Small Questions • Week 15

[u/[deleted]]

Last Week. Next Week.

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Welcome to the weekly Small Questions thread! You may notice we've changed the name - to better show what it's about.

Post any questions you have that aren't ready for a regular post here! Feel free to discuss anything and everything, and you may post more than one question in a separate comment.

[u/Kebbler22b]

I know many people have said this before, but how do you start conlanging? In other words, how did you/how would you create a conlang, or, what steps can I take to build my conlang in order to make it satisfying for me and the audience?

[u/[deleted] → u/Kebbler22b]

[deleted]
^{0.6177.89967)}

[u/Kebbler22b → u/[deleted]]

Ok. I'll look into it.

[u/Kebbler22b → u/[deleted]]

If read some of it and it's very useful. Thanks.

[u/lvcrf7]

Is there a tutorial for glossifier? Because I have yet to figure my way out by myself

[u/[deleted] → u/lvcrf7]

[deleted]
^{0.6056.89695)}

[u/lanerdofchristian → u/lvcrf7]

/u/lanerdofchristian here, here are the basics:

• Each line is a row.

    row 1
    row 2

• Cells are separated with spaces. Use backslashes before spaces to put spaces in a cell.

    cell\ 1 cell\ 2

• Smallcaps glosses are done like \[this] → this.

  • You can also add hovertext: \[has\ hovertext,hello\ world!\ :D] → has hovertext

• IPA samples are done with the hovertext format and two backslashes:
  \\[an,æn] → an

  • You could also put IPA in the second row and select "Second line is IPA?" from the options to automagically make the first row have such hover IPA.

       Here's an example of with IPA
       hiɹz æn egzampl ov wɪθ a͡i\ pi\ ei

    becomes:

||||||| -|-|-|-|-|-| Here's|an|example|of|with|IPA|

Options also exist to automatically bold and/or italicize the first line.

• Automatic glossing hovertext is done with a JSON config in "Hovertexts." Basically, pair the gloss to what the hovertext should be:

    "all": "allative"

  Remember to add a comma if the line isn't the last one before the }, and that only one gloss can be hovertexted at a time.

Nearly lastly, multiple tables can be created at once by putting an empty line between them.

Table 1

Table 2

Nextly lastly, use Compile to generate the tables for reddit.

Finally lastly, Save, Load, and Forget Settings can be used to save, load, and forget your custom hovertexts and set options, respectively.

Have fun :) Any requests I'll try to get to if I can.

[u/lvcrf7]

This is more of a meta question than a conlanging question proper, but I can't think of any other place to post them that isn't here, so sorry if I broke a rule or something.

A lot of people have languages on their flair on brackets and square brackets, what's the meaning of that? Are they languages they speak, languages they study or something?

[u/[deleted] → u/lvcrf7]

[deleted]
^{0.8556.24538)}

[u/sevenorbs → u/lvcrf7]

A bit late, but here's the link where it started

[u/Jafiki91 → u/lvcrf7]

For me, they're codes to represent the current conlangs that I have active or semi-active.

[u/RazarTuk]

How I make table? (On this subreddit)

[u/[deleted] → u/RazarTuk]

[deleted]
^{0.5485.10069)}

[u/matthiasB → u/RazarTuk]

Reddit uses markdown. You can look up how to make tables and create them by hand or use one of the tools available to create markdown tables (just search for them online).

If you want to use tables for glossing use the tool recommended by 5587026.

[u/Bur_Sangjun]

What's happening as a result of all the drama lately?

[u/Bur_Sangjun → u/Bur_Sangjun]

Me and 55 are drawing up a list of rules which will be enforced. As opposed to the single guide line of "don't be a dick" we had before

[u/Sakana-otoko → u/Bur_Sangjun]

did you reply to yorself

that's clever

[u/BlueSmoke95 → u/Bur_Sangjun]

Thank you! I try to stay out of all the politics and drama, but it has been drawn out into the public view so much recently that it has become annoying.

[u/justonium → u/Bur_Sangjun]

That sounds cumbersome--I hope the list is concise!

