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linguoboy wrote:So any questions?
rubs wrote:what level of linguistic skill will I need to make such a language as i'd propose?
rubs wrote:and atop of that how would Polypersonal-agreement work in practice?
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:what level of linguistic skill will I need to make such a language as i'd propose?
Depends what level of complexity you're aiming for.
rubs wrote:and atop of that how would Polypersonal-agreement work in practice?
It works many different ways, depending on the language in question. The polypersonal language I know best is Osage (a Siouan language, related to Lakota) and, if you have specific questions, I can do my best to answer them based on my knowledge of that language.
rubs wrote:linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:what level of linguistic skill will I need to make such a language as i'd propose?
Depends what level of complexity you're aiming for.
like ……… Makes navaho sound like babyspeak level complexity.
Basically really formalised and yet more complex version of one of those languages.
rubs wrote:well could you give me a general overview of how it's done.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:what level of linguistic skill will I need to make such a language as i'd propose?
Depends what level of complexity you're aiming for.
like ……… Makes navaho sound like babyspeak level complexity.
Basically really formalised and yet more complex version of one of those languages.
Um, yeah, you're going to want to scale down those ambitions. Quite a lot, in fact.
Let me put it to you this way: I have a degree in linguistics from one of the best programmes in the country. I've been learning languages for over thirty years. Navajo kicks my ass. Every time I have tried to study it, I've retreated in disgrace. It's morphology is at least an order of magnitude more complex than that of any other language I've studied (and, yes, that includes Osage).
rubs wrote:well could you give me a general overview of how it's done.
What's wrong with this overview? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypersonal_agreement
As I said, I'm more than willing to answer specific questions. What I'm not going to do is write up a lesson on polypersonal agreement from scratch when such things already exist and can be found on the web for free.
rubs wrote:[But I want a really bizare language
rubs wrote:I read it i'm just not sure what specific question to ask
rubs wrote:Well i'd need to know at-least something about the agreement pattern to ask something more specific, or at-least know what to ask.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:[But I want a really bizare language
"Bizarre" is not the same thing as "incredibly complex".
If you want a "bizarre" language, I would say that the easiest way to go about it is to determine what categories are commonly found in languages and then discard those in favour of other ones. Most languages have a singular/plural distinction? Okay, instead I'll have a tripartite distinction between "not enough", "enough", and "too much".
Most languages inflect verbs to show relative time? Okay, then I'll inflect them to show absolute time of day (e.g. whether an action took place or will take place in the morning or the afternoon, with no indication of whether this is today, tomorrow, or yesterday). Things like that make your language bizarre,
not just heaping on more inflectional complexity.
rubs wrote:I read it i'm just not sure what specific question to ask
Maybe try creating an example sentence to see if you've understood the explanation.rubs wrote:Well i'd need to know at-least something about the agreement pattern to ask something more specific, or at-least know what to ask.
You keep saying "the agreement pattern" as if there were only one. As I said, the pattern is different in different languages. That's why you need to work on coming up with more specific questions.
For instance, Osage doesn't have subject and object inflections, it has agent and patient ones. This is important because some verbs are stative and use patient inflections to indicate the subject. (In addition, there are doubly-stative verbs which use patient inflection to express both subject and object.) This is completely different from the polypersonal agreement of, say, Basque (an ergative language) or Swahili (an accusative one). Then Swahili isn't like these other languages either since it has an elaborate noun-class system which requires agreement on the verb. And so.
Think more about what you want to do, then you should be able to come up with some questions on how it can be done.
rubs wrote:Rather I want a language with the specific character of being a very complex and precise language.
rubs wrote:Well yeah I get that point, but… I want a hyper-logical alien language
rubs wrote:Well, I know some use a single affix to give both subject and the object, I read it I think I need some time to digest your post.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:Rather I want a language with the specific character of being a very complex and precise language.
I recommend looking at Ithkuil for an example of a language of this type.
rubs wrote:Well yeah I get that point, but… I want a hyper-logical alien language
"Logical" means very different things to different people. To most people, it seems to mean "having very regular morphology".
For an example of a language actually based on predicate logic (and, thus, very different from any human language), I recommend looking at Lojban.
rubs wrote:Well, I know some use a single affix to give both subject and the object, I read it I think I need some time to digest your post.
Osage does this, but only in the specific case where the subject is 1S and the object is 2S, e.g. wióxta "I love you". (Cf. ą́ðioxta "you love me", which is 1S.PAT-2S.PAT-love. óxta is a double-stative verb, but the same affix is used with active transitive verbs as well, e.g. owíhką "I help you".)
rubs wrote:Thats not what I meant by logical, what I meant by logical is having a grammar and syntax that strictly follow laws of logic, in a manner which is accurate precise and concise.
thanks, I suppose.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:Thats not what I meant by logical, what I meant by logical is having a grammar and syntax that strictly follow laws of logic, in a manner which is accurate precise and concise.
Then the next question becomes, "Which laws of logic?" Not all logic is mathematical logic, for instance.
There's a very sophisticated logic underlying all natural languages which makes them incredibly precise and yet concise at the same time. Linguists didn't really appreciate this until they tried to model languages computationally and learned how hard it was to keep computers from making mistakes that competent speakers would consider elementary.
