Families of Verbs

I recently finished reading “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman. In the notes at the end Gaiman writes:
 

 “And then one day about three weeks ago it was done. And after that I spent a week cutting and trimming it. (I’d read Stephen King’s On Writing on the plane home from Ireland, where I’d gone to do final rewrites and reworkings, and was fired up enough by his war on adverbs that I did a search through the manuscript for ——-ly, and peered at each adverb suspiciously before letting it live or zapping it into oblivion. A lot of them survived. Still, according to the old proverb, God is better pleased with adverbs than with nouns. . .)”
 

A lot more words are adverbs than most people think! Only some of them end in “-ly”. Vetting the “-ly” adverbs you use in a manuscript is not that bad an idea, however. Vetting the passive voice sentences is another good idea.

King seems to particularly discourage the use of adverbs in dialogue attribution. ie, use “she said” rather than “she said, quietly”. However, English gives us many options to achieve the latter without using an adverb: “she whispered”, “she muttered”, “she mumbled”, “she gasped” etc.

At the same time “lookoo’s” wonderful stuff on deviant art got me looking into Cheyenne grammar. Cheyenne verbs have a pre-verbal that works as an adverbial suffix. This suggest that a language such as Diinlang may have potential of families of related verbs formed by compounding: quiet-say, vague-say, breathe-say; fast-walk, slow-walk, vague-walk (dawdle), rural-walk (hike), escape-run (flee), attack-run (charge).

This infers Diinlang might have two classes of adverb: those acting directly on a verb and those that affect other parts of speech.

Launching Diinlang 2.0

Version 2.4

Recently I created a shorthand system for a friend of mine. This, in turn, gave me some ideas that could be applied to Diinlang. These changes are of sufficient magnitude that they constitute a new version, Diinlang 2.0.

Some of the changes that have been made include:

Articles.

Articles (and other determiners) are how a common noun is identified. A verb or other non-noun is turned into a noun by giving it an article or determiner.

ve/ vez  is the definite article (“the” in English). Note that it has a singular and a plural form.  je/ jez is the indefinite article, equivalent to “some” in English. It also has singular and plural forms.

These can be shortened to “v” or “j” and “vz” or “jz” for the plurals.

un is an alternate singular indefinite article, equivalent to “1, one, a, or an” in English. It can be pronounced with a long “uu” sound like the French “une”, or short like “en” or “an”. Shortened form can be the numeral “1”, since “u” is already used for a pronoun. Un may also be used when an impersonal pronoun is required. It is the equivalent of the English use of “one” in context such as “One should always brush one's teeth”.

ve and je can be optionally gendered to indicate the gender of the noun. The forms are “veo, vea, jeo, jea”. Potentailly un might be “uno” or “una”. 

Plurals.

Nouns are made plural by changing their determiner, rather than infecting the noun. Many natural languages pluralize both the article and the noun, but this is redundant and can lead to ambiguity when there is an error. Using a number higher than “1” for a determiner makes the noun plural. Using a plural article (vez or jez) makes a noun plural.

Uncount/ mass nouns use the singular form of article.

Bi and Av.

The verb “bi” (to be) has the short form “b”, the verb “av” (to have) has the short form “h”. Verbs are named by combining their bare infinitive and past forms. Hence “to be” in Diinlang is called “bi/bite” and “to have” is “av/avte”.

Personal Pronouns.

The personal pronouns are now based upon “em”, “yu” and “ze”, with the short forms “m”, “u” and “z”. These are, respectively, the first, second and third person. The plural forms add “-z”. Optional objective marker is “-em” or “-m”. The gendered forms of “ze” remain “zo” and “za” and “it” remains third person impersonal. For the moment I intend to retain “mi” as an alternate to “em”, both using “m” as a shorthand. Mi and em are fully interchangeable. “Tu” will be retained as an alternative to “yu”, and this may be more comfortable to the speakers of certain languages. Note that there is no formal/informal distinction between tu and yu in Diinlang. They are fully interchangeable.

The plural pronouns are made by adding “-z” to the singular forms. All male or all female groupings can be emphasised with “zoz” or “zaz”. “Yu” only needs to be pluralized if it needs to be emphasised that more than one person is being addressed or referred to.

If needed, an “inclusive we” pronoun can be constructed as “ yu-em/ yu-emz”.

The objective nature of a pronoun can be emphasised by adding the ending “-m” or “-em” to give, for example “zem” or “zemz”.

Reflexive constructions (“myself”, “himself”) are made by repeating the related pronoun or by use of the pronoun “se/ sez”. Se is used in this manner in several languages. English speakers can remember this from their phrase “per se”.

