Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

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imperialismus
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Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by imperialismus »

Aka scratchpad thread for my a priori conlang, Ayuma. This conlang is fairly well-developed already, and I'll use this thread to present stuff that I'm unsure about and which are subject to change. The current work-in-progress grammar can be found here. Since that document is fairly extensive, I can't be bothered to rehash all of it in this thread. The first few chapters are far from done but still fairly complete; the following chapters, not so much. Notably missing is anything to do with syntax.

My main source of inspiration for this language was North Sámi, particularly its phonology and morphophonology. That's where I cribbed the preaspirated consonants from. (Before you ask: yes, /ʰʰp ʰʰt ʰʰk/ are a real thing.) The consonant gradation is actually fairly straightforward compared to North Sámi. In Sámi, there are three consonant grades, but any particular word only ever takes two of them; which combo (e.g. 1+3, 2+3) a word takes is lexically determined. In Ayuma, there are three consonant grades and each lexeme takes the same grade in each particular inflection/declension.

Today's topic of interest: Dependent Clauses

Ayuma is a topic-prominent language. The general gist of topicalization is that

1. The topic is always definite.
2. Only subjects and direct objects may be topicalized. Indirect objects may be raised to the status of direct object and subsequently topicalized.
3. The topic tends to be a constant which figures in several consecutive sentences; to topicalize a newly introduced referent (given that it does not immediately appear in a subsequent sentence) is a marked construction which confers focus. Otherwise, topicalization is not a marked construction.
4. The "topic form" of a noun sometimes functions in a case-like manner, with select verbs.

I'm currently thinking about how dependent clauses work. I want to do away with nonfinite verbs as much as possible and replace such constructions with nominalized phrases, but I'm afraid sometimes the results get a bit too verbose for my liking.

So, relative clauses are simply nominalized verb phrases whose referent is identical to its topic. They are formed with the clitic =tehht/dehht. Examples:

Code: Select all

(1)
pidin			tibahi		tahpas-wa	dihas-ya=tehht
woman.TOP	eat.IMPF	red-GEN.SG	meat-ACC.SG=NMNZ
"a/the woman who eats red meat"

(2)
a				do-ht			utumo	pihhti-n		tibahi-mme=tehht-en?
3INTR.TOP	be.IMPF-Q	place.TOP	woman-NOM.SG	eat.IMPF-LOC=NMNZ-NOM.SG
"where does the woman eat?" more lit. "the place where the woman eats, where is it?"
In (1) we see a regular relative clause out of context. In (2), we see a locative which is raised to DO and topicalized, and the nominalized relative clause takes case marking. While slightly more verbose than the English, I don't mind. I don't think an Ayuma text in general will be longer than English. Things even out, and having an especially terse language wasn't ever a design goal.

Subordinate clauses are also serviced by nominalized VPs, using the clitic =teht/deht. I'm a little unsure of how this should work. I know that some languages do use nominalized clauses where SAE langs tend to use infinitive constructions, but it's very foreign to me, and I'm not sure if I'm getting it right. Things like "Aya likes eating red meat" become the mouthful "qide tibahi tahpaswa dihasyateht Ayas munun", which translates literally to "Aya likes that she eats red meat", but then in order to distinguish between "likes to eat red meat (she does so habitually)" from "likes to eat red meat (a cherished activity, but she doesn't actually get to do it)" I have to add in the irrealis mood marker, which makes the whole thing even longer...

With the aim of shortening some use cases, I'm considering adding in a few words which expect a nominalized VP as a direct object, where case marking of the nominalized VP is absent. For instance, the verb noana "believe":

Code: Select all

(3a)
nis		noanna	Amelika	dos	sihti=teht
1DAT.SG	believe.PF	America	be.PF	great=NMNZ

(3b)
nis		noanna	Amelika	dos	sihti=teht-ya
1DAT.SG	believe.PF	America	be.PF	great=NMNZ-ACC

