Verb System Quick Update.

This is a new page describing the updated verb system for Diinlang. See here for changes to pronouns and definite article.

The most recent change is that I have changed the past tense marker to “wen”, taken from Hawaiian Creole. This frees up the word “pre” for other uses, such as meaning “before”. The future marker, “gon” was also from Hawaiian Creole. The progressive affix has recently been changed to “is-” and the perfect marker to “dun-”. “ge-” makes a clause passive.

These markers are used in a set order:

Wen/ gon ; (zou) ; dun ; is- ; ge-

If you know a statement will be past continuous you will know to place “wen” before “is”. If a statement is future passive progressive “gon”, “is”, “ge” is the correct order. A past perfect statement uses “wen dun”. A conditional perfect statement uses “zou dun”.

“is-” and “ge-” are used as prefixes when creating active and passive adjectives. It needs to be decided if this is also done with verbal usage. For passive progressive marking they may be combined into one word “isge”.

I have made a little progress towards modal verbs/ markers. In addition to the conditional “zou” we possibly have:

Fi –indicating obligation, ie “should”, “ought to”.

Afi -indicating necessity.

Gofi -indicating inceptive, intent, planned actions etc.

(Adapted from Jamaican Patois)


Simple Present, Past and Future.
        These are formed with the bare infinitive and a tense marker if necessary. When a verb in future or past tense is being used as a copula the infinitive may be dropped if the meaning remains clear.

Mi du	I do
Zo du	He does
Zo wen du	He did
Zo gon du	He will do/ He is going to do.
Za zou du	She would do

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
        Transitivity is flexible. If an object is added after an intransitive verb, the verb becomes transitive. This may alter the meaning of the verb so that it has a meaning similar to “causes (the object) to …”
        Compare the English “I burn”. with “I burn it.”

Progressive/ Continuous Aspect.
        The progressive/continuous aspect is formed using the “is-” prefix. In English this verb aspect is accompanied by some form of the auxiliary/copular verb “to be”. In Diinlang the addition of the auxiliary is not necessary.

Mi isdu	I am doing
Zo isdu	He is doing
Zo wen isdu	He was doing
Zo gon isdu	He will be doing/ He is going to be doing.
Za zou isdu	She would be doing

Perfect Aspect.
        The perfect aspect is formed using “dun”. In English this verb aspect is accompanied by some form of the auxiliary verb “to have”. In Diinlang the addition of the auxiliary is not necessary. Perfect aspect in regular English verbs takes an –ed ending. Many irregular verbs take –en as an ending (eaten, riden, beaten etc).

Mi dun du	I have done
Zo dun du	He has done
Zo wen dun du	He had done
Zo gon dun du	He will have done/ He going to have done.
Za zou dun du	She would have done

Perfect Progressive.
        The perfect and progressive (continuous) aspects can be combined, usually in referring to the completed portion of a continuing action or temporary state: “I have been doing…” In Diinlang this is formed by combination of “dun” before a continuous form of the main verb.

Mi dun isdu	I have been doing
Zo dun isdu	He has been doing
Zo wen dun isdu	He had been doing
Zo gon dun isdu	He will have been doing/ He going to have been doing
Za zou dun isdu	She would have been doing.

Passive Voice.
        To form the passive voice (where the subject denotes the undergoer, or patient, of the action) the prefix “ge-” is used. In English passive voice is formed either with the verb “to be” or “to get” and a past-participle verb form. “get” is used in the meaning of “becoming” or “becomes”. (Remember perfect tense uses “have” with the past participle form in English) If “to be” can be replaced with “to get” or “to become” without a loss of meaning the sentence is passive voice and requires the “ge-” prefix in Diinlang. Some perfect construction clauses are inherently passive. “It ge du” and “It dun du” have the same meaning.
        In many languages the passive voice is formed by a combination of the perfect form of the verb used with the verb for “to be”. This construction may also be used in Diinlang. Often in Diinlang there will be more than one correct way to do something!

Tense	Subject	Tense and Aspect.	Past-Participle/ Infinitive.
Present passive	It It	is/ gets/ becomes ge-	done du
Past passive	It It	were/ got/ became wen ge-	done du
Future passive	It It	will be/ get/ become gon ge-	done du
Present perfect passive	It It	has been/ has got/ has become dun ge-	done du
Past perfect passive	It It	had been/ had got/ had became wen dun ge-	done du
Future perfect passive	It It	will have been/ will have got/ will have became gon dun ge-	done du.
Present progressive passive	It It	is being/ is getting/ is becoming isge-	done du
Past progressive passive	It It	was being/ was getting/ was becoming wen isge-	done du

Prepositions and Directions for Diinlang Part Two

Some further thoughts on directives and the related field of prepositions. I find it helpful to envision a cube. There are six directions that we can be from the cube: Above, below, left, right, beyond and before. We can also be outside the cube or inside it. The cube has six surfaces, although these surfaces may have an outside or inside.