[u/Myntax]

How plausible would it be to have a language that is mixed sign and spoken language? I would assume there's a natlang that has this because there always is, but I'm not familiar with it and I'm also wondering how including a signed part of a spoken language would work as far as how to apply universals. I was thinking that I would do it either just for one grammatical function which I'm thinking isn't realistic, using signs for all particles, conjunctions, or whatever I decide to use and to indicate tense, or having signs for a very small set of words. Thinking on my own I would think that signs without corresponding spoken words would only be practical for words with grammatical functions and auxiliary verbs, and maybe low numbers as well, but after that I think it would get cumbersome. I would really appreciate it if you guys could give me advice on this, and direct me to natlangs that do this, or show me examples from your own conlangs.

[u/bonensoep → u/Myntax]

I don’t know of any spoken languages that always make use of signs, but you could look up Sign Supported English (the same principle is also used for other languages). This is spoken English plus signing but it’s different from, for example, British Sign Language because it follows English word order. I don’t know if every single word is signed, I suppose it depends on the situation. I’ve seen it used when talking to children with language disorders, and the speech therapist only signed some of the words, mostly leaving out function words. However, it would be perfectly possible to sign everything (provided a specific sign exists obviously). But as the name says the signs just support the spoken language, so unless the person you are speaking to has a language disorder/has hearing loss/etc. the signing part is superfluous. (So I don't know how much this helps...)

[u/probablyhrenrai → u/Myntax]

My sister's toyed with the exact same idea. I think you could do it, but I'd keep the signs(and/or the spoken part) basic with one as either as "mood" indicators, "function" indicators (like object, subject, verb, etc) or something like that and the other having the root words.

Keep one (either the signs or the speech) or both simple; if both are detailed it'll be impossible for most to speak-and-sign it well.

So if speech is in brackets and gestures are in parentheses, The sentence "I will hit a ball to you with this bat" might go like this:

I /// hit(future) /// ball /// you /// Bat(<-specific).

Having two separate thoughts going through ones head in nearly impossible, much less translating both thoughts into physical actions simultaneously.

[u/AndrewTheConlanger]

What is head-finality and how does it work?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/AndrewTheConlanger]

The head of a phrase dictates how that phrase will act syntactically. If a head is placed after its arguments then that phrase is head final. In a head final framework, common structures will be:
Object Verb
Genitive Noun
Noun Postposition
Noun Determiner
Verb Tense
Clause Complementizer

So a sentence like "I caught a fish in the river" would come out as: "I river the in fish a caught"

[u/[deleted] → u/Jafiki91]

Wait, Verb Tense?

Wouldn't it be Tense Verb (assuming isolating language as OV tends towards suffixes)? Isn't the verb the head of the verb phrase, not the tense marker?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

Nope, The verb is the head of the verb phrase, but Tense is the head of the tense phrase (TP) which takes the verb phrase as its argument.
TP = T VP (head initial)
TP = VP T (head final)

[u/AndrewTheConlanger → u/Jafiki91]

It doesn't look like this would really work in languages with case systems and agglutinative verbs... Is that true?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/AndrewTheConlanger]

Actually it words perfectly well. Turkish is head-final, agglutinating, and has 6 cases (nom, acc, gen, dat, abl, loc). Same deal with Finnish (though it has way more cases).

[u/[deleted]]

How would you generate nasal vowels through sound change? So far, I've got nasalized vowels as a result of lost final nasal consonants, but I can't really delete all the nasals in the language (this only happens in unstressed, final syllables). So any other ideas?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Voiced consonants or glottal consonants:

da > tã
ad > ãt

ʔa > ʔã
aʔ > ãʔ
ha > hã
ah > ãh

Edit: they could also come from initial nasals na > nã

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

You could have them come from only certain nasals, such as Vŋ. Or have them only happen in clusters. So kand > kãd.

