Atlas: new auxlang

[Axiem]

Efficiency is not a goal per se, but being easy is.

But it's not easy if the choices for the roots is pretty arbitrary.

(I also notice that you ignored my question about "giraffe" over "rodent")

Atlas gives you hints in order to remember the word. Of course you will have to learn the words (how they are combined and related to each other), but most of them are very intuitive.

How is this different than English?

Now some people are discussing why cheetah is quick animal when it is proven to one of be the quickest if not the quickest on Earth!

Actually, a peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on Earth that we know of. A cheetah only goes up to about 70 mph; a peregrine falcon gets somewhere around 250 mph.

Ironically, a peregrine falcon is faster than a swift, though those are so named for being so fast.

If you are reading a text and you come up with the word (makin up) jerfoumaop, and you have never seen that word before, oh bad luck. In Atlas, you will be able to identify, at least, that that word is an animal and one of its features. Is it 100% intuitive? No! because it is impossible as I said before. However, it helps.

The idea that it's always impossible is absolutely absurd, especially in English. English also has a large set of roots—and because a lot of them are Latin or Greek in origin, are shared with a number of other languages.

If I speak about illnesses for instance... if I tell you there is very sad illness which is formed with cell+illness, would you have an idea? and forget+illness? I am guessing the vast majority of people would.

English already does this with its disease names, and is doing it more and more (instead of naming them after people/places/things). I don't think anyone is arguing that having a collection of roots isn't helpful, but rather that it's ludicrous to expect that every word can be easily created from a small number of roots.

Or if I speak about clothes and I say to you, what does the word leg+cloth means? And a few others.

I would think pantyhose, even though I prefer not to wear them. Or maybe you were thinking a skirt or a dress?

[Keenir]

Atlas gives you hints in order to remember the word. Of course you will have to learn the words (how they are combined and related to each other), but most of them are very intuitive.

...at least to those who are fluent already, i suspect.

Now some people are discussing why cheetah is quick animal when it is proven to one of be the quickest if not the quickest on Earth!

cheetahs are only quick over short distances. pronghorns and painted dogs are faster over longer distances. and deerflies are fliers faster than falcons.

If I speak about illnesses for instance... if I tell you there is very sad illness which is formed with cell+illness, would you have an idea?

flesh-eating bacteria?

and forget+illness? I am guessing the vast majority of people would.

amnesia, brain damage to the memory regions, and some others.

Or if I speak about clothes and I say to you, what does the word leg+cloth means?

Sock! or legwarmer.

[Xing]

Some random thoughts, as I was reading through the grammar.


Sentence structure

Are there any rules concerning the order of adjectives, or of adverbial complements?

Nouns

Where do you draw the line between animate and inanimate nouns? (Or between "animals" and "vegetables"?)
What about amoebae, bacteria, viruses, body parts, cell nuclei, forces of nature? Does a word change noun class if it's used in an extended or non-literal sense. (As in "roots" of a tree vs "roots" in the more abstract sense of "source" or "origin"?)

What's the point of having different noun classes anyway?

As for the plural, how do you handle fractions? (Half a litre, three quarter of a litre, one and a half litre, two and half litre...)

Why not make the plural marker optional, like the gender/sex marker? (Might be a good thing if the number of the referent(s) is unknown...)

Adjectives

How do you form adjectives with different meanings from a single root, when that's possible? Say, if a single root "X" could form adjectives with meanings like "X-ful", "X-ish", "in the manner of X", "pertaining to X", "intended for X", "made of X", "able to do/be-X", etc.?

Personal pronouns

When are the gender/sex indicators used? Are they used only when they're needed to disambiguate an utterance? Or could I choose to habitually use a gendered pronouns when referring to myself (and perhaps also when talking about others), even if the gender/sex is known?

How are reflexive pronouns used? Which constituents can they refer back to? Must they refer back to a subject, or can they refer back also to objects or oblique constituents? Must they refer back to constituents in the same clause or sentences?

Can reflexive pronouns be used in an emphatic sense? (As in English "I wrote the letter myself.")

Prepositions

Having so many prepositions – as people have already pointed out – screams eurocentrism. Apart from having prepositions with quite specialised meanings, you go even further when you insist on having a separate set of prepositions for temporal expression? Why, when it's perfectly fine to treat time as analogous to space? Sure, a temporal locations are not literally the same thing as a spatial location (or temporal beginnings and endpoints as a spatial ones, etc.), but the point is that words are used in an analogous sense. That words can be used in analogous senses is an extremely powerful tool in languages. If you insist that you can't re-use the same prepositions in expressions like "in the afternoon" and "in the living room", you should also have different words for "good" in expressions like "a good deed", "a good knife", "a good purpose" – because "good" quite literally means different things in those.