"I believed that America was great"
That is, (3a) instead of (3b). I'm also thinking of having the clitic disappear in all except the rightmost instance in embedded clauses, much like English "that" can disappear in sentences like "I know (that) you know (that) I know." Compare:

Code: Select all

(4a)
nis		bizea		deanas	bizea			nis		bizea=teht
1DAT.SG	know.IMPF	2DAT.SG	know.IMPF	1DAT.SG	know.IMPF=NMNZ

(4b)
nis		bizea		[deanas	bizea			[nis	bizea]=teht]=deht
1DAT.SG	know.IMPF	2DAT.SG	know.IMPF	1DAT.SG	know.IMPF=NMNZ=NMNZ
"I know (that) you know (that) I know"
The clitic doubling in (4b) looks ugly and although natural language isn't foreign to redundancy and noise, I feel like (4a) is much more natural.
Last edited by imperialismus on 04 Feb 2017 14:56, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by Creyeditor »

Yeeah, I conlang description not starting with the phoneme inventory [:)]
I'll have a look at your pdf some time.
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by Frislander »

First comments before I get going: love the feel of the language.
imperialismus wrote:My main source of inspiration for this language was North Sámi, particularly its phonology and morphophonology. That's where I cribbed the preaspirated consonants from. (Before you ask: yes, /ʰʰp ʰʰt ʰʰk/ are a real thing.) The consonant gradation is actually fairly straightforward compared to North Sámi. In Sámi, there are three consonant grades, but any particular word only ever takes two of them; which combo (e.g. 1+3, 2+3) a word takes is lexically determined. In Ayuma, there are three consonant grades and each lexeme takes the same grade in each particular inflection/declension.
Interesting: I don't know that much about Saami, but permitting only certain combinations of consonant grades has piqued my interest.

Now let's look at your topicalisation rules.
1. The topic is always definite.
Standard, and almost a given, really.
2. Only subjects and direct objects may be topicalized. Indirect objects may be raised to the status of direct object and subsequently topicalized.
So you can't topicalise locations? Instruments? Nouns with no other grammatical role in the sentence other than "this is the subject of discussion" (e.g. "As for London, the traffic was awful")?
3. The topic tends to be a constant which figures in several consecutive sentences; to topicalize a newly introduced referent (given that it does not immediately appear in a subsequent sentence) is a marked construction which confers focus. Otherwise, topicalization is not a marked construction.
So if focus-fronting is a marked construction, does it receive special intonation as well? (This is how I've seen it work in other languages)
4. The "topic form" of a noun sometimes functions in a case-like manner, with select verbs.
It's quite common for the topic marker to replace case markers in my experience (e.g. Japanese and Quechuan).
I'm currently thinking about how dependent clauses work. I want to do away with nonfinite verbs as much as possible and replace such constructions with nominalized phrases, but I'm afraid sometimes the results get a bit too verbose for my liking.

So, relative clauses are simply nominalized verb phrases whose referent is identical to its topic. They are formed with the clitic =tehht/dehht. Examples:

Code: Select all

(1)
pidin			tibahi		tahpas-wa	dihas-ya=tehht
woman.TOP	eat.IMPF	red-GEN.SG	meat-ACC.SG=NMNZ
"a/the woman who eats red meat"