Jon VERB himself = Jon VERB zo/ze or Jon VERB se.

“Su/ suz” is a relative pronoun used to join two clauses. This can be remembered from the English word “subject”. It is the equivalent of the English “who”, “what”, “which”, or “that” when used in a non-interrogative sense. For “whose” it combines with “vo” as “su vo”.

Comparative and Superlative.

Comparative and superlative change once again. “ar-” forms the comparative suffix, “us-” the superlative. These combine with “ta” and “ko” or other terms as “e-” and “o-” did. Hence, “arta, usta, arko, usko”. This will hopefully avoid confusion with terms like “email”, “econference” etc. As in English, “us-” has to be preceeded by the definite article to be a superlative. On its own “us-” it is a pronoun meaning “more/less than half”.

For the word “than” for comparison Diinlang can use “as, imi or di”. The construction “as…as” is used when two items are the same in some respect. Alternately the word “iyso” (same, equal) may be used. 

Yes and No.

In addition to “ya” and “no” for yes and no the alternates “yay” and “nay” will be permissible. Short forms for both forms of each are “y” and “n”. This should help add variety and euphony. When “no” is prefixed to a vowel it becomes “non-”.

More changes and new ideas to follow.

Fine Tuning The Verbs

This blog is about a few tweaks to Diinlang’s verb system, intended to make it simpler but more versatile.

The core of the verb system use the verb infinitive, modifying it with a preverbal as necessary. This system is used in many conlangs and creoles and can also be found in some non-creole natlangs.

“Gon” and “wen” indicate future and past tense. “Nou” (“now”) can be used to emphasise an action is in the present. Preverbals to distinguish something is just about to happen or has just happened in the recent past may be useful. The past preverbal may be changed to “te”, which is used in many French-based creoles. This has some symmetry with using “-t” to create single word past forms of verbs.

“Dun” is used to create a clause with a completed or “perfect” aspect. This can be combined with tense preverbals for a past perfect or future perfect clause. Tense preverbals are placed before those of aspects.

“Ge” is used to make a clause in a passive voice. This can also be combined with tense preverbals. In the past I have treated “ge” as a prefix placed on the verb infinitive. Changes to the verbal system make this a preverbal.

“Zou” is used for subjunctive and/or conditional clauses.

Another preverbal will be used to form clauses of habitual actions.

An example of a basic clause would be:

PRO PVB(s) INF.

In a previous post I suggested that it would be useful to be able to create an alternate form of past that was a single word. This is achieved by adding “-t” to the verb infinitive. With this system in place it is no longer necessary for there to be a separate one word form for the perfect aspect. English regular verbs use the same word for both the simple past and the perfect form. This is achieved by using the verb “to have” as an auxiliary verb.

Simple Past: PRO PASTFORM

Perfect: PRO have/had/has PASTFORM

The tense of the perfect form is indicated by the tense of the auxiliary verb. Perfect construction in Diinlang can also be formed using “av” (“to have”) as an auxiliary. A preverbal is used to tense the auxiliary if necessary. Some languages form a perfect construction by using a “to have” verb with the infinitive of the main verb. This can also be done in Diinlang. It is the presence of the preverbal “dun” or “av” as an auxiliary that determines if a clause is perfect aspect. Thus, there are four ways to form a perfect aspect in Diinlang

PRO dun INF

PRO av INF

PRO dun PASTFORM

PRO av PASTFORM

A passive voice in Diinlang can also be formed by using “ge” with the PASTFORM. Using the PASTFORM with the verb “bi” (“to be”) used as an auxiliary also forms a passive construction. Logically, PRO wen bi INF is also passive.  The present tense construction “PRO bi INF”, however, is ambiguous and should be avoided. Since the main verb lacks the continuous/progressive prefix such a construction should probably be regarded as passive.

This brings us to the continuous/progressive form of the verb. Most dynamic verbs in English use their PROG/CONT form more often than their simple present. It can be argued that many such verbs are inherently progressive (in present tense) and that the verb does not therefore need marking. In Diinlang the PROG/CONT form is marked by a prefix. This is currently “is-“ but this may be changed. Many French creoles used “ap” or “ape” before the verb. Others use “pe”, “ke” of “ki”. The use of a prefix allows the “-t” suffix to be used to make a past PROG/CONT construction. In English a continuous/progressive construction is accompanied by “to be” as an auxiliary. In Diinlang this is optional, the presence of the prefix being adequate. PRO bi is-INF has the same meaning as PRO is-INF.