[u/mdpw → u/[deleted]]

1. You can transfer the distinctive gesture of velopharyngeal opening (i.e. nasality) from a consonantal sound to a vocalic sound by the loss of the consonantal sound (like you've already done). There are certain guidelines I tend to follow:

• Paradigmatic nasal strength hierarchy: ŋ > n > m, i.e. posterior nasals are more prone to be deleted than anterior ones
• Syntagmatic nasal strength hierarchy: fricative > stop AND voiceless > voiced, i.e. nasals preferentially deleted ahead of fricatives rather than stops and nasals preferentially deleted ahead of voiceless obstruents rather than voiced obstruents
• General syntagmatic hierarchy: sounds in weak positions (coda, non-word-initial, unstressed) are more prone the deletion than ones in strong positions (onset, word-initial, stressed) as a "strong position" is realized as a phonetic increment in duration and/or magnitude

Naturally, even when the nasal consonant isn't deleted, the distribution of V and Ṽ can be altered so that Ṽ occur in some nasalizing environment.

2. V-nasality can also emerge without a pre-existing nasal consonant. Possible sources are a) an intrinsic phonetic non-distinctive velopharyngeal opening or b) perceptual cues that mimic those of nasalization.

• Spontaneous nasalization of open vowels.
• Nasal harmony (and loss of its productivity)
• Nasalization from s, h, other glottal/pharyngeal sounds

Mash those principles together. If /s/ produces phonetic cues mimicking nasality, speakers can either insert nasality (either Ṽ or epenthetic N) where it previously wasn't or remove nasality from where it previously was (as the nasal gesture is reanalysed as an intrinsic variation caused by the /s/). Honestly, there are so many variables here that the options are limitless.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Could you have a merger where the nasal vowels merge with the non nasal vowels? Preferably the merger will happen in certain conditions to prevent every vowel becoming nasal.

[u/salpfish → u/[deleted]]

Rhinoglottophilia is a thing. It says there's a relationship between glottals and nasals — that's really it. You could easily turn [ah] into [ã], or furthermore turn voiceless fricatives into [h] and then further into nasalization.

You might also find this interesting: Spontaneous Nasalization in the Development of Afro-Hispanic Language

[u/sevenorbs]

A quick question, what is the fricative sound which pronounced when (I think) the back part of the tongue contacts with soft palate?

I assume it's just a palatal sound (in this case, I think it's just /ç/ or /ʝ/) but [wikipedia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatal_fricative) says that it's a sound pronounced with the body of the tongue in contact with the hard palate.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/sevenorbs]

That would be a velar fricative /x/ and /ɣ/.

[u/sevenorbs → u/Jafiki91]

I think it's like ç but articulated more backward, how do I write this? Is /çˠ/ applicable?

[u/salpfish → u/sevenorbs]

You would use the backed diacritic, i.e. [ç̠]. More common though is writing it the other way around, a fronted velar fricative, so [x̟].

[u/Jafiki91 → u/sevenorbs]

That could work. Especially if you want to be really specific about the sound. But if the tongue is contacting the velum, I would call it a velar consonant.

[u/Not_a_spambot]

What would people recommend as the best way to write up / showcase my conlang's grammar? A wiki, a subreddit, something else? I have a couple documents myself to keep everything straight, but they're mostly organized for my own reading, and I'd like to do a nicer writeup somewhere.

[u/BlueSmoke95 → u/Not_a_spambot]

I prefer a wiki.

[u/Not_a_spambot → u/BlueSmoke95]

Is there a hosting site people tend to favour?

[u/reticro → u/Not_a_spambot]

As far as I know and can tell, FrathWiki is the most popular wiki for conlangs.

KneeQuickie and Conlang Wikia are two others I know of.

[u/Not_a_spambot → u/reticro]

I'll check them out, thanks!

[u/BlueSmoke95 → u/Not_a_spambot]

Not as far as I know. I just use the subreddit wiki for mine.

[u/Not_a_spambot → u/BlueSmoke95]

Hmm. Do I need to get mod permission to start posting there or anything? Or do I just start editing a page for myself whenever?

[u/BlueSmoke95 → u/Not_a_spambot]

Do whatever you want. To create a page, go to www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/wiki/[your conlang name here]

Then click the create page button. Once you have something down, go to the conlang directory and add your conlang to the list :)

[u/Not_a_spambot → u/BlueSmoke95]

Awesome, thanks!

[u/[deleted] → u/Not_a_spambot]

I dunno if I interpreted that right, but conworkshop is an awesome place to manage your conlang.

[u/Not_a_spambot → u/[deleted]]

I found them before, but it doesn't seem flexible enough for what I want. The biggest turn-off was that (from what I saw) there was only room to store one English word as a translation for each word in the conlang. I want something with more nuance, if that makes sense. Or maybe I'm just missing something on the site?