In any case, if you don't allow words to be used in analogous or extended senses, you must very likely have way more than 500 or so roots.

Another thing: Why do you have a separate preposition to indicate recipients, but not givers or sources?

And as for the instrumental preposition(s), having "s" and "z" indicating opposite meanings might not be optimal.

******

I'm about half-way through the grammar now. I might continue when I've got time. But I hope one main point is clear: 20 pages does not make a "complete grammar" of any workable language.

[qwed117]

Wait a minute. The peregrine falcon is only the fastest by diving speed . The swift is faster when cruising at a constant elevation.

[lsd]

When I was a child, and therefore fond of records of all kinds, it seems to me that frigategird had the speed record...

Why is efficiency a goal of a language?

that is the auxlang way, make it better...

[Rodiniye]

Some random thoughts, as I was reading through the grammar.


Sentence structure

Are there any rules concerning the order of adjectives, or of adverbial complements?

Nouns

Where do you draw the line between animate and inanimate nouns? (Or between "animals" and "vegetables"?)
What about amoebae, bacteria, viruses, body parts, cell nuclei, forces of nature? Does a word change noun class if it's used in an extended or non-literal sense. (As in "roots" of a tree vs "roots" in the more abstract sense of "source" or "origin"?)

What's the point of having different noun classes anyway?

As for the plural, how do you handle fractions? (Half a litre, three quarter of a litre, one and a half litre, two and half litre...)

Why not make the plural marker optional, like the gender/sex marker? (Might be a good thing if the number of the referent(s) is unknown...)

Adjectives

How do you form adjectives with different meanings from a single root, when that's possible? Say, if a single root "X" could form adjectives with meanings like "X-ful", "X-ish", "in the manner of X", "pertaining to X", "intended for X", "made of X", "able to do/be-X", etc.?

Personal pronouns

When are the gender/sex indicators used? Are they used only when they're needed to disambiguate an utterance? Or could I choose to habitually use a gendered pronouns when referring to myself (and perhaps also when talking about others), even if the gender/sex is known?

How are reflexive pronouns used? Which constituents can they refer back to? Must they refer back to a subject, or can they refer back also to objects or oblique constituents? Must they refer back to constituents in the same clause or sentences?

Can reflexive pronouns be used in an emphatic sense? (As in English "I wrote the letter myself.")

Prepositions

Having so many prepositions – as people have already pointed out – screams eurocentrism. Apart from having prepositions with quite specialised meanings, you go even further when you insist on having a separate set of prepositions for temporal expression? Why, when it's perfectly fine to treat time as analogous to space? Sure, a temporal locations are not literally the same thing as a spatial location (or temporal beginnings and endpoints as a spatial ones, etc.), but the point is that words are used in an analogous sense. That words can be used in analogous senses is an extremely powerful tool in languages. If you insist that you can't re-use the same prepositions in expressions like "in the afternoon" and "in the living room", you should also have different words for "good" in expressions like "a good deed", "a good knife", "a good purpose" – because "good" quite literally means different things in those.

In any case, if you don't allow words to be used in analogous or extended senses, you must very likely have way more than 500 or so roots.

Another thing: Why do you have a separate preposition to indicate recipients, but not givers or sources?

And as for the instrumental preposition(s), having "s" and "z" indicating opposite meanings might not be optimal.

******

I'm about half-way through the grammar now. I might continue when I've got time. But I hope one main point is clear: 20 pages does not make a "complete grammar" of any workable language.

Sentence structure - adjectives to appear behind the noun. Adverbial complements tend to appear between the Subject and the Verb, although this is not 100% strict.

Nouns - everything alive is animate. So for instance a "cell" is believe to be animate. Everything you can touch is "concrete". There can be some interpretion here sometimes. For instance, is "rain" something you can touch, or is it a process? can you touch the rain or you touch the water? Here Atlas allows some freedom. It becomes a bit phylosophical so both would be accepted. For the rest it is very simple. A force of nature would of course be abstract, and roots in an abstract way would be abstract too.

They are very useful to indentify words or to create words. If you take for instance the root "ger" (heal) you have:

geru (drug, medicine)
gere (medicine, set of treatments)
gera (healer)

even you could do "gero", a medicinal plant.

Adjectives

Initially no other words to be added. However, you can always form a compound word to specify the meaning. If you want to to a -ish adjective for instance, you can add the preposition "iex" (similar):

iexbesi - bigish.

Personal pronouns - gender can be used by choice. If you want to specify it, or if you want to use it.

