HyPry (Ngäliv Ëra) scratchpad

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HyPry (Ngäliv Ëra) scratchpad

Post by kiwikami »

Ngäliv Ëra [ŋælib͡β eɾɑ] / HyPry v3
Now with a functional orthography!

This is so I stop clogging up the What Did You Accomplish Today thread. Things are likely to change drastically as time goes on in a general forwards direction; I would greatly appreciate feedback, as I'm a little out of practice in conlanging (Undercommon aside). This is half a place to introduce the existing grammar, half a place to provide updates of new additions/changes/whatever-I-happen-to-be-working-on-that-day, so do forgive me if I end up rambling on about second-order causatives and particle physics terminology before getting around to describing how nouns work.

A brief note on HyPry version 3, and why it's version 3:
Spoiler:
 The original HyPry (Prydonian High Gallifreyan) was an early conlang of mine, and as with so many early attempts, it was the very picture of a kitchen sink. I've tried to revisit it before (the short-lived v2), but it's always ended up devolving into a mess of cases and overly-complex verb conjugations, built as it was by a young conlangerling who had only just discovered the joys of affixational morphology. This isn't a redo so much as a spiritual successor.
 It should be noted that HyPry does have an associated conworld (sort of), with a developed (and contradicting) history; it is not mine, but rather one built by about fifty-odd years' worth of writers, notably including Marc Platt, who introduced certain cultural notes and tidbits that will probably come up now and again (such as the significance of looms). This conlang began as a fan work; it has since grown to stand on its own, but if for some reason you'd like to read a (ridiculously comprehensive) description of the world in question, I'd direct you here.

Phoneme Inventory:
 p pʰ pˣ t tʰ tˣ k kʰ kˣ k͡p k͡pʰ k͡pˣ ʔ <b p ph d t th g k kh gp kp kph h>
 tʷ tʷʰ tʷˣ kʷ kʷʰ kʷˣ <dw tw thw gw kw khw>
 m n nʷ ŋ ŋʷ ŋ͡m <m n nw ng ngw nm>
 p͡ɸ t͡s t͡sʷ t͡ɬ t͡ɬʷ <v z zw tl tlw>
 ʍ r̥ r̥ʷ l̥ l̥ʷ j̊ j̊ʷ <w r rw l lw y yw>

 i u e ø ɜ o æ ɑ <i u ë ö e o ä a>

 The alveolars <d t th dw tw thw> are written <s s sh sw sw shw> when lenited, as described below.
 The labialized alveolar affricates /t͡sʷ t͡ɬʷ/ are realized as [t͡ʃʷ, t͡ɭ̝̊ʷ].
 The full range of phoneme distinctions is found only word-initially and in most medial CC clusters. Word-finally and intervocalically, oral stops lenite to fricatives, while approximants (and /r̥/) voice. Lenition also occurs to oral stops in a medial CN cluster, and those that are the second C of an initial CC cluster. Bilabial and alveolar stops with a velar release become velarized; this can lead to alveolar fricatives with two secondary articulations (/tʷˣ/ > [sʷˠ]). Lenited aspirated and tenuis stops merge (/k, kʰ/ > [x]). Lenited labio-velar and labialized velar stops merge (/k͡p, kʷ/ > [xʷ]). Lenited /tʷ/ is realized as [ʃʷ].

Syllable Structure:
 (C)(F/L/G)V(L/G/S*)(F/N/A)
--- G = glide, L = liquid, A = affricate
--- LL/GG onsets are prohibited.
--- *Oral stops are permitted as the first consonant in a CC coda iff the second is a fricative.


