(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2020]

[MIGUELbM]

When do you think it's a good idea to have genders in languages?
For all I know, Riagi, my conlang, has no agreement between parts of speech, would a gender system have any purpose there?

[zyma]

When do you think it's a good idea to have genders in languages?
For all I know, Riagi, my conlang, has no agreement between parts of speech, would a gender system have any purpose there?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of gender systems having a real "purpose" in a language; it's a good idea to have genders in a language if you want to.

[MIGUELbM]

When do you think it's a good idea to have genders in languages?
For all I know, Riagi, my conlang, has no agreement between parts of speech, would a gender system have any purpose there?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of gender systems having a real "purpose" in a language; it's a good idea to have genders in a language if you want to.

I'd like to, the problem is, if I have no agreement of any sorts how would it even show up?

[zyma]

When do you think it's a good idea to have genders in languages?
For all I know, Riagi, my conlang, has no agreement between parts of speech, would a gender system have any purpose there?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of gender systems having a real "purpose" in a language; it's a good idea to have genders in a language if you want to.

I'd like to, the problem is, if I have no agreement of any sorts how would it even show up?

I don't know anything about your language, but maybe noun endings?

[loglorn]

Isn't one of the requisites to be considered a 'noun class' or a 'gender' system is to have something agree with it? Even if the agreement happens at weird places. If your language is already kinda settled down, i probably would try to fit gender in it.

I don't normally use gender, but that's because i'm just plain lazy

[MIGUELbM]

Isn't one of the requisites to be considered a 'noun class' or a 'gender' system is to have something agree with it?

Yeah, that's the issue, I think that I'll just skip it. I can always make another language with a gender system as complex as I want.

[zyma]

Isn't one of the requisites to be considered a 'noun class' or a 'gender' system is to have something agree with it?

I don't think I've ever heard that, but I could definitely be wrong.

Edit: Although I can't think of a language where noun classes/genders don't include some kind of agreement with adjectives, pronouns, and or verbs At least hypothetically, though, I don't think agreement is a requirement for a noun class system. Couldn't it just be as easy as separating nouns into groups/declensions based on their endings?

[Thrice Xandvii]

There could theoretically be a system where declensions are the only place one sees noun class differences in a language. In my Khengallese, the only remnant of noun class is in the singulative particle which has one variant for each class and must agree with the noun it modifies. It shows up nowhere else so far, but I will likely have it take a role somewhere else too, or else it would be a very unstable arrangement system.

Suggestions? I don't want anything as simple as just agreement with adjectives.

[Dormouse559]

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of gender systems having a real "purpose" in a language; it's a good idea to have genders in a language if you want to.

It should be noted that genders can serve a purpose in languages. The uses I know of are increased redundancy and vocabulary creation. The redundancy that genders and gender agreement bring makes it easier to determine meaning, even when there's outside interference. In the area of vocabulary, gender lets you create new lexical items by changing the gender of a word. Take French, where "manche" means "handle" when masculine, but "sleeve" when feminine.

[taylorS]

When a language has a single set of plosives (say, /p t k kw/ are they usually voiced between vowels, or does it just depend on the language?

[Ithisa]

When a language has a single set of plosives (say, /p t k kw/ are they usually voiced between vowels, or does it just depend on the language?

Depends on the language I guess. Hawaiian doesn't voice them between vowels.

[Nortaneous]

depends on the language. look at some North American languages with one stop series if you want examples of what can be done -- the rules can be more complex than a binary "do plosives voice between vowels".

also Greek, where mp nt Nk > mb nd Ng > b d g

[gach]

There could theoretically be a system where declensions are the only place one sees noun class differences in a language. In my Khengallese, the only remnant of noun class is in the singulative particle which has one variant for each class and must agree with the noun it modifies. It shows up nowhere else so far, but I will likely have it take a role somewhere else too, or else it would be a very unstable arrangement system.

Suggestions? I don't want anything as simple as just agreement with adjectives.

I'd say it's primarily a question of terminology, what are you ready to call "gender" or "noun class" and what not. If there's any agreement for the feature, you should be good for calling it gender, but the line isn't always very clear.

In my view Dyirbal is a language with a borderline noun class system even though it has a total of four rigid classes. The only way the classes manifest themselves in the language is through classifying markers that normally accompany the nouns. These appear only once in the NP and you get no gender agreement on adjectives or on verbs. They do, however, often occur as generic nouns with an anaphoric function and here you can see that they agree with the underlying gender of the dropped noun. Examples from Dixon's grammar are

Bayi baninyu.
CL1 come
"(Man) is coming."

Bulgan baninyu.
big come
"Big (something) is coming."

Bayi bulgan baninyu.
CL1 big come
"Big (man) is coming."

