TbKt conjunctions

So I was reading about syntax and figured I could do a mini post on TbKt conjunctions. We'll look at about 4 or 5 today (all particles...except they can inflect so whatever).

The first is ī. This is "and" and links together multiple nouns within a phrase to a single subject/head. The key thing to remember here is that it works on a phrasal level instead of a clausal one and keeps both the noun and the verb the same. For example, the sentence Yān oxdīc rōxub ī zhōluq "I hit the dog and the cat". This also implies some sort of unity of coherence in the verb. Ī can link nouns separated by relative clauses. For example, Yān oxdīc rōxub vit anmōs-anmōs ī zhōluq "I hit the dog, which ran away, and the cat".

The second is jasā "and/or". It isn't commonly used and more or less replaces ī. Yān oxdīc rōxub jasā zhōluq "I hit the dog and/or the cat"

Then there is ocāk "and". Unlike ī, ocāk operates on a clausal level. More specifically, it links two (otherwise unrelated) clauses together, and draws attention to the fact that the subject changed. Indeed, in common usage it almost acts as a DS switch reference marker. This is very useful when the object cannot be promoted to subject position (perhaps because of indefiniteness) yet there is some sort of continuity between the clauses. Use of ocāk followed by a verb but no arguments indicates that the subject has changed, probably to the former object (though arguments can of course be added, especially for clarity of emphasis). For example Yān oxdīc rōxub ocāk anmōs-anmōs  "I hit a dog and the dog ran (away)". If the dog had already been previously referenced, then Rōxub oxaxdic yān ūmpa anmōs-anmōs "I hit the dog and it ran away" would be more appropriate.

Which brings us to ūmpa "and". This also works on a clausal level, but specifically marks the subject as staying the same between the clauses, like a SS SR marker. Sometimes it translates to something very similar to ī (despite working on different levels) but implies disunity of the verb, or some sort of sequence. This is especially true when the new "clause" is only an arugment, meaning that the subject and verb have been carried over. For example Yān oxdīc rōxub ūmpa zhōluq is literally "I hit (the) dog and (the) cat" but would be understood as "I hit the dog and then the cat" or "I hit the dog and (I hit) the cat (but with something to make the acts of hitting be considered separate)".

Agis means "but" and works as a replacement for ocāk. It simply marks surprise or unexpectedness of the next clause and can be emphasized with the suffix -(a)x. This suffix can also be added to the other conjunctions, with the same sort of meaning. Some examples. Rōxub oxaxdīc ūmpax mōnak anmōs-anmōs "I hit the dog but it didn't run away". Yān oxdīc rōxub īx zhōluq "I hit a dog AND a cat".

Anyway, that's an intro to conjunctions in TbKt. To think that I was accidentally doing pivot and pseudo-switch reference long before I ever knew them.

Dialects in TbKt

Based on a reddit post, here's some info on a couple TbKt dialects:

So island speech! First thing to talk about is the changes to the phonetic inventory, which has undergone some series changes.

• The ejectives have merged with the plain stop series (except [qʼ] which shifted to [ʔ]).
• The palatal-alveolar series has shifted to a pure palatal (under Knǝnʔtəəʔ's influence) while /ʃ/ merged with /s/.
• The alveolar affricates have lenited to the fricatives, with [z] then merging with [s].
• The pharyngeal fricatives shifted to [h]
• /ɹ/-> [r]
• The vowels have stayed relative the same, except that /i/ has shifted to [e] and /u/ to [ʉ] (with it losing rounding in some speakers as well).
• some changes in sequences and the various assimilation/sandhi rules, most notably /h/->ø /VV (if both V are of the same quality), loss of nasal assimilation and intervocalic lenition, and allowance of syllabic consonants. {+syllabic, -long}>ø/[𝛂,+long]C or _C[𝛂,+long] is also found in the dialect, for root words at least.

These changes mostly reflect that the native Kntic languages have a much smaller consonant inventory and even greater tolerance for consonant clusters. Anyway, these changes alone can result in very different words, for example bāfaw [bɑ:ħəɹ] to bār [bä:r] or zhōjos [tʃʼo:dzɔs] to zōs [co:s], but also very little change at all, like pījūp [pi:dzu:p] to pīsūp [pi:su:p] and gīsto [gi:stɔ] to gīsto [gi:stɔ]
The next important differences are morphological and include:

• Many of the imitative reduplications are instead known only by the second part of the word, that is the echo.
• Full reduplication is instead replaced with left-bound back-reduplication (very much a feature of the local languages)
• The aspects are done with adverbs instead of affixes, with the perfective taken as a default instead of the imperfective.
• Possessed nouns are not marked as such anymore, instead possession is shown simply through juxtaposition.
• Compounds aren't marked anymore