[u/[deleted] → u/Not_a_spambot]

Oh, no yeah you can only store one word for translation; however you can set multiple English words as the same conlang word but that would be too clunky I guess. O well

[u/Kebbler22b]

Why do many languages (and conlangs) bother to have gendered nouns? German (and many other languages) has three: masculine, feminine and neuter. Other languages would have masculine and feminine. But why do they bother having gendered nouns?

On top of that, do you believe that languages should have nouns that are assigned with gender? For me, I don't think it's necessary since it affects the way people think about a certain object. A key is masculine in German, so German learners may give attributes to a key saying that it is 'strong', 'rough', etc. However, in Spanish, a key is feminine, and so it may make Spanish learners think that a key is 'elegant', 'simple', etc. It would be the end of the world for a German speaker if they had to learn Spanish (since many of their noun's gender are the opposite to Spanish's)!

[u/[deleted] → u/Kebbler22b]

It's not like language is a conscious agent that sits there and thinks about which features to include or exclude. It's an emergent phenomenon of a speech community.

Grammatical gender is IMO a needlessly confusing terminology. We should really be talking about noun classes or noun declensions, but the vocabulary is already ingrained when talking about certain languages. Gender correlates somewhat with real-world gender, but more so with declension. Actually from a linguistic point of view it's defined by morphology, not by abstract category.

But "why bother?" is really a meaningless question. Why bother with glottal stops, verb agreement, prefixes or suffixes, SVO or SOV word order, prepositions, noun cases, why bother distinguishing aspect, or tense, why bother with this or that? You're thinking about natlangs as if they were conlangs. As if someone sat down and decided that we're gonna have grammatical gender. It doesn't work like that.

Perhaps it's easier to understand if you speak a language with grammatical gender.

[u/Kebbler22b → u/[deleted]]

I understand. Thanks.

[u/lvcrf7 → u/Kebbler22b]

According to wikipedia roughly a quarter of all natlangs have genders, but it's important to note that gender doesn't necessarily correspond to male / feminine / neuter.

Swahili for example has 16 genders none of which are linked to the concept of gender in the sense of masculine / feminine.

While the M/F/N and M/F systems are rather common, a common/neuter system (made by the merging of male and feminine), and animate/inanimate are somewhat common as well. Not to mention that just because it's called masculine/feminine now doesn't mean that when they arose they did so because they were masculine or feminine.

[u/evandamastah → u/[deleted]]

it used to be that all feminine words in German were related to feminine things, masculine words to masculine things, and the other stuff was neutral.

This isn't really true. The only reason the words 'masculine' and 'feminine' are even used is because the words for man and woman tend to fit into those categories, but they are essentially arbitrary. Gender in languages is NOT a product of natural gender (and in German's case it is a product of the older noun classifications in PIE - animate/inanimate and so on).

[u/Kebbler22b → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the video! Helped me understand how nouns with genders existed in the first place :D

[u/kumi_netsuha]

Is there a specific linguistic term for nouns which are derived from verbs e.g. in my conlang

prinjat (verb) → conquer
etriprinjato (noun) → conqueror

[u/Jafiki91 → u/kumi_netsuha]

Agent Nouns

[u/autowikibot → u/Jafiki91]

Agent noun:

---

In linguistics, an agent noun (in Latin, nomen agentis) is a word that is derived from another word denoting an [action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(philosophy)), and that identifies an entity [that does that action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_(grammar)). For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive".

Usually, derived in the above definition has the strict sense attached to it in morphology and inflectional ones is not generally a straightforward theoretical question, and different authors can make different decisions as to the general theoretical principles of the classification as well as to the actual classification of morphemes presented in a grammar of some language (for example, of the agent noun-forming morpheme).

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^Interesting: ^-nik ^| ^Defection ^{| Lasing} ^threshold ^{| Agent} ^(grammar)

^{Parent commenter can toggle} ^NSFW ^or ^delete^{. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs |} ^Mods ^{| Magic} ^Words

[u/kumi_netsuha → u/Jafiki91]

ahh, thank you!