Suppose, for Diinlang, we designate each of these eight parameters with a single syllable word. These are:

Up/ Loh

Lev/ Deks

Van/ Hin

In/ Eks

These are, respectively, up/ down, left/ right, front/ back, in/ out. Some of these may change, since eks and deks are similar in sound.

Up refers to height and positive vertical distance in general. It can take the diminutives and augmentative suffixes to become “upta” and “upko”, meaning “high/ very high” or “not-high”. “Lohko” would mean shallow and “lohta” would mean “deep”.

These words can also take –ha and –ho to create comparative and superlative forms: loh, lohha, lohho = low, lower, lowest.

The above terms assume egocentric relative directions are being used. In other words it treats the side of an object nearest to the viewer as the front, the farthest as the back etc. When it is necessary to indicate the “proper left” or an equivalent the objective marker “-em” can be added. The starboard side of a ship is therefore “deksem”. Something in front of a bird would be “vanem”. It may be simpler and clearer to instead suffix with pronouns so proper left is “zelev”. This also gives us “tulev” = “your left” and “milev” =“my left”.  

The suffix “-ru” indicates a static place or surface. Therefore the top of an object is upru, the left side/ surface is levru, the underside lohru etc.

When dimensions need to be expressed the syllable “leng” is added. In English the question “how high is the plane” can be ambivalent. It may mean the distance from bottom to top or its distance above the ground. In Diinlang the first would be “ke upleng?” and the second “ke up?” or “ke upta?”. “Uplengta” means “tall” and “uplengko” means “short”. “Width” is “spanleng”, with “spanglengta” being thick or wide and “spanlengko” being narrow or thin. Horizontal depth or thickness is “traleng” from the word “tra” for “through”. A thin wall would be “tralengko”.

Another suffix is used to indicate movement in one of these directions. In a previous blog I suggested “-ki” for this. “upki” is therefore “upwards”, “inki” is inwards and “levski” leftwards. It would be useful to have an afferent and efferent form of “ki”. This could compactly convey such actions as something rising towards a point of reference or something rising away. “-ka” and “-ke” cannot be uses since “ke” is already in use. Possibly “-aki” and “-eki”?

“-pas”, derived from “pass” can be used to form additional turns. “Uppas” would mean to go over so has the meaning “across”. “inpas” and “ekspas” would mean “entrance” and  “exit”.

These directives would work with some prepositions. In previous posts I have called “del” a generic conjunction. In practice its use may be more specific, having the meaning “of”, “from” (to indicate origin) and possibly “for”. It will see frequent use with directive phrases. “Vanen del ze aves” = “In front of the bird/ to the bird’s front”. “Up del ship” =”above the ship”.

“On” is used similarly to how it is used in English, but has the added sense of being in contact with something. Something can be on surfaces other than the top. Something could be “up on” or “on up(ru)” but also could be “on van” or “on lev”. “On” also has some of the applications of the English word “at”. You can say you will meet “on a bridge” but also “on the café”. This can be thought of as being “on the same location as...”

“Ad” in Diinlang means “to” and “apo” is “from”. These are from ISV and may be used instead of or in addition to afferent and efferent forms of “-ki”. “Upki ad mi”= “asending to me”. “Upki apo mi” = “rising up away from me”. These words can be used with some of the other suffixes suggested in this blog. “Adki”= “towards”, “apoki” = “from-wards”, “in ad” = “into”. “eks ad” = “out to”, “eks apo”=“out from”.

“Veng” means “near” and is used in many of the instances that “at”, “by”, “on” or “in” might be used in English. The use of these prepositions in English is eccentric and can be confusing to the learner. Diinlang generally uses “veng” for indicating near or outside a location or “in” for a location within something.

Conjunctions in Diinlang Part One

Version 1.2

I have noticed that I have not posted anything on the blog about conjunctions in Diinlang. The section below is taken from a draft I wrote when the project first started. As with most Diinlang, nothing is carved in stone and may be subject to change and modification.

Originally Diinlang was to observe a CVn format for words. I felt that Diinlang conjunctions should not have to follow CVn format but should be phonetically distinct. They should be short -two letters for the most often used, three for the less common.