(2)
a				do-ht			utumo	pihhti-n		tibahi-mme=tehht-en?
3INTR.TOP	be.IMPF-Q	place.TOP	woman-NOM.SG	eat.IMPF-LOC=NMNZ-NOM.SG
"where does the woman eat?" more lit. "the place where the woman eats, where is it?"
In (1) we see a regular relative clause out of context. In (2), we see a locative which is raised to DO and topicalized, and the nominalized relative clause takes case marking. While slightly more verbose than the English, I don't mind. I don't think an Ayuma text in general will be longer than English. Things even out, and having an especially terse language wasn't ever a design goal.
Many languages take longer to describe things than English, especially if the concepts are more technical: see Omniglot's translations of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, particularly the North and South American pages, and probably also the sets from Uralic and Yukaghir which are more along the lines of what you're going for here aesthetically, I think.
Subordinate clauses are also serviced by nominalized VPs, using the clitic =teht/deht. I'm a little unsure of how this should work. I know that some languages do use nominalized clauses where SAE langs tend to use infinitive constructions, but it's very foreign to me, and I'm not sure if I'm getting it right. Things like "Aya likes eating red meat" become the mouthful "qide tibahi tahpaswa dihasyateht Ayas munun", which translates literally to "Aya likes that she eats red meat", but then in order to distinguish between "likes to eat red meat (she does so habitually)" from "likes to eat red meat (a cherished activity, but she doesn't actually get to do it)" I have to add in the irrealis mood marker, which makes the whole thing even longer...
Actually "Aya likes eating read meat" is already a kind of nominalised construction in English (whether this use of the present participle counts as nominalisation is arguable, I think). The English equivalent to the Indo-European infinitive would be "Aya likes to eat red meat".

I'm sure your strategy is perfectly OK, but could we have a glossed example here please just to check? And adding the irrealis marker for unrealised desires with this strategy seems perfectly natural to me.
With the aim of shortening some use cases, I'm considering adding in a few words which expect a nominalized VP as a direct object, where case marking of the nominalized VP is absent. For instance, the verb noana "believe":

Code: Select all

(3a)
nis		noanna	Amelika	dos	sihti=teht
1DAT.SG	believe.PF	America	be.PF	great=NMNZ

(3b)
nis		noanna	Amelika	dos	sihti=teht-ya
1DAT.SG	believe.PF	America	be.PF	great=NMNZ-ACC

"I believed that America was great"
That is, (3a) instead of (3b). I'm also thinking of having the clitic disappear in all except the rightmost instance in embedded clauses, much like English "that" can disappear in sentences like "I know (that) you know (that) I know." Compare:

Code: Select all

(4a)
nis		bizea		deanas	bizea			nis		bizea=teht
1DAT.SG	know.IMPF	2DAT.SG	know.IMPF	1DAT.SG	know.IMPF=NMNZ

(4b)
nis		bizea		[deanas	bizea			[nis	bizea]=teht]=deht
1DAT.SG	know.IMPF	2DAT.SG	know.IMPF	1DAT.SG	know.IMPF=NMNZ=NMNZ
"I know (that) you know (that) I know"
The clitic doubling in (4b) looks ugly and although natural language isn't foreign to redundancy and noise, I feel like (4a) is much more natural.
Actually I would find it to be highly natural for a language to have special contracted forms in these sorts of circumstances, especially with complementising verbs like "believe" and "know". Would the longer form be available for more formal.high-register speech?
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by imperialismus »

Frislander wrote:
2. Only subjects and direct objects may be topicalized. Indirect objects may be raised to the status of direct object and subsequently topicalized.
So you can't topicalise locations? Instruments? Nouns with no other grammatical role in the sentence other than "this is the subject of discussion" (e.g. "As for London, the traffic was awful")?
You can, and I should have mentioned that. Example (2) above demonstrates this, although it's needlessly complex to illustrate just that, so here's the pertinent part:

Code: Select all

utumo   pihhti-n      tibahi-mme
place.TOP   woman-NOM.SG   eat.IMPF-LOC
This just needs "in a place, the woman eats", which is kind of a tautological sentence, but in context it was part of a question ("where does the woman eat?"). Questions are formed by attaching a question suffix to the verb and replacing whichever part of the sentence is being asked about with an interrogative pronoun (if none is present, it's a polar question). It's the Jeopardy! principle: It is the place where the woman eats-question mark = where does the woman eat. (No wh-movement.)
So if focus-fronting is a marked construction, does it receive special intonation as well? (This is how I've seen it work in other languages)
Yeah, the plan is that a topic in focus, in addition to pragmatic constraints, receives rising or high pitch relative to the sentence.
Actually "Aya likes eating read meat" is already a kind of nominalised construction in English (whether this use of the present participle counts as nominalisation is arguable, I think). The English equivalent to the Indo-European infinitive would be "Aya likes to eat red meat".
I guess that's a better example. But the point was to do away with nonfinite verbs. There are deverbal nouns in Ayuma, which are simply identical to the verb stem treated as a noun, and they may modify verbs (in the instrumental case); but this is just a general case of adjectives and adverbs being lexicalized as nouns. In "likes to eat red meat" the verb takes an object, but this isn't possible in Ayuma, even though a deverbal noun may look like a participle. E.g. you can say "he came in singing" but you can't say "he came in singing a song" without rephrasing.
I'm sure your strategy is perfectly OK, but could we have a glossed example here please just to check? And adding the irrealis marker for unrealised desires with this strategy seems perfectly natural to me.
Sure.