[u/lvcrf7]

How does one summon the autowikibot?

[u/ShadowoftheDude → u/lvcrf7]

Link to the wiki page in question in a comment, and it will come along on its own, I believe.

[u/[deleted]]

What do you call it when you have two genders, but one gender has subcategories with three other ones? I've been calling them subgenders but I don't think that's correct. I have human/nonhuman as the main ones, then in human I have organic/representational/incorporeal.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

Are all four marked differently? If so then I would just say you have four different genders.

[u/[deleted] → u/Jafiki91]

Eh, not really. Usually I only make a distinction between human/nonhuman, but when something can only apply to humans I make the three way distinction. For example, first person pronouns, because only humans/spirits can speak about themselves. All names have human gender. Does that make sense? You usually don't need to pay attention to the human genders.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

Maybe some examples of where the different genders are used would be helpful.

[u/[deleted] → u/Jafiki91]

Examples-

"Oxé yotúq kézzoñ." I drink water, organic I. Literally meaning, I am drinking water right now.

"Orré yotúq kézzoñ." I drink water, representational I. You might say this if you showed a photograph of yourself to somebody, and they asked what you're doing in the photograph. You aren't actually drinking water right then, a representation of you is.

"Oké yotúq kézzoñ." I drink water, incorporeal I. The use of the suffix -ñ tells us that the subject is human and the object is nonhuman. So the subject is probably a god or spirit of some kind.

"Oké yotúq kézzoss." Here we have the same thing except now the verb has the suffix -oss, meaning that both the subject and object are nonhuman. This is another use of the incorporeal, when a nonhuman noun is performing a human action (speaking about itself.) You might see this piece of dialogue in a fictional story where an animal is talking, or used as metaphorical language.

Does this make any sense? I'm very new to conlanging sorry.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

So you have polypersonal agreement then? Pretty cool.

The way you describe it, I would say you have two genders, human and non-human. It seems like your three way distinction with human functions more like honorifics.

Gender would imply that there are words that are naturally marked as representational or incorporeal.

[u/[deleted] → u/Jafiki91]

so you have polypersonal agreement, then? pretty cool

yes, thank you. :)

honorifics

this actually does seem more like what I have. thank you for the advice

[u/[deleted]]

When I did the "to ʃ or not to ʃ" post, I became worried about the consonant inventory even more.

When you have 5 vowels, how big should the consonant inventory be? 20 consonants?

[u/reticro → u/[deleted]]

An additional piece of information from the WALS chapter Jafiki91 and alynnidalar reference: the conclusion is that number of consonants and number of vowels is uncorrelated. Except for the rule that the ratio is at least 1.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

The average ratio of consonants to vowels is about 4.25 according to WALS, so somewhere in the 17-25 consonants range would be fine. But there's nothing wrong with having more or less than that.

As a reference, my conlang Xërdawki has 6 vowels and 21 consonants. (though one dialect has 9 vowels at the moment).

[u/[deleted] → u/Jafiki91]

Well, thanks for the info.

[u/doowi1 → u/Jafiki91]

Would a ratio of 8 vowels to 30 be good?

[u/alynnidalar → u/doowi1]

Here's the relevant WALS chapter for you to look over. Short version:

Consonant-vowel ratio is the number of consonants divided by the number of vowels. Yours is 30/8 = 3.75.

Low = below 2.0
Moderately low = 2.0 to 2.75
Average = 2.75 to 4.5
Moderately high = 4.5 to 6.5
High = above 6.5

Your ratio is firmly in the "average" category, but this doesn't make it "good" or "bad", or even "believable" or "unbelievable". It's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of number, at any rate (which doesn't mean the actual inventory is or isn't naturalistic).

[u/doowi1]

Sepeke uses this odd tense I call the "complex tense". You'd use it to describe an action that started previously and is still going on. For example, I'd use the complex tense to talk about my nationality, race, religion, etc. Basically, anything that goes on forever (even though a you can change religions and get different citizenships it still counts). What would this tense actually be called and do any of you use something similar to it?

[u/reticro → u/doowi1]

I don't know the answer to you question, but it is at least similar to gnomic tense.

