There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: Anthony Miles
1b. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: George Marques de Jesus
1c. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: Patrick Dunn
1d. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
1e. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: Jyri Lehtinen
2a. A real-life 'gin and tonic' phenomenon
From: mughtej
2b. Re: A real-life 'gin and tonic' phenomenon
From: Adam Walker
3a. Re: Creating a Prononominal System
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
3b. Re: Creating a Prononominal System
From: Leonardo Castro
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:12 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
On 28 March 2013 19:39, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews wrote:
> Is his a limit on pronominal system creation? I know there's duals, and
> four-person systems, so what else is possible?
Siye has five or six pronouns depending on how you look at it. The third
person is split into animate "i" for "ya" and inanimate "e" or "a". I have been
using "um" for the third person indefinite pronoun as well as the reflexive
pronoun, but I noticed yesterday that my older notes have "mu" as the
indefinite in contrast to "um" as the reflexive. Thanks to this topic, I have
an opportunity to correct my error!
Messages in this topic (21)
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1b. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "George Marques de Jesus" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:16 pm ((PDT))
2013/3/28 Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> Double- (no, triple-)header.
>
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:02:33 -0300, George Marques de Jesus <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> >I don't know if it happens anywhere else, but in my conlang, Mihousapeja,
> I
> >have a "presential we", in addition to the inclusive and exclusive
> >variations.
> >
> >If you're in a party talking to your friend, the "inclusive we" means you
> >both, and the "presential we" means everyone in the party. If you're in a
> >business meeting, the "inclusive we" means all the companies involved, the
> >"exclusive we" means the company you represent, and the "presential we"
> >means the people in the room as persons, no companies involved.
>
> I like this. What are the forms? Does the morphology suggest some of
> these categories are closerly related than others, e.g.?
>
This is my first conlang and I didn't give some thought about the
morphology of the pronouns, just chose random words (since it's an a priori
language), but now wish I thought about it. They have different forms based
on gender (there's two genders: animate and inanimate, although the plural
is always used in the inanimate gender, unless you are a sort of
omnipresent god).
Namely, there's "moa" (inclusive), "nus" (exclusive) and "hen"
(presential). The animate versions would be "ese", "ape" and "athe",
respectively.
>
> Cued by your latter example alone, a breakdown ran through my mind where
> you could segment the semantics as follows, which would then be a nice
> decomposition to reflect in morphology. Your first example belies it for
> Mihousapeja, though.
>
> (1) is the speaker in the group?
> (2) is/are the listener(s) in the group?
> (3) is the group extended to other people which the people present
> represent, in the associative plural style?
> 1 2 3
> Y Y Y inclusive we
> Y Y N presential we
> Y N Y exclusive we
> Y N N 1st singular
> N Y Y much like 2nd plural, in practice?
> N Y N much like 2nd singular?
> N N Y if this has any meaning, then I suppose 3rd person
>
>
> Alex
>
I like this "truth table", never thought in this logical way. Also, I never
heard of the "associative plural" before (I'm always learning something
new), but it's basically the same idea. The presential is much like of a
counterpart of the inclusive, used when the context might make it less
clear, so in my first example, usually in a party the "we" refers to your
group of friends (well, in a way it is the group you represent), so the
presential can extend that meaning. In the second example the reverse
occurs: the inclusive is too broad (because it includes associates), so you
can narrow down to the people in the room.
George Marques
Messages in this topic (21)
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1c. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:54 pm ((PDT))
The Oasa pronoun system looks like this:
singular
honorific
plural inclusive
plural exclusive
plural autoexclusive
first person
ea (-'a)
shusi'a (-si'a)
etano (-an)
ealano (-an)
ako (-ko)
second person
ita (-ta)
hailota (-lota)
itano (-tan)
third person definite animate
elu (-lu)
eluno (-lun)
third person definite inanimate
ak'i (-k'i)
ak'eno (-k'en)
third person indefinite animate
sho (-sho)
shusho (-on)
third person indefinite inanimate
ha (-ha)
hano (-han)
The forms in parentheses are suffixes used with inalienable possessives and
a few other situations. The honorific forms are used when speaking to a
superior or a person one does not know well. The inclusive/exclusive
distinction is obvious, but there's also an autoexclusive form -- ako --
which is used in situations when one wishes to indicate a sense of
membership without implying that one is actually literally involved. For
example, if a team wins, you'd say "we (autoexclusive) won" if you are a
fan of the team, and "we won" if you were actually on the team. It's also
used in political situations, when a representative that the speaker voted
for does something the speaker approves of, and in religious situations to
indicate agreement with doctrines of the religion or philosophy.