Code: Select all

(5a)
qide         tibahi	tahpas-wa dihas-ya=teht       Aya-s  munun
3NOM.SG  eat.IMPF   red-GEN.SG meat-ACC.SG=NMNZ Aya-DAT.SG like.IMPF
"Aya likes to eat red meat (she does it all the time)"

(5b)
qide         tibahi-yon	tahpas-wa dihas-ya=teht       Aya-s  munun
3NOM.SG  eat.IMPF-IRR   red-GEN.SG meat-ACC.SG=NMNZ Aya-DAT.SG like.IMPF
"Aya likes to eat red meat (but she doesn't, for whatever reason)"
Actually I would find it to be highly natural for a language to have special contracted forms in these sorts of circumstances, especially with complementising verbs like "believe" and "know". Would the longer form be available for more formal.high-register speech?
That's an idea. I'll to think about that.
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by imperialismus »

Note how nominalized relative clauses can be used to form agent nominals:

Code: Select all

qide	geana=teht-en		zonos
3TOP	dare.IMPF=NMNZ-NOM	win.IMPF
"he who dares, wins"

qide	geana=teht-na
3TOP	dare.IMPF=NMNZ-NOM.SG
"bold, daring ones"
The 3 Verb Classes and the Case System
So, in this post I'm going to take a step back and talk a bit about morphosyntax. Ayuma has a rather unique take on it, although I think it's naturalistic.

First off, there are two genders, animate and inanimate. The semantic distinction between the two has long since eroded, to be point where the animate nouns are equal to those nouns which end in a vowel or nasal, while consonantal stems are inanimate whether they refer to people or objects.

There are three open classes of verbs as well as a closed class of special verbs such as copulae. The first class, the active verbs, work similarly to a nominative-accusative system. The subject takes the nominative case, and the object takes the accusative. The exception is that inanimate nouns may not take the nominative, and must instead take the ablative case. (The ablative's main role is to act as the source, either of a subject or an object, moving through physical or metaphorical space, usually but not always towards a destination, which is marked with the dative-allative.) The ablative role may be promoted to nominative with the voice marker -wu. This exists mainly so that inanimate nouns may be topicalized.

This is demonstrated below with a series of sentences using the inanimate noun notid "window" and the verb niva "break".

Code: Select all

(6A)
notiht-i	nivv-a
window.ABL.SG	break-PF
"The window broke."

(6B)
notid		nivv-a-wu
window.TOP	break-PF-ABL
"The window broke."

(6C)
notihht-a	nivv-a-wu
window.NOM.SG	break-PF-ABL
"The window broke."

(6D)
notid			nivv-a-wu	am	ahasa-tina	dumela-ya=cho
window.TOP	break-PF-ABL	OBL	little-GEN.PL	rascal-ACC.SG=DET
"The window was broken by those little rascals."

(6E)
ni		nivv-a	 notid-ya
1NOM.SG	break-PF window-ACC.SG
"I broke the window."
Note that (6A) is a natural antipassive. And in fact this is possible with animate nouns too:

Code: Select all

(7)
ini		nivv-a
1ABL.SG	break-PF
"I broke down, I was broken"
In (6B), the window is topicalized. (6C) is a grammatically possible but unlikely construction, being equivalent to a long-winded take on (6A) and generally considered poor prose. (6C) takes an oblique argument, a semantic agent. (6D) is a transitive nom-acc sentence.