If you want to learn more about it (and I recommend that anyone who wants to create a language do so), you should acquaint yourself with the field of cognitive linguistics.
thanks, I suppose.
You're welcome, I guess.
rubs wrote:I’ve noticed that some languages appear incredibly logical once one gets familiar to them.
Like outside they’d look virtually indecipherably but internally they have internal consistent incredibly regular
but complex structure that functions in a highly expressive manner.
rubs wrote:Still somewhat more intuitive argument, but i've seen enough languages to say their is significant variation in language, when factor in that different populations will think somewhat differently, and so forth, makes me think their are likely to be only few Universals.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:I’ve noticed that some languages appear incredibly logical once one gets familiar to them.
Like outside they’d look virtually indecipherably but internally they have internal consistent incredibly regular
but complex structure that functions in a highly expressive manner.
Not that I disagree, but could you give some concrete examples?
universals or differences?rubs wrote:Still somewhat more intuitive argument, but i've seen enough languages to say their is significant variation in language, when factor in that different populations will think somewhat differently, and so forth, makes me think their are likely to be only few Universals.
There's actually more than you might think because you take so many for granted.
Prototype theory, for instance. I've yet to read about any natural human language which doesn't structure semantic categories this way. (This is one of the things that makes Lojban such a good model for a non-human language; it was actually invented to test whether human beings could even learn to speak such a thoroughly mathematical language.)
rubs wrote:obvious example thats been dropped is navaho
rubs wrote:universals or differences?There's actually more than you might think because you take so many for granted.
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:obvious example thats been dropped is navaho
In what way do you find Navajo "incredibly regular"? When I look at the verbal system, I actually see quite a few irregularities (such as suppletive plural stems and lexicalised derived forms).
rubs wrote:universals or differences?There's actually more than you might think because you take so many for granted.
Universals. (That should have been clear from context, i.e. being immediately followed by an example of a universal.)
rubs wrote:also reading up what specifically you meant that's interesting but, doesn't make the semantics or syntax irregular.
rubs wrote:Well In what sense is it universal
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:also reading up what specifically you meant that's interesting but, doesn't make the semantics or syntax irregular.
Then I don't understand what you mean by "irregular". In what sense is went a "regular" past tense of go when the vast majority of English verbs form the past tense simply by adding -ed? Suppletion is an inherently "irregular" process--not all stems undergo it and there are no rules which predict what forms the suppletive stems will take.
Same with lexicalisation. The meaning of words is arbitrary, so lexicalisation by definition means that the meaning isn't predictable from the compositional structure of the word.rubs wrote:Well In what sense is it universal
In that I've never seen evidence of an attested natural language in which categories aren't structured in this way.
rubs wrote:linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:also reading up what specifically you meant that's interesting but, doesn't make the semantics or syntax irregular.
Then I don't understand what you mean by "irregular". In what sense is went a "regular" past tense of go when the vast majority of English verbs form the past tense simply by adding -ed? Suppletion is an inherently "irregular" process--not all stems undergo it and there are no rules which predict what forms the suppletive stems will take.
well if plural, marking is also encoded in another part of the overarching clause that doesn't seem like it'd necisarily be a different type of structure but rather just a conditionally triggered change, that is present when the totality of the clause contains an argument with non singular marking.
rubs wrote:rereading what I said I don't see how this negatively affects what i've claimed
rubs wrote:yup'ik, any example amerindian languages appear to be at the very least often enough deeply expressive languages, indeed sometimes their is no difficulty expressing concepts previously entirely alien to the culture without requiring any degree of Lexicalisation or anything like that.
rubs wrote:yeah well I tend to not think in those categories
linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:linguoboy wrote:rubs wrote:also reading up what specifically you meant that's interesting but, doesn't make the semantics or syntax irregular.
Then I don't understand what you mean by "irregular". In what sense is went a "regular" past tense of go when the vast majority of English verbs form the past tense simply by adding -ed? Suppletion is an inherently "irregular" process--not all stems undergo it and there are no rules which predict what forms the suppletive stems will take.
well if plural, marking is also encoded in another part of the overarching clause that doesn't seem like it'd necisarily be a different type of structure but rather just a conditionally triggered change, that is present when the totality of the clause contains an argument with non singular marking.
This isn't clarifying for me your definition of "irregular". If suppletion doesn't qualify, what does?
rubs wrote:rereading what I said I don't see how this negatively affects what i've claimed
You claimed the Navajo language was "incredibly regular". Its regularity is quite credible to me.
rubs wrote:yup'ik, any example amerindian languages appear to be at the very least often enough deeply expressive languages, indeed sometimes their is no difficulty expressing concepts previously entirely alien to the culture without requiring any degree of Lexicalisation or anything like that.
All languages are capable of that. This isn't any special quality of languages of the Americas. (Yup'ik isn't "Amerindian".)
rubs wrote:yeah well I tend to not think in those categories
You absolutely think in these categories all the time. "Language" is a category. So is "human" or "plural". Plurality itself is a category, as is tense and definiteness. This is how your thought is structured.
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