Bayi yara bulgan baninyu.
CL1 man big come
"Big man is coming."

The noun class assignment and the choice of the classifier is rigid in Dyirbal but the system is very close to a fluid classifier system where generic nouns are used in a similar specifying and anaphoric functions but with some freedom of what classifier to choose for which noun in whichever situation.

[Squall]

I have some problems to make a case system. The problem is that a word cannot exist without a case.

How is a noun treated when it does not have a grammatical role?
'lord' in "The lord of the rings"
'milk' written on a bottle of milk

Will I need the vocative case? It is only used with names of people.
In a list of people (such as telephone numbers), will the names be in the genitive and have the same suffix?


My first cases are: nominative, accusative, lative-dative, ablative, genitive, locative, instrumental-prolative, translative.

[zyma]

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of gender systems having a real "purpose" in a language; it's a good idea to have genders in a language if you want to.

It should be noted that genders can serve a purpose in languages. The uses I know of are increased redundancy and vocabulary creation. The redundancy that genders and gender agreement bring makes it easier to determine meaning, even when there's outside interference. In the area of vocabulary, gender lets you create new lexical items by changing the gender of a word. Take French, where "manche" means "handle" when masculine, but "sleeve" when feminine.

I see your point about the redundancy.

But about the vocabulary creation, that wasn't the original purpose of the gender system, was it? The fact that a French word can have a different meaning based on gender is just a coincidence based on two similar Latin words diachronically converging.

According to Wiktionary (I don't have any better resources at the moment):

la manche "sleeve" comes from the Latin manica

le manche "handle" comes from the Latin manicus


So, in my opinion, it looks like the fact that "manche" has two different meanings based on gender is just a coincidence, and is not the original purpose of gender.

However, if you consider the change in endings between manic-a and manic-us to also be an example of vocabulary creation through a change in gender, than I see your point.

[zyma]

I have some problems to make a case system. The problem is that a word cannot exist without a case.

How is a noun treated when it does not have a grammatical role?
'lord' in "The lord of the rings"
'milk' written on a bottle of milk

Will I need the vocative case? It is only used with names of people.
In a list of people (such as telephone numbers), will the names be in the genitive and have the same suffix?


My first cases are: nominative, accusative, lative-dative, ablative, genitive, locative, instrumental-prolative, translative.

Most languages (nominative-accusative languages, at least) that have case put all these in the nominative case. Nominative marks the subject of the verb, but most languages also use it as the default/unmarked/citation form.

Vocative is generally not used when listing names, only when someone is being addressed or called out to in a sentence.

[Dormouse559]

But about the vocabulary creation, that wasn't the original purpose of the gender system, was it? The fact that a French word can have a different meaning based on gender is just a coincidence based on two similar Latin words diachronically converging.

I don't see that as necessarily invalidating my point. If some words become homophonous, there is potential for ambiguity, but features like gender can clarify that.

However, if you consider the change in endings between manic-a and manic-us to also be an example of vocabulary creation through a change in gender, than I see your point.

Indeed.

And French has been making its own modern pairs as well. A good example is "chèvre", which means "goat" when feminine and "goat cheese" when masculine.

[zyma]

I don't see that as necessarily invalidating my point. If some words become homophonous, there is potential for ambiguity, but features like gender can clarify that.

I wasn't trying to invalidate your point, only to see if I understood it.

[Nortaneous]

How is a noun treated when it does not have a grammatical role?
'lord' in "The lord of the rings"

It depends. They'd probably be marked with its role in the sentence. If I had a conlang that had the role-marking system of Kannow [one of my conlangs], but marked roles with cases on nouns instead of affixes on verbs, you could have something like:

Lord of the Rings won an award.
PAST-win lord-NOM ring-GEN-PL award-ACC

I am watching Lord of the Rings.
PRES-watch 1S lord-DAT ring-GEN-PL

(Case-Kannow marks objects with either the accusative or the dative depending on things that aren't relevant to your question.)

Also, a few languages have suffixaufnahme. My conlang Deghuri does, so those sentences would look like:

Lord of the Rings won an award.
ring-PL-GEN-ABS lord-ABS PAST award-ERG win

I am watching Lord of the Rings.
1S-ABS ring-PL-GEN-ERG lord-ERG watch

As for 'milk' on a bottle of milk, that would be the citation form, and the citation form would almost certainly be the nominative.

[loglorn]

Would it be a realistic sound change to make

Cʰ →Ch (some of of 'segmentalization')
hV →Vː (something like that happened to PIE laryngeals i think)
Ultimately getting CʰV →CVː

Something alike (maybe with some vowel coloring or some other fun stuff) could happen with /x/ too.