The second class of verbs are the passive works. They function similar to active-stative languages. By default they take a dative subject (the destination of some causal process). Passive verbs include verbs for sensing, feeling, thinking and other mental states. Some may also take nominative subjects, with a more active meaning.

Code: Select all

(8A)
nis		mocit-a	bihat-ya
1DAT.SG	see-PF	bird-ACC.SG
"I see a bird."

(8B)
ni		mocit-a	bihat-ya
1NOM.SG	see-PF	bird-ACC.SG
"I look at a bird."
The first and second classes only include intransitive and transitive verbs. The third open class, the verbs of motion, also include transitive verbs. The verbs of motion take an ablative or nominative subject and a dative object, sometimes an accusative object as well. They include verbs of physical motion and verbs relating to transmission, transference, and transactions.

Code: Select all

(9)
ni		ceahht-a	ninnanis-as
1NOM.SG	go-PF		store-DAT.SG
"I went to the store."

(10)
Sayahht-in		hogg-a	duhtun-ti	mosni		zhidwin-es
Sayadi-NOM.SG	jump-PF	diving-GEN.SG	board.ABL.SG	pool-DAT.SG
"Sayadi jumped from the diving board into the pool."
I'm gonna borrow a term from Mark Pearson and call the set of case roles which a verb demands its case frame, denoted in brackets like <NOM, DAT> or <ABL, ACC, DAT>. Case frames are lexically determined and quite important, because Ayuma has many verbs (maybe the majority of verbs) which take multiple case frames, with subtle or significant differences in meaning. This also means that Ayuma has a smaller number of verb roots than a language like English, where nearly every verb follows the same nom-acc paradigm.

Verbs of motion also include the subclass verbs of exchange. The prototypical verb of exchange is mugad "give, take". When it takes the case frame <ABL, ACC, DAT> it means "give":

Code: Select all

(11)
ini		muhhkad-a	min-ya		Aya-s
1ABL.SG	give-PF		gift-ACC.SG	Aya-DAT.SG
"I gave Aya a gift."
When it takes the case frame <NOM, ACC, ABL> it means "take":

Code: Select all

(12)
ni		muhhkada	sosid-ya	Agga-ni
1NOM.SG	take-PF		key-ACC.SG	Aya-ABL.SG
"I took the keys from Aya."
Verbs relating to transactions are also verbs of exchange. Here is an example where the "topic form" of the noun, usually used solely for topicalizing a subject or direct object, behaves in a case-like manner:

Code: Select all

(13)
ninnan-ni		cidnea		boamuc-an	nis
merchant-ABL.SG	sell.IMPF	fish-ACC.PL	1DAT.SG
"The merchant sells me fish."

(14)
ni		cidnea-on	boammuc-os	ninnan-ni
1TOP	buy.IMPF-DAT	fish-DAT.PL	merchant-ABL.SG
"I buy fish from a merchant."

(15)
ni		cihhtnea	boamuc-an	ninnan-ni
1NOM.SG	steal-PF	fish-ACC.PL	merchant-ABL.SG
"I stole fish from a merchant."
Note that the semantic role of the nominative is more forceful and volitional than the ablative. This leads to the sense of "take" when applied to the verb mugad and to the idiosyncratic sense of "steal" when applied to cihhtnea.

I haven't talked at all about the instrumental case, which is relatively straightforward. It is used for instrumental and comitative senses, as well as the special case of predicate nominals where it indicates temporary states (similar to Russian). The genitive case is sprinkled throughout the examples in this thread. Its use cases extend to general cases of nouns modifying nouns, including noun-noun compounds, possession, and attribution (adjectives are lexicalized as nouns which modify their head word). It's also used in locative constructions, such as:

Code: Select all

(16A)
am		musni-ti	sos-ya
on	building-GEN.SG	top-ACC.SG
"on top of a building"

(16B)
ni		dihht-i	muna-ya		minnid-wa	sos-as
1NOM.SG	put-PF	coin-ACC.SG	table-GEN.SG	top-DAT.SG
"I put a coin down on the table."
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by cedh »

imperialismus wrote:I'm gonna borrow a term from Mark Pearson and call the set of case roles which a verb demands its case frame, denoted in brackets like <NOM, DAT> or <ABL, ACC, DAT>. Case frames are lexically determined and quite important, because Ayuma has many verbs (maybe the majority of verbs) which take multiple case frames, with subtle or significant differences in meaning. This also means that Ayuma has a smaller number of verb roots than a language like English, where nearly every verb follows the same nom-acc paradigm.