Syntax is changed as well, mostly the shift to a more topic-prominent structure and VS being used in intransitive sentences instead of SV.
Semantics is a major difference, with lots of words being loaned from the local languages, for example kwīs "seaweed" and krnaí "canoe". Other words have shifted in meaning as well, though I'm not sure how right now. Also (combined with pragmatics, I guess), the semantic differences between the human and non-human nouns and verbs (such as "to eat (human)" vs "to eat (non-human)") have been lost and replaced with one or the other.
Pragmatics is another area where the dialect differs from the standard. Much of the formality system is lost, with only the familiar pronouns being used now (or sometimes pronouns borrowed from Kntic languages, in which the Kntic ones generally act as informal and the TbKt ones as formal). As previously mentioned, it is much more topic-prominent than the standard.

Of course there are other differences as well, but that gives a decent over view. Now, some comparisons.
fīs mlodi-mlodizun [ħi:s nlɔðɪmlɔðɪtʃʊn] "she is very beautiful" demlode mā [demlɔde mä:] "s/he is very beautiful"
yānolūs khotiúja īn ryītuāb cōmum [hɑ:nɔlu:s kʼɔθɪwʣi:n ri:θʊɑ:b ʦo:mʊm] "I (formal) have eaten (formal) the ox tongue" rītu sōmum yān līrūl [ɾi:tʉ so:mʉm hä:n li:ɾu:l] "The ox tongue, I've eaten it"
Fīs fazīxūf owāxc [ħi:s ħətʃi:ʃu: ħɔɹɑ:ʃts] "S/he is reading some writing" mā zīsūnamos orās* [mä: ci:su:nəmɔ sɔɾä:s] "S/he is reading some writing"

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The mountain dialect is mostly notable for some unusual phonological features, namely "suprasegmental semivowels". Basically, in contrast to the standard (and most other dialects), the semivowels /j/ <í> and /w/ <ú> do not turn into long vowels after consonants or put between two consonants. Instead, they have lost most of their features, including being a full segement, except intervocalically. Also, final close vowels (long and short) have turned into their respective semivowels (while /i/->/e/ elsewhere and some other vowel mergers have left it with a six vowel, lengthless system overall). For example kmuri [kŋʊrɪ] "mountain range" is kmurí [kŋurʲ] and dīkholu [di:kʼɔlʊ] "weather" is dikhålú [dikʼɑlʷ]. These are generally barely audible in isolation. However, it usually surfaces on the following word, either as a full semi-vowel (when vowel initial) or as palatalization/labialization on the last consonant of the cluster, often with /ə/ <a> or an echo vowel added where the semivowel once was. Some examples:
kmurutlíachí [kŋurutlʲətʃʼ] which is composed of kmurí and tlachí "big". The semivowel attaches right, and the CCC cluster is broken up as CVCC with an echo vowel.
dikhålúitwå [dikʼɑlwitɹɑ] "cold weather", where itwaw "weather" begins with a vowel.
lúuní "island" (which comes from úlunī [u:lʊni:], there is metathesis (or rather, segment shifting) because of the initial semivowel) combines with pozåh [potʃɑʔ] "boat (from pōzoq) to be lúumpíozåh as in "islands and boats" or more completely yan pehma lúumpíozåh "I see islands and boats"

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Other features often found in TbKt dialects:

• changed vowel systems, especially the development of [e]
• consonant stuff, including more fricatives, loss of one of the series or things like that. The uvular and pharyngeals are especially commonly lost
• loan words (which the standard is very resistant too)
• simply different constructions
• different pronouns

It a lot of things like that. It's late and I'm tired, so I'll be done for now, but I hope you learned a bit about some of the many Kikxotian dialects.

Knənʔtəəʔ: Ergativity and Relative clauses

So last night I realized that Knənʔtəəʔ is sort of ergative and I decided to go with that. So I needed to redo its relative clauses. And uh, I ended up getting exactly what I started with. Anyway, since relative clauses are interesting, I'll post my final explanation, where I basically justify what I already have. It's not all of my internal and external dialogue trying to figure it out, but it is something

"So I think I've figured out what was going on. There's two competing rules that I did realize I had going on until some analysis...Or maybe none of this makes sense and more research is need

anguishes

Let's analyze sentences together and see what happens:
bmis [so kaalbaa] dɨwõ kwiis
bmis so=k<aa>lbaa d<ɨ>wõ kwiis
man 3S=<REL>be.clean <CONT>eat seaweed
"the clean man is eating seaweed"
So we have a head which is the absolutive argument of the relative clause (which if not relativized would be kɨlbaa bmis "the man is clean". Since the relative clause technically takes a pronoun as its head, it works on a nom-acc alignment and fills the slot that would be occupied by the ergative pronoun, resulting in the pronoun preceding the relativized verb and everything being dandy. Let's work up to the next level of relative clause: non-stative intransitive verbs.