The indefinite are essentially equivalent to "one" or "someone," and are
used for hearer-new information, while the definite third person is
essentially "he/she," and used to refer to hearer-old information.
The interrogative pronouns are nono for inanimates and nosho for animates.
The suffix for both is -no. In extremely polite speech, the indefinite
pronouns may be used for interrogatives.
Messages in this topic (21)
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1d. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:10 pm ((PDT))
I'm also thinking they could be broken down into they, same gender for
women, they, same gender for men, they, a man a woman alone, and they, a man
a woman in a group. Then, there's they for the group as a whole, and they
for part of the group.Wow! As if our language wasn't confusing enough.
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Patrick Dunn
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 1:20 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Creating A Prononominal System
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Daniel Burgener
<[email protected]>wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I was tinking of a telephic pronoun. I also like pronouns that
> distinguish
> > merital status. I'm not sure how those would work.
> >
>
> In a language I'm working on with a friend which is primarily for
gossiping
> about relationships, we mark marital status as well as gender on all
nouns,
> including pronouns. There are four marital statuses: "single", "dating",
> "married" and "other". Nouns that aren't people are assigned both a
gender
> and a marital status somewhat arbitrarily. (The word for chair might be
> married and female for example).
>
Oooh. The opportunity for metaphor there is wonderful. "I just found a
chair.MAR at the thriftstore."
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr
_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 29, 2013 4:07 am ((PDT))
I've been reading Foley's "The Papuan languages of New Guinea" and it lists
some pretty strange ways for splitting the pronominal space. The most
insane system are the singular pronouns of Ngala:
1.SG.M wɨn
1.SG.F nyɨn
2.SG.M mɨn
2.SG.F yɨn
3.SG.M kɨr
3.SG.F yɨn
First of all the language extends the masculine/feminine split into not
only the second person but all the way to the first person. On top of that
it doesn't distinguish the feminine second and third person singular
pronouns. I guess you have to have quite strict gender rules in your
society in order to make this kind of a system stable. Related languages
don't appear to be as insane as Ngala and only distinguish M/F in their
second and third person pronouns. They also have distinctly shaped pronouns
for both persons in both genders with the 2.SG.F pronoun providing an
obvious cognate for the Ngala 1.SG.F pronoun. The languages are also
reasonable in not extending the gender distinction into their dual and
plural pronouns.
Another strange feature of many Papuan languages is that there is
apparently often a connection between the second person singular and first
person non-singular pronouns. As an example Foley gives the personal
pronouns of Suki:
SG PL
1 ne e
2 e de
3 u i
Many languages of the area also make only partial person distinction in
their non-singular pronouns. So for example Awa contrasts in plural _ite_
(1/2.PL) with _se_ (3.PL) and Iatmul in dual _an_ (1.DU) with _mpɨk_
(2/3.DU).
Some of these features are very strange and I would have considered them
wildly unnaturalistic if I would have encountered them first in someone's
conlang.
None of the conlangs I'm working with does anything too strange with their
personal pronouns. I'm including a first person inclusive pronoun in Kišta
(which I'm just parsing together from a decade of sketching) that goes back
to a form *šən(ə). This can be broken down into the first person plural
pronominal base *šə and a suffix *-n(ə). The same, or at least very
similar, suffix has also worked as the dual suffix of nouns and can be seen
in various pair derivations in modern Kišta, such as:
*malə > malla ("eye")
*malə-n > malan ("the pair of eyes")
My rational for this development is that in discourse the first person dual
seems to be much more biased towards inclusive use ("you and I") than first
person plural. If the dual number erodes away, the first person dual
pronoun might just survive because of its inclusive use and generalise out
of the dual meaning. I don't know if such development is attested from any
natural language and would be glad to hear if anyone else knows.