Additional Phonotactic Things:
 /j̊ j̊ʷ/ > /#_C
  ex. /j̊-p͡ɸi/ > [ib͡βi] ivi vacation
 /ʔP/ > [P']
  ex. /ʔ-k͡pøl/ > [k͡p'øl] gbhöl table
 /C[-LAB]ʍ / > [Cʷ]
  ex. /kʰ-ʍɜŋø/ > [kʷʰɜŋø] kwengö the bogeyman

 /ʔP/ > [P'] applies to any plosive + glottal stop combination, either initially (rare) or medially (marginally more common); one could say that there are phonemic ejectives, since they do show up initially in roots ([k'oʍ] <ghow> be still), but I've yet to find or make any minimal pairs, so for now they are non-contrastive and describable as the result of initial /ʔ/-stop clusters; they are written as the non-aspirated form of the stop followed by <h>.
 Additionally, and rather importantly, C1V1# #C2V1# > C1V1C2. There are exceptions to this with the pronouns, where you get C1V1# #C2V2# > C1V1C2 whenever they're singular and directly followed by their (informal) classifiers, and also with classifiers and argument placeholders in general, since they tend to combine idiosyncratically. This is why why the argument string (n-ë na o t-o ta) "you make a thing happen to me" is realized as nën os ta while (t-o ta o n-ë na) "I make a thing happen to you" comes out as tos o nën.
 (Though pronouns tend to drop anyway, so realistically these would be nas and tas.)

[hr][/hr]
Writing System:
 In addition to the Latin orthography given above, HyPry has a handful of its own writing systems that I'll get around to describing eventually. I'll put a link to posts on the sun-form script as I make them; this is a logography based on intersecting circles. Here's one breakdown of Dräxw tlwum fih da, rën zwërz a "It was storming all day yesterday".

Next up: Nouns. Or maybe particle physics. Probably neither.
Last edited by kiwikami on 24 Oct 2017 22:53, edited 10 times in total.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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Re: HyPry scratchpad

Post by kiwikami »

Noun Classes

 NPs consist primarily of nouns falling into one of a couple dozen noun classes, followed by corresponding classifiers, the latter of which are also marked for plurality. The word "classifiers" is used here as I'm uncertain of a better name for them; they are rather more numerous than noun classes tend to be and new ones may be formed semi-productively, but they also (1) cannot be omitted from an NP, (2) may be used pronominally in the absence of an NP or to refer to a previously-mentioned NP, and (3) are used regardless of syntactic contexts. The noun class prefixes also attach to prepositions in certain situations, as will be described later. NP structure might better be described as a noun and a number-marking determiner, which agree for class. I'm uncertain which is more accurate or useful; input would be appreciated.

 Noun class prefixes are derived from their corresponding classifiers, which are a mostly-closed class with a little bit of leeway; there's a fixed number of "simple" (prefixed) ones, and new "complex" (circumfixed) ones are rarely, but occasionally, formed from existing classifiers that merge with accompanying pre-argument particles (generally noun-derived ones, which lose any coda in the process). In their plurality-marked form, complex classifiers' halves are interwoven with those of the plural morphemes; e.g. [mi_i-ha_n] > mihain a few particles. The HyPry term for this is runma a weaving-together, which also refers to important things that happen syntactically to arguments. I refer to it as "looming" in my notes, so it'll probably show up with that name later on. The formation of new complex classifiers in this manner, though rare, is recognized as semi-productive; new ones may be coined in very specific situations to somewhat humorous effect, and various groups and professions are likely to make use of some that aren't in common parlance. The (classifier-less for simplicity) NP [Ngäliv Ëra] Gallifreyan language might, to linguists, become [Ngëälivër] - ëra is reduced to ër, and the original simple prefix ng(ä) changes its vowel to match the first of the former particle, creating a complex ngë_ër "language" class.

 The current list of commonly-used simple and complex classifiers is as follows, and is subject to change. The levels given are based on the tiers of HyPry's animacy hierarchy; the numbers are those used to identify the class in glosses (note that they aren't in order, as I am rearranging the tiers bit by bit as I go).
Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Level 1
     (4) Spatio-Temporal | y[ë] | dimensions, units of spatio-temporal measurement, members of subspecies Dominus umbrae temporis

Level 2
     (1) Personal        | n[a] | first person, items inalienably possessed by or related to the speaker (ex. me, my cousin, my thumb)
     (2) Interlocutor    | t[a] | second person, items inalienably possessed by or related to the interlocutor (ex. you, your skull)

Level 3
     (3) Sapient         | g[a] | self-aware beings (ex. human, deity, cousin Bob)
     (24) Force          | da_[ch]e | forces of nature, non-sapient but "animate" and arguably agentive objects or events (ex. storm, war, free will)