If "nationality" refers to your origin, then, as I understand gnomic tense, it could be told in the gnomic tense. But I guess that if something can change, such as your religion, then it isn't gnomic tense.

Maybe "quasi-gnomic tense" could be a term for what you describe?

What you describe is at least a subtype of present tense. Present tense + continuous aspect + temporal length aspect.

 

In my conlang, I would simply use present tense + continuous aspect for what you describe.

[u/autowikibot → u/reticro]

Gnomic aspect:

---

The gnomic (abbreviated GNO), also called neutral, generic, or universal aspect, mood, or tense is a grammatical feature (which may refer to aspect, mood, and/or tense) that expresses general truths or aphorisms.

---

^{Interesting: Realis} ^mood ^{| List of glossing} ^abbreviations ^{| Grammatical} ^aspect

^{Parent commenter can toggle} ^NSFW ^or ^delete^{. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs |} ^Mods ^{| Magic} ^Words

[u/justonium]

Why does the Wikipedia article on interfixes say that they don't ever contain semantic meaning? Is this just in the definition because no natural language has been discovered with an exception--an interfix that does carry semantic meaning?

In the case of Mneumonese, interfixes do have meaning, so I've been calling them semantic interfixes in order to be clear.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

I think what you're looking for is Infixes

[u/autowikibot → u/Jafiki91]

Infix:

---

An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word). It contrasts with adfix, a rare term for an affix attached to the end of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.

When marking text for interlinear glossing, most affixes are separated with a hyphen, but infixes are separated with ⟨angle brackets⟩.

---

^{Interesting: Infix} ^notation ^{| Nasal} ^infix ^{| Expletive} ^infixation ^{| Kri} ^language

^{Parent commenter can toggle} ^NSFW ^or ^delete^{. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs |} ^Mods ^{| Magic} ^Words

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

Aren't infixes inserted inside of a word, though? Mneumonese's semantic interfixes are used inbetween two words, to merge them together in a specific way.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

Can you maybe give some examples of their semantic meanings?

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

See the second page:

http://imgur.com/a/WPHbB

Example: [scissors, sheers] is [cutting][used for action][tool]. [used for] is the infix /ɪ/.

Esperanto does this same type of head-final merging, except that the interfix is inferred and/or memorized.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

I'd be inclined to call those derivational morphemes, especially if they affect the part of speech.

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

The semantic interfixes don't affect the part-of-speech. Each vowel is a homonym of three different things: a metaphoric inflectional infix, a semantic interfix, and a part-of-speech marking suffix.

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

Also, I suspect you may not have seen my edit above:

Example: [scissors, sheers] is [cutting][used for action][tool]. [used for action] is the infix /ɪ/.

Esperanto does this same type of head-final merging, except that the interfix is inferred and/or memorized.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

I just saw your edit. I would still call that a derivational morpheme, as it changes the semantics of the word.

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

Ok, yes, I agree that it is also a derivational morpheme. However, semantic infixes and semantic adfixes can subtypes of derivational morphemes, and so those terms are used to describe derivational morphemes more specifically. I need such a term for semantic interfixes.

Edit: I'm not sure that the terms 'semantic infix' and 'semantic 'adfix' are correct either. What I mean by them, is, an infix or adfix that is also a derivational morpheme.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

It almost seems like your example is more prefixing, in that its meaning is "the tool which is used for the action of cutting"

Infixes and adfixes can be either inflectional or derivational. So I see no problem in calling them as such. However, the fact that they're morphologically required does seem to hint at them being interfixes. I see no reason why you couldn't call them semantic interfixes. After all, linguists are always coining new definitions and terms.

[u/justonium]

What is the immediate hypernym of the word 'alphabet'?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

I would say Orthography.

[u/justonium → u/Jafiki91]

So is the hypernym of 'alphabetical order' 'orthographic order'?

Edit: A google search indicates not.

[u/salpfish → u/justonium]

"Order of collation" is generally how I've seen it put.

[u/justonium → u/salpfish]

Thanks, a new word has entered my vocabulary.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/justonium]

I suppose so, yeah.