This leaves us with non-verb uses of verb forms. When a verb is used as an adjective, adverb or a noun a single word form is used. Active adjectives are made with the PROG/CONT form, passive adjectives made with the PASTFORM. Nouns are made from the INF, PROG/CONT or PASTFORM.

More on Progessive and Perfect.

I will admit that I was not totally happy with the system of using suffixes for the progressive and perfect forms of verbs. Since the prefix “ge-” is used for passive forms of the verb it seems logical to resume the system of using prefixes for progressive and perfect too.

What was not made clear in previous posts was that progressive and perfect constructions can also be made using auxiliary verbs, as in English and many other languages.

For progressive/ continuous constrictions the auxiliary “bi” (to be) can be used, although I see no reason why “du” (to do) might not be used too. For perfect constructions the auxiliary verb “av” (to have) is used. A case may be made for also having a dedicated perfect marker such as “dun” or “did” too. This would avoid inelegant “have had” or “had had” constructions.

The prefixes are “is-” for progressive/ continuous and “va-” for perfect, although this latter may change if there is a better suggestion. “ge-” is used for passive constructions. The prefixes are more useful for use as gerunds or adjectives. I suspect most adjectives will use “is-” and “ge-” rather than “va-” but there may be exceptions. Auxiliaries and prefixes may be used together, which is likely with constructions that combine the perfect and progressive. For example, “past progressive perfect” would be “wen av is-VERB” or “wen dun is-VERB”.

Latin into Diinlang.

There have been a number of attempts to create an auxlang based on or derived from Latin. International Scientific Vocabulary (ISV) uses many Latin words. The Romance languages have a considerable lexicon of words evolved from Latin. Many non-Romance languages have assimilated Romance or Latin words.

In a previous post I fielded some embryonic ideas of conventions for deriving Diinlang words from Mandarin. Protocols for creating Diinlang words from Latin can probably be more definite.

Several times on this blog I have referred to Novial, which is derived from Latin. Rather than using Novial I am going to start with another Latin-derived auxlang, “Latino Sine Flexione” (LFS), developed by Guiseppe Peano.  

Peano selected his noun forms from the ablative case of Latin words, using the genitive form as a guide.

• First declension (-a stem) nouns took an “-a” ending.
• Second declension (-o and -r stem) nouns took an “-o” ending.
• Third declension (-i and consonant stem) nouns took an “-e” ending.
• Forth declension (-u stem) nouns took an “-u” ending.
• Fifth declension (-e stem) nouns took an “-e” ending.

Obviously both third and fifth declension nouns produce words with “-e” endings. This is only a problem if homophones are created. If this is a problem for Diinlang then fifth declension derived nouns can be given an “-em” ending, derived from the accusative form. The majority of first declension nouns in Latin are feminine so the above system will give us many Diinlang words ending in “-a” that have genuine female context. For example, “filia” for daughter. The majority of second declension words are masculine or neuter, so we get many “-o” ending words with a male context. For example, “filio” for son. Some fine tuning will be needed. The nouns for “farmer” and “sailor” are first declension in Latin and end in “-a”. The Diinlang words will be more obviously neuter and probably agent nouns. The word for “dog” may be more recognizable as “kanis” rather than “cane”. Some words will need to be changed to suit  Diinlang phonetics.

Peano converted verbs into LFS by taking the infinitive (present?) form in Latin and dropping the “-re” from the end. This generally gives a verb that ends in a vowel.

This article suggests an inflection-free Latin based on infinitive verbs and accusative nouns. An interesting idea, but the objective here is to create Diinlang words that may be comprehendible to users familiar with some Latin.

Peano’s system for converting adjectives was:

• Adjectives with a neuter nominative form ending in “-e” used that form in LFS.
• Adjectives with a neuter nominative form ending in “-um” replaced the “-um” with “-o”.
• All other adjectives used their ablative case, based on the genitive form, as for nouns (above).

I am less certain about using Peano’s system for converting adjectives. Many conlangs attempt to mark nouns, verbs and modifiers, usually using different endings. In some natural languages, such as English, the same word form can serve as a noun, verb, modifier or other part of speech. The word is not distinguished by its ending, but by its context and position relative to other words. A verb becomes a noun simply by adding a determiner or article. A noun becomes a verb by using it as one. Many adjectives and adverbs are simply nouns used for description. This is the system that I would prefer for Diinlang. This would work well with the system of using determiners to mark the plurality of nouns.

The above system gives use “matre” for “mother”, but obviously, this is a feminine word, so Diinlang will use “matra”.