Level 4
     (5) Animate         | k[e] | animate (ex. dolphin, housefly); entity must move under its own will, should be sentient
     (7) Event           | r[u] | nominalized verbs (ex. blinking, hypocrisy, life)

Level 5
     (6) Inanimate       | b[e] | inanimate (ex. plant, planet, pet rock); alive, host to life, or associated w/living things, not necessarily sentient
     (11) Matter         | tl[o] | physical matter in unspecified or multiple states (ex. stuff, universe, chunky soup)
     (19) Goop           | n[e]_[y]u] | soft solids or matter with resistance to a push (goop, a pillow, a knapsack)
     (20) Flow           | p[ë]_[y]u] | flowing fluids or masses of solids within a larger, mobile system (current [NOT river], breeze [NOT wind], lane on a highway and the vehicles on it)
     (21) Sheet          | hä_[d] | flat, flexible solids or flowing sheets of liquid (ex. paper, clothing, the surface of a river)
     (22) Grain          | nm[ö] | grainy-textured masses of solids or non-homogeneous groups of similar entities (ex. handfuls of sand, bottles containing various sundry items, groups of people [for humorous effect, especially seen from a distance or lumped together as one mass])

Level 6
     (10) Energy         | l[o] | forms of energy, results and measurements thereof (ex. heat, magnetic north, velocity)
     (12) Solid          | h[a] | solid matter, neither grainy-textured nor squishy to the touch (ex. ice, lump of coal); null-marked on C-initial nouns
     (13) Liquid         | th[e] | quantity of (still, or flowing within a immobile substrate) liquid matter (ex. water, vodka, cerebrospinal fluid)
     (14) Gas            | z[ë] | gaseous matter (ex. atmosphere, water vapor, room-temperature hydrogen monoxide)
     (17) Plasma         | gb[o]_[m]ë | ...plasma (ex. plasma)

Level 7
     (8)  Intangible     | ng[e] | measurable non-spatio-temporal intangibles, mathematical concepts (ex. vacuum, morphosyntax, ℵ₀)
     (9)  Qualia         | l[ä] | mental states and constructs, perceptions (ex. green, preference, imaginary friend)
     (15) Location       | r[ä] | location (ex. kitchen, radio studio, France, used car lot)
     (18) Social         | h[i]_[n]u | societal or intrapersonal constructs (culture, government, family name, debate, prescriptive grammatical rules)
 The classifiers' associated vowels (in brackets above) show up if the nouns they are prefixed to (or the plural morphemes they may be interwoven with) begin with a consonant that would otherwise form an illegal cluster. Bracketed consonants show up instead of final vowels on vowel-final words; thus you have the class-18 nouns hovu name from ob, but hëhën joke from ëhë.

 Mapping of things to classifiers is based on semantic class, but this is a rather fuzzy sorting method, and there are numerous arbitrary, idiomatic, or odd assignments in common use (e.g. shadows of living things, despite being visual phenomena and thus expected to be qualia (or perhaps intangibles), are generally classed as inanimates; shadows of nonliving things are indeed qualia).
Last edited by kiwikami on 19 Oct 2017 21:46, edited 3 times in total.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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Re: HyPry scratchpad

Post by kiwikami »

Basic Syntax

(It should be noted in all glosses below that I use =, typically used for clitics, to indicate boundaries between morphemes that act phonologically as one word due to phrase-level phonology in which, given two C(C)V syllables with the same vowel, the second becomes a lenited consonantal coda of the first, and the second vowel deletes; e.g. wë kë > wëk "to be (a member of some set)". This is ubiquitous in HyPry, sometimes leading to long glosses like CLS15=arg2=c2-2 for ros. I also use = for verb moods attaching to their preceding adjacent verbs, and for classifiers that attach to following vowel-initial words or to preceding pronouns despite not sharing a vowel.)

VP structure and basic word order is Verb (Particles) [Patient , Instrument/Force , Agent] (Prepositional Phrases) Mood.