I did consider that it might be possible to expand on this basic set to allow some more logical constructions such as Loglan does.

Fourteen short words serve most of the conjugate needs in Diinlang. These can be used in combination and for some uses may need to be combined with simple words like “only” or “even”.

The first conjunctions to learn are “en”, “or”, “enor” and “nor”

en means “and” and presents non-contrasting item(s) or idea(s): “Zez gamble en zez smoke.” Following Chinese practice this conjunction may be optional in a sentence if the meaning remains clear. “Kom” (with) is an acceptable alternative. While an English speaker would be inclined to say “Dean en Jon” in Deanlang some nationalities are more inclined to use the construction “Dean kom Jon”.

In the original draft “et” was the word for “and”. Despite its use in French and some other languages a “-t” ending did not seem right for this particular conjunction. Many languages use just “e” but this is not so elegant when “and” is combined into other words, so I have selected “en”, which is used in a number of languages and is phonetically intuitive to English speakers. This may mean the word “enje” for “any” will need changing.  

    or means the same as in English and presents an alternative item or idea: “Every day they gamble or they smoke.”

enor means “and/or” and presents options that may be either inclusive or exclusive. This was originally “etor”. Potentially we could have the word “komor” for “with/or”.

“You may have cake enor ice cream!”

nor presents a non-contrasting negative idea (“They do not gamble, nor do they smoke.”)

Del.

  Del has a role as a non-specific conjunction. If you are unsure of which conjunction to use, use “del”. Scots uses “o”  for  “of/ from” and this may be adopted in Diinlang instead, forming a nice counterpoint for the possessive marker “vo”.

dhen, but, yet, ergo, kos.

dhen is “then” and is a conjunction that is also a preposition. It is used like and/en when the items being described occur in a sequence. In English we say “They got married and had children” but it is more accurate to say “They got married then had children”.  “dhen” is likely to be changed.

but / yet are both used to presents a contrast or exception. While their use is similar it is not fully interchangeable in English and the distinctions will become apparent when using subordinating conjunctions.

    “They gamble, but they don't smoke.”

    “They gamble, yet they don't smoke.”

Whether it is worth keeping “yet” in Diinlang remains to be decided.

Ergo is “so” or “thus” in English and presents a consequence

“He gambled well last night ergo he smoked a cigar to celebrate.”

It may be more logical to keep the shorter and more versatile English word “so”.

Kos is used for the conjunctions “because” or “for” (freeing "for" for other applications) The use of kos compliments “ergo” since it presents a cause rather than a consequence.

    “We went inside because it rained.” = “Miz pre go intra kos it dunpotsu”.

    “It rained so we went inside” = “It dunpotsu ergo miz pre go intra

Update: “Kos” is unfortunately a homophone of “koz” (few). The word “per” may serve for many of the applications that we use “because” for in English. For some applications constructions such as “per ke”, “per li”, “per sa” may be needed instead. Possibly the most apt construction will be “per ifa”.

Kwah.

“kwah” is used like “than” in English and separates things being compared. Unlike “than” in English it can be used in a statement that things are equal or similar if the rest of the sentence is suitably constructed. “Dean bi taha kwah Jon”, “Ray bi iso kwah Jon” (Dean is much bigger than Jon, Ray is equal/same as Jon).

It may be better to use “as” in this application. Scots uses  “nor” for “than”, which I find logical and is my current preference.

If, as.

  If is mainly used with correlative and subordinate conjunctions and indicates a conditional statement.

“as” presents an explanation ("He is gambling with his health, as he has been smoking far too long.")  As can mean “the same way” or “at the same time”. It is may be used instead of “than”/”kwah” when the things discussed are even or equivalent or nearly so in some way. Possibly “as” can be used for “too/ also”.

“per” is used much the same as in English and can be used as “with respect to/wrt”. It may also mean “for each”, “to each”, “in each”, “in accordance with” or “via the”. Per also serves as a preposition.

 The fourteen basic conjunctions are therefore en, or, enor, nor, dhen, but, yet, ergo, kos, kwah, if, as, per, del.

 

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions are formed using combinations of the above words.

either...or                           (or)…or  The first “or” is optional.

not only...but (also)           but….but (?)

neither...nor                       nor…nor

both...and                          probably redundant! Diinlang has singular and plural, no dual.

whether...or                           if...or

if...or                                       if...or   

if...and                                    if...et

if…then                                  if…dhen

just as...so                               ergo…ergo / / if...ergo