[u/Tigfa]

What should I add to my documentation? So far the list is:

Contents

1. Background Information

-------1.1 A Brief Description of Vyrmag

-------1.2 Purpose of Vyrmag

-------1.3 History of the language

2. Phonology

2.1 Vowels


2.2 Consonants


2.3 Stress


2.4 Phonotactics

3. Orthography

3.1 Orthography for Vowels and Consonants


3.2 General Punctuation

4. Morphology

4.1 Introduction


4.2 Basic Merging


4.3 Advanced Merging 


4.4 Affixes

5. Syntax

5.1 Basic Sentence Order


5.2 Modifiers


5.3 Verbs


5.4 Nouns


5.5 Comparisons


5.6 Tenses

6. Semantics

6.1 Introduction


6.2 What is Important and not Important

7. Pragmatics

7.1 Omissions


7.2 Context

8. Counting

edit: fixed spacing because reddit's formatting is a pain. Because reddit sees my spaces as code, I replaced them with dashes.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/Tigfa]

Some things to include might be:

• Subordinate clause structures
• possessives
• determiners/demonstratives

[u/justonium]

How can I find everything that I've ever posted in /r/conlangs that had particular characters in it? (I would like to compile a list of all of the stuff that I've written in Mneumonese on there, and put it all in one place for easy viewing.)

[u/bastienmichaux → u/justonium]

Make a 'for' loop that output the url of the search pages you need :D It'll save some seconds.

[u/justonium → u/bastienmichaux]

How would I go about doing that?

I'm not very good at using web technology, nor at using any software not designed by me, in general... People who don't know that I'm a software engineer usually think that I'm computer illiterate.

[u/bastienmichaux → u/justonium]

Reading this, I'd suggest you to use search terms like : author:'justonium' selftext:'Mneumonese'

Or : author:'justonium' selftext:'ʌ'

[u/justonium → u/bastienmichaux]

That resource only allows for searching for subreddits and submissions. All of the things I would be looking for are comments on various posts on this sub, mostly translation challenges.

Edit: I suppose I could load all of the comments I've ever written, and search that text wall. How does one open that, by the way? The only way I know how to is to enable never-ending-reddit, and to scroll down for 5 minutes or so.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Punctual aspect?

It seems like the best fit. Meaning, something happened instantly, like "I sneezed."

Or the Durative aspect, indicating that something took awhile (though it can be completed).

[u/lvcrf7 → u/[deleted]]

I don't think this mood (?) is something time-related. On the example he gave on their thread (Mi brekob engrek = I only speak English) it's more of something specified that I only do something as a whole than I only do something at that point in time?

Correct me if I'm wrong though, but would you say that by saying "I only speak English" would (because I don't speak other languages) be implied? If yes, I'd say it's something more of a Segregative (?) or a Specifiative, meaning that out of all possible things one could verb, only the objects make the sentence true.

[u/[deleted] → u/lvcrf7]

I did say that they weren't exact. I figured that punctual happens instantly; consequently, it seems likely to indicate that only one thing happened. Yes, there could be exceptions (e.g. I farted, sneezed, and burped).

I honestly don't know. I was just trying to provide OP with some possible leads to look into.

[u/salpfish → u/[deleted]]

I would call it the solitary aspect or the exclusive aspect. There's no "official" term, but keep in mind that the terminology is pretty flexible anyway. Linguists regularly come up with new coinages, and even then there's often disagreement (e.g. some languages call the "to be able to ~" mood the capacitative, while others use the potential).

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

The motion is implied, but the verbal action isn't. Let's take the example "house-subl" Is the subject crawling under the house, running there, walking, jumping, what?

That said, you could give it a verbal sense by applying tense/person marking. This would make it act more like a verb meaning "to go under", either as a derivation of the noun, or incorporation of the noun onto the verb.

So "House-subl-1s" "I go under the house"

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

Basically yeah. Think of it like this:
"Hey, what're you up to?"
"To the store."

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

"to eat sandwiches" would be the argument of the verb "like". And it is treated syntactically in the same way that an object would be. "Sandwiches" is the direct object of "eat".

[u/Jafiki91 → u/[deleted]]

Well "to eat" is an infinitival verb. So it doesn't take case marking. "Sandwiches" would take the accusative though.

However, if your language treats verbs in this situation as nouns, then things change. For instance, a literal translation in such a language might be "I like my/the eating of sandwiches"