 The patient/instrument/agent group in the middle constitute a verb's arguments; their roles are defined by the verb's lexical entry, but they tend towards the thematic relations indicated. Each may be an NP or VP. I'm uncertain whether "argument" is the best term for them, as they aren't necessarily mandatory, but I've been using the term as an analogy to the arguments of functions in programming languages. Also, it may be that all verbs require all three arguments, and one or more simply may be non-overt; at the moment, I've yet to create verbs that don't have three potential argument slots. Later notes will likely refer to these as arg1, arg2, and arg3. As an example, for ëld burn, arg1 is a thing that is burning, arg2 is a heat source, and arg3 is the instigator of the burning action. In the most basic case, arguments are nested within the VP:

Hëls reng rä zsib zë tos a.
 h-ëld rä-eng rä zë-tib zë to-a=to a
 IND-burn c15-tree CLS15 c14-fire CLS14 c2-2=CLS2 IND
You burn the forest with fire.

 But say one wants [reng rä] forest as arg1 and [tos] second person as arg3, but no specification of how the burning occurs: "You burn the forest." If one puts things in the given order, one gets "Hëls reng rä tos a" - but this does not have the intended meaning. Arguments are determined by ordering only, and the argument after arg1 must be arg2; this statement is true only if the second person is arg2, the physical source of the burning. They must be on fire, wandering around the land burning it. If we want the second person to be using some other source of flame but for that source to remain unspecified, the arg2 slot has to be filled so that the second argument can be interpreted as arg3. This is done using [o], glossed as arg2. Note that the pronoun now shows up as [-s ta], and the final indicative mood marker becomes a glottal fricative at the end of the preceding word:

Hëls reng ros tah.
 H-ëld rä-eng rä=o=ta-o ta a
 IND-burn c15-tree CLS15=arg2=c2-2 CLS2=IND
You burn the forest.

 There is a corresponding slot-filler for arg1, [i]; note that an arg3 can be left out without issue; the absence is indicated just fine by the mood marker coming along and ending the VP before one shows up:

Hëls i zsib za.
 h-ëld i zë-tib zë a
 IND-burn arg1 c14-fire CLS14=IND
A fire burns (something).

 If both fillers are used and are adjacent to each other, they become [yӧ]:

Hëls yӧ tos a.
 h-ëld i=o ta-o=ta a
 IND-burn arg1=arg2 c2-2=CLS2 IND
You burn something.

 Only arg3 has volition, so if an object is acting on its own accord in a manner that only affects itself, it must be specified as both arg1 and arg3; this may be done by inserting the arg1 marker in the third argument's place. If there is no second argument (instead replaced by [o]), the [o] + [i] sequence becomes u (which in the example below further becomes w and joins with the indicative [a], which now that I think about it is due to a phonological rule I've forgotten to add to the phonotactics section):

Hiwe tos wa.
 h-iwe ta-o-ta o=i=a
 IND-dance c2-2=CLS2 arg2=arg1=IND
You are dancing.

 I'm 98% sure this works as a reflexive construction as well, but I've yet to work it all out. Similarly, if one is in fact going around in the woods burning things with one's own flame-emitting flesh, one could specify that arg2 is also arg3 by introducing the arg2 marker after a second argument is added. As the o follows a CoC syllable, it is reduced to a glottal fricative following the previous word (as vowel-initial words in HyPry may be analyzed as having an underlying glottal stop):

Hëls reng rä tot'h a.
 h-ëld rä-eng rä to-a=to=o a
 IND-burn c15-tree CLS15 c2-2=CLS2=arg2 IND
You [a flame-emitting thing] burn [intentionally] the forest.

 Depending on the verb, an empty arg2 but a filled arg3 may imply that the arguments are the same NP without specifying it as such. This is extremely common in casual speech, and leads to ambiguity between "X does Y to Z" and "X causes Y to be done to Z (but not by X)". This latter construction is thus more often created using an inverse voice structure that I'll get to later. In principle, something could be all three arguments, but the situations that require this are rather few and far between:

Hëls tos ih a.
 h-ëld ta-o=ta i=i a
 IND-burn c2-2=CLS arg1=arg1 IND
You are undergoing self-instigated spontaneous human combustion

 Verbs need not have all arguments overtly indicated - or any at all, for that matter:

Hiweh.
 h-iwe=a
 IND-dance=IND
Dancing is happening.

 The arg1+arg2 combined marker is also used if a verb takes a prepositional phrase (which normally goes after arg3) but no other arguments. Note that CLS15 here is not adjacent to its corresponding noun; this is due to looming, which I'll get to later.

