduces the amount of languages people learn about and makes them think that polylangs actually have many binding features. It also means that they are less likely to learn about features not found in those languages. For example, I did an informal survey on switch reference (with a bunch of polylang enthusiats) and none of us could think of any conlang with a switch reference system (other than my own, in progress one). Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the primary references for polysynthesis don't have it, even though it is very common in polylangs in other parts of the world (like New Guinea) and even in the United States! In all this reduces the diversity of conlangs (I've seen one papualang (excluding my own) and none based on Australian langs, for instance) because people have an incomplete view of what "polysynthesis" really is and don't realize it.
Fetishization of the exotic aside, polysynthesis would be an okay term if it could be well defined, people agreed on a definition, didn't try so hard to fit every language into it and recognized its limits and unreasonability. It would be fine if the community used a wider variety (not just of Native American langs) of languages to act as references, showing the diversity in the term and maybe counteracting some (though not all) of the underlying marks/stereotypes within the term. But it doesn't and we don't have the self-awareness nor desire in the community to fix this. So I'm stuck ranting about it on a blog. Well the next time the inevitable "how do I polylang" or "I never see polylangs (cue 15 polylangs)" post comes up, I can link this as I try to raise awareness :p
Here's the first thing I never sent and then I'll follow up with some other ideas I've had since then:
"Anyway, my point is that even now, the languages we choose to label as polysynthetic (especially taking the large amount of morphemes approach) tend to fall on minority and especially disenfranchised groups. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there was actually an agreed on definition for polysynthesis. But there isn't, because whenever someone tries to come up with something, other people get angry because their language gets excluded (the biggest example of this being Baker and his exclusion of Inuit languages) or because a language they don't consider polysynthetic is included. So we are left with a category that means "lots of morphemes and if feels that way". Which then brings us back to the point that "feels that way", for whatever reason, closely aligns with "languages spoken by minority groups". So we have a category that (like all morphological typologies, mind you) doesn't tell us really much of anything about the languages classified in it, except that 1) they have long words with multiple morphemes; 2) are not placed with the other languages for some reason.
And that's crux of it. The category doesn't tell us anything that synthetic (here being agglutinative and fusional) doesn't already tell us. Yet people defend it so viciously and want their language to be in the category. Why?"
Well, a big part of it is what I call "fetishization of the exotic" (and I am guilty of it too). Polysynthesis is seen as something cool, so you want your language in it (especially for conlanging). It is seen as cool because it is different from IE (and especially English) therefore something you want to be. And that's where the underlying "racism" (for lack of a better term) comes in. It doesn't mean that the linguists/enthusiasts are being racist, but they are, because of the way the terms has been used, perpetuating stereotypes and signaling certain ideas (namely primativity/noble savage/north americanness) through the use of the term "polysynthesis". It is the "exotic" that really binds the different types of polysynthesis together, more so than head-marking, polypersonal agreement or noun-incorporation.
Why is this important? Well, the category "polysynthesis" hurts conlanging and reduces its diversity. How? First of all, since there is little if any actual tendencies that fit for polysynthesis, it isn't signaling features for the most part. Instead it signals that you want your lang to be North American-like, especially in a Salishanesque way. This is fine and all, but it further reduces the amount of languages people learn about and makes them think that polylangs actually have many binding features. It also means that they are less likely to learn about features not found in those languages. For example, I did an informal survey on switch reference (with a bunch of polylang enthusiats) and none of us could think of any conlang with a switch reference system (other than my own, in progress one). Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the primary references for polysynthesis don't have it, even though it is very common in polylangs in other parts of the world (like New Guinea) and even in the United States! In all this reduces the diversity of conlangs (I've seen one papualang (excluding my own) and none based on Australian langs, for instance) because people have an incomplete view of what "polysynthesis" really is and don't realize it.
Fetishization of the exotic aside, polysynthesis would be an okay term if it could be well defined, people agreed on a definition, didn't try so hard to fit every language into it and recognized its limits and unreasonability. It would be fine if the community used a wider variety (not just of Native American langs) of languages to act as references, showing the diversity in the term and maybe counteracting some (though not all) of the underlying marks/stereotypes within the term. But it doesn't and we don't have the self-awareness nor desire in the community to fix this. So I'm stuck ranting about it on a blog. Well the next time the inevitable "how do I polylang" or "I never see polylangs (cue 15 polylangs)" post comes up, I can link this as I try to raise awareness :p
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Updates and Happy Canada Day
So I've been really bad at updating this. On the other hand, I've been quite active on the conlanging subreddit for at least the last month now. So I've actually been pretty busy. I'll include links to a couple of the conlang projects I've done there to here.
In other news, I hope to do some bigger world building posts and eventually create those dang language profiles. Of course, I keep getting more languages to profile so hey! Also, I need to find a way to upload my current grammar sheets in the like.
Anyway, here's the links to languages I've done:
Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
Kélojùù
Knǝnʔǝǝʔ
There's also been plenty of translations and vocabulary building exercises
In other news, I hope to do some bigger world building posts and eventually create those dang language profiles. Of course, I keep getting more languages to profile so hey! Also, I need to find a way to upload my current grammar sheets in the like.
Anyway, here's the links to languages I've done:
Ākoṇṭemāṟuttōm
Kélojùù
Knǝnʔǝǝʔ
There's also been plenty of translations and vocabulary building exercises
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)