Prepositions - There are a few prepositions, but way far from the ones used in natural languages. See English prepositions for instance and you will find the number is around 80 prepositions easily. I admit seeing them all together is a bit of a shock, would not many languages use less prepositions (without using declensions/postpositions/other formulae apart from them). The reason for every preposition having its own use is:
- easy to decipher the message without ambiguity.
- very handy to form new words with a specific meaning.
as prepositions take a key part in word formation in Atlas.
Of course some could have doble meanings, but the benefits you get from having this system far outweights the difficulties in learning only a few more prepositions. I have had this in the past when teaching English and prepositions with different meanings tend to be difficult for students.

Thanks for your comments! Looking forward to your next analysis

[Xing]

Sentence structure - adjectives to appear behind the noun. Adverbial complements tend to appear between the Subject and the Verb, although this is not 100% strict.

It was the order between adjectives I was wondering about (in the cases where several adjectives modify a noun). The same for adverbial complements.

Nouns - everything alive is animate. So for instance a "cell" is believe to be animate. Everything you can touch is "concrete". There can be some interpretion here sometimes. For instance, is "rain" something you can touch, or is it a process? can you touch the rain or you touch the water? Here Atlas allows some freedom. It becomes a bit phylosophical so both would be accepted. For the rest it is very simple. A force of nature would of course be abstract, and roots in an abstract way would be abstract too.

What happens when a word is used in an extended sense? (Say, a concrete noun is used abstractly?) Does it keep its original noun class?

Initially no other words to be added. However, you can always form a compound word to specify the meaning. If you want to to a -ish adjective for instance, you can add the preposition "iex" (similar):

iexbesi - bigish.

What more ways are there to form adjective? You can often form several adjectives with different meanings out of the same root or basic concept – which meaning is the most "basic" one? Say you have a root for "sun", and add the adjective ending, what would that adjective mean?

Personal pronouns - gender can be used by choice. If you want to specify it, or if you want to use it.

Have you considered the possibility that gender might become grammaticalised?

Prepositions - There are a few prepositions, but way far from the ones used in natural languages. See English prepositions for instance and you will find the number is around 80 prepositions easily. I admit seeing them all together is a bit of a shock, would not many languages use less prepositions (without using declensions/postpositions/other formulae apart from them). The reason for every preposition having its own use is:
- easy to decipher the message without ambiguity.
- very handy to form new words with a specific meaning.
as prepositions take a key part in word formation in Atlas.
Of course some could have doble meanings, but the benefits you get from having this system far outweights the difficulties in learning only a few more prepositions. I have had this in the past when teaching English and prepositions with different meanings tend to be difficult for students.

English is an outlier when it comes to the number of prepositions, so having fewer prepositions than English doesn't really say much about a language.

I don't see the point in having different sets of prepositions for spatial and temporal locations. Of course you *could* have it – nothing wrong with it – but I don't see any benefit in it, from an auxlanging point of view. And why is there no preposition to mark giver or source, when there is preposition to mark recipient?

I think you need to update your grammar. Many of your answers weren't obvious to me.

[Rodiniye]

It was the order between adjectives I was wondering about (in the cases where several adjectives modify a noun). The same for adverbial complements.

Free order. I don't see the point in establishing rules on this.

What happens when a word is used in an extended sense? (Say, a concrete noun is used abstractly?) Does it keep its original noun class?

Could you give an example?

What more ways are there to form adjective? You can often form several adjectives with different meanings out of the same root or basic concept – which meaning is the most "basic" one? Say you have a root for "sun", and add the adjective ending, what would that adjective mean?

Most adjectives have only one meaning. Same is beauty => beautiful for instance.

Take for instance "create". You can heave "created" or "creative" (Atlas does not have participles). In that case, if you think confusion might arise, you could do a compound adjective:

create+estate would be equivalent to "created": anvaz (create) + reux (state, condition) = anvazreuxi (created)
create+process would be equivalent to "creative": anvaz (create) + cal (process) = anvazcali (creative)

However, when there is no possibility for confussion the basic form can be used "anvazi".

Have you considered the possibility that gender might become grammaticalised?

What do you mean by this?

I don't see the point in having different sets of prepositions for spatial and temporal locations. Of course you *could* have it – nothing wrong with it – but I don't see any benefit in it, from an auxlanging point of view. And why is there no preposition to mark giver or source, when there is preposition to mark recipient?

I think you need to update your grammar. Many of your answers weren't obvious to me.

As I said, mostly the reason behind prepositions being for one specific meaning only is word formation. For instance, from root "dauk" (take) you have "houdakes" (postpone) [after+take], and you could have as well "detdaukes" (occult) [behind+take]. So with this example you see how a preposition with multiple meanings would have not accomplished the same goal.

As for the no preposition for giver you are right, I will have a look.

And as for updating the grammar, it will be done soon.

Thanks for your comments!

[Axiem]

Wait a minute. The peregrine falcon is only the fastest by diving speed . The swift is faster when cruising at a constant elevation.