Hiwe yö tä reng a, rä.
 h-iwe i=o tä r-eng a rä.
 IND-dance arg1 arg2 outside c15-tree IND CLS15
Dancing is happening on the outskirts of the forest.

 This distinguishes some prepositions from the inverse voice markers, which must be adjacent to the verb. Leaving out arg1+arg2 in the sentence above leads to being interpreted as the "outside" inverse, ZYX, which in turn means that forest is interpreted as the first argument; in ZYX form, this becomes a causative agent, and the use of only a first argument in ZYX without later arguments of higher animacy to justify it is interpreted as derisive towards the existing argument, as it is forced into the lowest possible position:

Hiwe tä reng a, rä.
 h-iwe tä r-eng a rä.
 IND-dance outside c15-tree IND CLS15
The forest is dancing [and is very bad at it].
That poor excuse for a forest is dancing.

So the argument markers are rather important.
Last edited by kiwikami on 19 Oct 2017 18:53, edited 1 time in total.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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Re: HyPry (Ngäliv Ëra) scratchpad

Post by kiwikami »

Animacy and the Inverse Voices

 Given the noun classes above, nouns in higher tiers (1 being the highest) should appear later in a sentence; arg3 is typically the spot for active, volitive agents, and higher nouns are preferred further towards arg3. To achieve this ordering when a higher noun in a sentence is not an agent or causer, but an instrument or patient, one of the five inverse voices must be used. Each is indicated using a particle (derived from a preposition), and each describes a particular rearrangement of the typical XYZ verbal argument structure, as follows:

YXZ = hëm (above) INV1
XZY = nu (below) INV2
ZXY = nwë (vertically level with) INV3
YZX = ino (horizontally level with) INV4
ZYX = tä (outside) INV5

Is this a naturalistic system? Probably not, no. Does it work? Sure does.

Thus, you have the following (ignoring looming for now):

Phë ti beng be gi ga.
strike MOM c6-tree CLS6 c3-person CLS3=IND
The man (unintentionally) hits the tree.

But the following:

Phë ti hëm höro ha beng ba.
strike MOM INV.YXZ c12-ball CLS12 c6-tree CLS6=IND
The ball hits the tree.

Ball is lower on the hierarchy than tree, but man is higher. The YXZ inverse is here chosen over, say, the YZX, because in general one wants to rearrange as few arguments as possible, and doing otherwise has honorific or pejorative implications:

Phë tino höroh beng ba.
strike MOM=INV.YZX c6-tree=CLS6=arg2 c12-ball CLS12=IND
The ball hits the esteemed tree.

Sliding the Z argument down to first or second position when it is the only argument in a sentence, or sliding the Y argument to first, is particularly common in reference to oneself, and is tied up with the rather complicated system of formality that governs inter-HyPry-speaker communication. You can make even more subtle distinctions by arranging arguments that aren't overt, as with the unspecified idea (argument X) below.

Etlwa o nën a.
have.an.idea arg2 1sg IND
I have an idea. (neutral - 1sg Z is third)

Etlwa hëm o nën a.
have.an.idea INV.YXZ arg2 1sg IND
I have an idea, and it's a damn good one (if I do say so myself). (neutral - 1sg Z is third, idea X is second)

Etlwa nuy nën a.
have.an.idea INV.XZY=arg1 1sg IND
I have an idea. (respectful - 1sg Z is second)

Etlwa inoy nën a.
have.an.idea INV.YZX=arg1 1sg IND
I have an idea, and I think it's a good one. (respectful - 1sg Z is second, idea X is third)

Etlwa tä nën a.
have.an.idea INV.ZYX 1sg IND
I have an idea. (deferential - 1sg Z is first)

Etlwa nwë nën a.
have.an.idea INV.ZXY 1sg IND
I have an idea, though it's not very good (sorry to bother you with it). (deferential - 1sg Z is first, idea X is second)

And so on, with various layers of formality and deference; looming also plays a part in that system, and it combined with embedded clauses allows for exceptions to this rather strict hierarchy for the sake of ease of speech (except in highly formal contest). More on this later, just wanted to write something here as I haven't in a while.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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