Verbs of motion also include the subclass verbs of exchange. The prototypical verb of exchange is mugad "give, take". When it takes the case frame <ABL, ACC, DAT> it means "give". [...] When it takes the case frame <NOM, ACC, ABL> it means "take".
[+1]

(Reading this made me realize that I have so far tended to completely overlook the potential of case as a grammatical tool in conlangs...)
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by Frislander »

The cases and their usage are nice. I can see the influence from Okuna, but it's clearly not a carbon copy, like how the functions of Okuna's three core cases (ergative, nominative and dative) are split between four in this language (ablative, nominative, accusative and dative). I feel this is actually more naturalistic, though Okuna already feels like a natlang to me.
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by Creyeditor »

I actually have a question about your pdf. I found the following statements.
  • Simple vowels are monomoraic.
  • Syllables can maximally bear three moras.
  • Diphthongs are bimoraic.
  • Geminates (and simple preaspirates) are bimoraic.
  • Overlong aspirates are trimoraic.
  • A combinaion of diphthongs and geminates is trimoraic (I thought that you may call this mora sharing).
Now the question: Can overlong aspirates occur with diphthongs? Is there mora sharing if they occur with simple vowels?
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by imperialismus »

Creyeditor wrote:I actually have a question about your pdf. I found the following statements.
  • Simple vowels are monomoraic.
  • Syllables can maximally bear three moras.
  • Diphthongs are bimoraic.
  • Geminates (and simple preaspirates) are bimoraic.
  • Overlong aspirates are trimoraic.
  • A combinaion of diphthongs and geminates is trimoraic (I thought that you may call this mora sharing).
Now the question: Can overlong aspirates occur with diphthongs? Is there mora sharing if they occur with simple vowels?
Diphthongs are shortened to monophthongs if they occur before overlong preaspirates (monophthongs are also shortened to ultrashort). These syllables are both trimoraic: kehht, keinn. So I suppose yes.

Here is the paper on North Sámi phonology which inspired Ayuma's phonology. Apparently North Sámi has a surface distinction between long and short diphthongs (this distinction is not apparently phonemic), such that only short diphthongs occur before overlong preaspirates. But that just gets too weird for me; I chose to go for the simpler solution of having diphthongs reduce to monophthongs before overlong preaspirates. That system, implausibly, allows short diphthongs but not long vowels before the overlong consonants, so I guess a long vowel is longer in duration than a short diphthong. Ayuma doesn't have phonemic vowel length. But that paper really is an absolute goldmine for the conlanger; other than the weirdness to do with duration/morae, there's nothing overtly "exotic" or especially unusual about North Sámi's phonology, but it's still completely unique as far as I'm aware. Goes to show you don't need to have eighty clicks to have an unusual phonology.
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Re: Topics in Ayuma Linguistics

Post by Omzinesý »

imperialismus wrote:. In Sámi, there are three consonant grades, but any particular word only ever takes two of them; which combo (e.g. 1+3, 2+3) a word takes is lexically determined.
If I remember right, verbs have some imperative form with the strongest grade though indicatives played with the two weaker grades.
imperialismus wrote: Ayuma is a topic-prominent language. The general gist of topicalization is that
[..l]
2. Only subjects and direct objects may be topicalized. Indirect objects may be raised to the status of direct object and subsequently topicalized.
What do subject and object mean in your language?
Are they semantic terms? A+S vs. O ?
Or do they also have something to do with information structure?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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