I was considering "maximum speed achieved by the animal", not "usual traveling speed". A cheetah, for instance, only reaches its maximum speed in hunting situations; most of the time, it walks at a much slower pace.

But yes, the irony isn't quite as ironical as originally implied because of this.

[Axiem]

Nouns - everything alive is animate.

Define "alive".

[Rodiniye]

Define "alive".

1: having life : not dead or inanimate

By Merriam Webster

Basically anything alive starting from a small microorganisms. Cells are considered (one of) the smallest entities alive, so a "cell" in Atlas is "zella" (animate - animal) ending.

[Creyeditor]

Define "alive".

1: having life : not dead or inanimate

By Merriam Webster

Basically anything alive starting from a small microorganisms. Cells are considered (one of) the smallest entities alive, so a "cell" in Atlas is "zella" (animate - animal) ending.

Sorry, I don't want to bother you. Does that mean that a virus, the wind and god are not animate? They do not have live and they never die, I guess. Btw, I like the name of your auxlang.

[Frislander]

Have you considered the possibility that gender might become grammaticalised?

What do you mean by this?

"Grammaticalisation" is where a formerly independent word or a bit of derivational morphology becomes part of the grammatical structure of the language.

For instance, from root "dauk" (take) you have "houdakes" (postpone) [after+take], and you could have as well "detdaukes" (occult) [behind+take]. So with this example you see how a preposition with multiple meanings would have not accomplished the same goal.

This are literally just as idiosyncratic as English phrasal verbs, and they don't contradict Xing's point at all.

[Xing]

Have you considered the possibility that gender might become grammaticalised?

What do you mean by this?

I could have expressed my self clearer. What I meant was that if people frequently use the gendered forms of the pronouns, they might start to regard those forms as the unmarked ones. So that the use of a gender-neutral form might sound as a marked choice, that people use only when they deliberately want to emphasise the irrelevance of gender in a particular context, or deliberately want to break "gender stereotypes", etc. (Just like the various more or less invented "gender-neutral" pronouns in some European languages.)

Edit: Another thing. I looked up the section on numbers again.

Do numerals appear before or after the nouns? What about ordinals – do they go before or after the nouns?

[Rodiniye]

I could have expressed my self clearer. What I meant was that if people frequently use the gendered forms of the pronouns, they might start to regard those forms as the unmarked ones. So that the use of a gender-neutral form might sound as a marked choice, that people use only when they deliberately want to emphasise the irrelevance of gender in a particular context, or deliberately want to break "gender stereotypes", etc. (Just like the various more or less invented "gender-neutral" pronouns in some European languages.)

It could happen, but at the moment all texts and the grammar itself point towards one direction. As it is the easiest one, and probably the most accepted option for society nowadays, I am not expecting gender to be used beyond what Atlas grammar says (if so, the other way around, that people tend to forget about the gender mark). This is the way I am planning this, but as any other language, the unpredictable might happen.

Do numerals appear before or after the nouns? What about ordinals – do they go before or after the nouns?

Good question. It is not specified but I would expect to see them before the noun, as it happens with correlatives. Both of them function as quantifiers somehow. Adjectives, however, appear after the noun.

This are literally just as idiosyncratic as English phrasal verbs, and they don't contradict Xing's point at all.

It is fairly similar, all I was saying is that in various contexts Atlas uses the different meaning of prepositions. "det" and "hou" give different meanings here to the resulting word. If only one existed (with both "time" and "place" meanings) only one word could have been formed and not 2.

Sorry, I don't want to bother you. Does that mean that a virus, the wind and god are not animate? They do not have live and they never die, I guess. Btw, I like the name of your auxlang.

No bothering at all.

Exactly. They are both not animate. Whatever you think about god, it would probably fall into the abstract category. The wind, as a meteorological process, is classified as not animate - abstract too.

Thanks for that!

[GamerGeek]

Btw, I like the name of your auxlang.

Me too. I wanna steal it

[Rodiniye]

Btw, I like the name of your auxlang.

Me too. I wanna steal it

Thief!

[Axiem]

Define "alive".

1: having life : not dead or inanimate

By Merriam Webster

Basically anything alive starting from a small microorganisms. Cells are considered (one of) the smallest entities alive, so a "cell" in Atlas is "zella" (animate - animal) ending.

That's a very non-answer answer.

So, do we decline nouns differently depending on whether we want them to be considered animate or not (e.g. when tromping around in the Land of Metaphor)?

[GamerGeek]

You should do translations in Atlas and Rodinian.

[Xing]

Exactly. They are both not animate. Whatever you think about god, it would probably fall into the abstract category. The wind, as a meteorological process, is classified as not animate - abstract too.

What about ghosts, spirits, mythological creatures, the devil, Cthulhu, Elvis Presley, Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse, the evil monkey in my closet...