bmis [so lutɨhut] dwõ kwiis
bmis so=l<ut><ɨ>hut d<Ø>wõ kwiis
man 3S=<REL><PROG>sleep <PERF>eat seaweed
"the sleeping man has eaten seaweed"
Once again, the head is the absolutive argument of the relative clause, which free would be lɨhut bmis "the man is sleeping". Since the relative clause takes the pronoun as the head, it once again converts to nom-acc and fills the ERG slot(edited)

So far, so good. I've been maintaining the alignment (more or less :p) that I discovered yesterday

But then things get rough

"the man who ate seaweed is sleeping"
The relative clause is headed by a pronoun, so it goes nom-acc and should look something like :
Lɨhut bmis [so dwõ kwiis] or (Sï̵) bmis [so dwõ kwiis] lɨhut so (topic marking way to do it)
l<ɨ>hut bmis so=dwõ kwiis and (sï̵) bmis so=dwõ kwiis l<ɨ>hut so
<CONT>sleep man 3S=eat seaweed or TOP man 3S=eat seaweed <CONT>sleep 3S

Anyway, the restrictions with the way pronouns work basically mean (since agent incorporation isn't allowed and there are no voices) that relativization like this is limited to subjects=agent, despite the ergativity in main clauses. I guess technically these transitive ones could be interpreted either way, but that is abnormal for the speakers. However, part of the ergativity means that the main interpretation of a possessed verbal noun is that the possessor is the patient which allowed for a nice work around of which there are many ways to do it, based on topicality:

Kɨlbaa kwiis dnwõ so räp bmis or Sï̵ kwiis dnwõ so räp bmis kɨlbaa so so on and so forth k<ɨ>lbaa kwiis d<nØ>wõ so räp bmis
<CONT>be.clean seaweed <NOM>eat from man
"the seaweed the man ate is clean"
Notice that the possessor has to be removed from the possessive phrase to make the argument of the main verb clear. Other wise it could be translated as "The man's eating of the seaweed was clean" or "the man cleanly ate the seaweed"

Well, there you have it, something I should turn into a blog post. And it was all for nothing since it ended up looking the same as what I had originally anyway"

As for other things with ergativity, I plan on having deleted arguments follow an ergative pivot (basically "I hit the man and died" would mean that the man died, not that I died).

All Star: Best song of the 90s?

I interrupt my being busy with the semester to bring you this essay on the beauty of All Star.

"As a scholar of Smash Mouth, I think there's a disagreement over what mugged means here, and we might actually have the same base idea. It's getting jumped, beat up, etc. It might not necessarily mean being targeted because he has something of value. The wise person says "Hey you, the way you're going, the world (that is life) is gonna catch you up and knock you down" to which the speaker replies "You know, I know that I'm dumb and that people think I'm dumb. But this doesn't bother me" What he knows is that he has to "hit the ground running," he needs to stay ahead of both the world and be prepared for one it does catch up (since the years don't stop coming). He may get knocked down by the world, but that shouldn't stop him from being who he is. That's why he explores the backstreets, and tries new things. Because he isn't afraid of the world. He's a rock star, an all star.

The second verse calls back to this imagery. The world getting cold is the same idea as the world rolling him. It's an unfeeling place. Yet as he says "the meteor man begs to differ, judging by the hole in the satellite picture" In the same way that he isn't afraid of the world rolling him, he is doesn't believe that life gets harder the longer it goes on. In fact, if the ice is going to break, might as well take it into your own hands and jump in the water on your own terms. It's a song celebrating individual freedom. It's an existentialist love song.

Consider the verse "Somebody once asked...all use a little change". Here the speaker encounters someone who has been rolled by the world. Yet they rather than taking the chance to swim, they try to run away from their problem. The singer is sympathetic, yet also realizes the foolishness in this action. A little fuel could do him some good, but it won't fix the problem. The change in sense of the word "change" highlights this. We could all do a little better with some "change" be it a change in scenery or the personality, but it will do us only as much good as we make of it. In the end, the years start coming and they don't stop coming, so we should adapt ourselves to it, rather than live in fear. And so in the end, this is why the singer is dismissive of the wise person at the beginning. He realizes that being smart does you no good if you don't use it. Why fear the future when you can instead prepare yourself for it and have fun while doing so?

Such must we all be."

Melancholic Bitch

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.

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:

• Word order: SVO, with VSO (sort of) in some intransitive clauses
• Alignment: Split ergative
• Morphological:Analytic with some agglutinative features

Notable 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)

Some morphological markings:

• 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:

• Word order: SOV
• Alignment:Nominative-Accusative
• Morphological: Agglutinative

Notable Features:

• 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

Some morphological markings:

• 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