-Jyri
2013/3/29 Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <[email protected]>
> I'm also thinking they could be broken down into they, same gender for
> women, they, same gender for men, they, a man a woman alone, and they, a
> man
> a woman in a group. Then, there's they for the group as a whole, and they
> for part of the group.Wow! As if our language wasn't confusing enough.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of Patrick Dunn
> Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 1:20 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Creating A Prononominal System
>
> On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Daniel Burgener
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <
> > [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I was tinking of a telephic pronoun. I also like pronouns that
> > distinguish
> > > merital status. I'm not sure how those would work.
> > >
> >
> > In a language I'm working on with a friend which is primarily for
> gossiping
> > about relationships, we mark marital status as well as gender on all
> nouns,
> > including pronouns. There are four marital statuses: "single", "dating",
> > "married" and "other". Nouns that aren't people are assigned both a
> gender
> > and a marital status somewhat arbitrarily. (The word for chair might be
> > married and female for example).
> >
>
> Oooh. The opportunity for metaphor there is wonderful. "I just found a
> chair.MAR at the thriftstore."
>
>
>
> --
> Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
> order from Finishing Line
> Press<
> http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
> and
> Amazon<
> http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr
> _1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
>
Messages in this topic (21)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. A real-life 'gin and tonic' phenomenon
Posted by: "mughtej" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:24 pm ((PDT))
I was watching an anime episode on the internet dubbed in Chinese and heard a
word which could be either 了解 (liaojie) or the English roger for the word
understand. I had to replay the word several times to figure out the Chinese
word was used, because the Chinese dub sometimes keeps the original words and
phrases.
Which reminds me of the idea of the 'gin and tonic' phenomenon from
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where a drink created by with the name gin
and tonic (with various spellings) by every civilized race before discovering
the existence of other race.
Messages in this topic (2)
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2b. Re: A real-life 'gin and tonic' phenomenon
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 6:35 pm ((PDT))
Maybe you can get some Swedish meatballs to go with your gin and tonic.
Adam who loves B5
On 3/28/13, mughtej <[email protected]> wrote:
> I was watching an anime episode on the internet dubbed in Chinese and heard
> a word which could be either 了解 (liaojie) or the English roger for the word
> understand. I had to replay the word several times to figure out the
> Chinese word was used, because the Chinese dub sometimes keeps the original
> words and phrases.
>
> Which reminds me of the idea of the 'gin and tonic' phenomenon from
> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where a drink created by with the name gin
> and tonic (with various spellings) by every civilized race before
> discovering the existence of other race.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Creating a Prononominal System
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 28, 2013 9:03 pm ((PDT))
I'm also thinking if pronouns can be broken down by cast, can they be broken
down by race or species?
Also, what's the inanimate and animate pronouns forms for?
I'm guessing the only pronoun that would work would be it.
I didn't think of honorific pronouns, are the honorifics broken down
depending on gender? And how about pronouns divided by age, could that work?
In other words, there would be an age category.
I'm also thinking they could be broken down into they, same gender for
women, they, same gender for men, they, a man a woman alone, and they, a man
a woman in a group. Then, there's they for the group as a whole, and they
for part of the group.
Wow! As if our language wasn't confusing enough.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Creating a Prononominal System
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:24 am ((PDT))
2013/3/29 Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <[email protected]>:
> I'm also thinking if pronouns can be broken down by cast, can they be broken
> down by race or species?
Maybe a different pronoun for "outsider" would be realistic. A race or
species could have different pronouns to refer or speak to people from
inside and outside the group, but having many different pronouns for a
lot of races or species seems improbable. They would likely be
stereotipical and probably offensive words.
Messages in this topic (2)
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