• De matra = the mother
• Dez matra = the mothers
• Tri matra = three mothers
• Za matra zo = she mothers him
• De ave matra = the mother bird

Peano’s system does not create nouns with “-i” endings. The majority of the verbs created will not end in “-i” either. This suggests that many Diinlang adjectives and adverbs can be created from these nouns and verbs using the suffixes suggested here. Hence:

• matrahili (matrahli) = motherly (adverb)
• matrahing/ matrahin = mothering
• matrahi = mother-ry

Some details will need further work, but this looks like a sound foundation.

 

 

Comparatives and Superlatives Part Six

I am making a few changes to the comparative and superlative system that I hope will make it more flexible and user friendly.

The system is now based around four words, these being:

“Ta”, meaning “big, large, much, etc”.

“Ko”, meaning “small, little, not much”.

“Plu” meaning “much”.

“Min” meaning “not much, little”

Obviously there is some overlap in meaning here, and in many cases either of the two possible words can be used. They may also be used in combination. “Ta” and “ko” have been used in Diinlang for some time now and are used to form several other terms. When used as suffixes they serve as augmentatives and diminutives. “Plu” and “min” are used in a number of other conlangs.

To form a comparative the words are prefixed with “e-” to give “eta” and “eplu” meaning “bigger, more” and “eko” and “emin” for “littler, less/ lesser”. These can be used as standalone words or compounded on to the front of another word with a hyphen. Thus, “eta-green” is “greener/ more green”.

To form a superlative “o-” is used to create the meaning “most, biggest” or “least, smallest, littlest”.

Ta, ko, plu and min are used for uncountables, abstracts and other qualities. For quantities plural forms of the above words are used. “Taz” and “Pluz” mean “large number, many” and “koz” and “minz” mean “small number, few”. “e-” and “o-” form the corresponding comparatives and superlatives as already described.

In many languages the same word is used for “more” and “most”, the latter being distinguished by placing a definite article before it. We see a semblance of this in English. “Most people…” means a majority of people, not the maximal possible number. The actual superlative is “the most people…” Diinlang will use the same system as in English.

As in English, Diinlang words for “more” may be used to mean “extra” or “additional”, “an extra number of”, or “an additional quantity of”.

If an absolute superlative is needed the word for “very” can be utilized.

“The very most XXX” = “De reta oplu/ota XXX”.

When comparing two or more items we have a number of options in Diinlang that serve the function of “than”. These include “da” (of), “no”(nor) and “as”.

When things are equal we can use the word “iyso” (“equal”, “same”) instead of the comparative. We can also use the construction “as…as…”.

As alternate comparatives and superlatives the words “major”, “minor”, “maxima” and “minima” can be used. Lancelot Hogben in Interglossa’ 1943 notes that these words are in wide international use in mathematics and the physical sciences. Interstingly, Interglossa used “plu” but unlike many conlangs used it to mark plurality.

Possession in Diinlang

Following the latest changes to Diinlang I will cover how possession is dealt with. There are several ways to do this in Diinlang.

The first way is to use an “X of Y” construction as is used in most Romance languages. In Diinlang “the book of Jon” would be “de buuk da Jon” and “the books of Jon” is “dez buuk da Jon”.

As in English, the possessor can be placed before the possession. In English this uses the apostrophe that so mystifies so many users. In Diinlang the system is simpler and uses the connecting word “vo”. “Jon’s book” is “Jon vo buuk”. To say “Jon’s books” “vo” can be pluralized to make “Jon voz buuk”. The same mechanisms are used with pronouns, which do not change other than being placed with “da” or “vo”. “De buuk da mi”, “mi vo buuk” are “The book of mine”, “My book” and so on.

“vo” effectively marks as noun or pronoun as being the possessor of the thing discussed. Therefore “buuk Jon vo”, “buuk mi vo” and “dez buuk Jon vo” are viable constructions.

Note that the use of “vo” is effectively optional. It can be omitted when the meaning is clear. Looked at another way, it is applied when clarity is needed. Such a construction is most likely to be used with a pronoun or proper noun. With normal nouns the meaning may be less clear. Thus, “Jon’s book” can be simply “Jon buuk”.

The third mechanism is to use the possessor as an adjective for the noun of interest. “The Jon book” = “de Jon buuk” or “de buuk Jon”. This can also be done with a pronoun: “de mi buuk” or “de buuk mi”. This system is most useful when the possessor is designated with a pronoun or proper noun. With other nouns the meaning may become unclear and one of the other schemes should be used.