Welcome to Linguifex! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages. Again, welcome and have fun! Admin.png Χρυσοφύλαξ 23:16, 4 July 2014 (CEST)

Fourth Linguifex Relay

The relay is progressing quite quickly! Unfortunately Unleashy failed to pass the torch in time, so here it is. IlL (talk) 02:02, 21 July 2015 (CEST)

Prototyping new conlang - Vadi

This is very much in the early stages. All I know conculture-wise is the people call themselves the Varan, and the language is Vadi. Now to figure out what that va- morpheme is all about.

Been playing around with the case system, I still seem to have an aversion to nouns with elaborate case systems, and I'm using Latin as a frame of reference. So far, 3 cases, 2 marking core arguments (Agent vs Patient), and a genitive. A two-way gender system based on animacy marks the core arguments' roles the following way: the least-marked case for animates is the agent, whereas for inanimates, they are the most prominently marked, and for patient roles it's vice-versa. Five declensions are realized based on stem endings and/or animacy; for example, Class I nouns are for animate nouns that take an infix -in- to mark the patient role, whereas Class II nouns are reserved for inanimates whose stems end in -r. Class III-V include both animates and inanimates; Class III is also called the -ri- Declension because the marked roles have the suffix -ri in the plural forms, Class IV (aka the -d- Declension) because the stem of the marked role terminates with -d- plus some other submorpheme, and finally Class IV (the s- Declension), whose plural stems end with the submorpheme -s-.

I have no idea how to come up with a diachronic explanation of how the noun class system came to be. Maybe those submorphemes were at one time noun classifiers but phonological erosion and other syncreticism happened.

The morphosyntactic alignment looks like it's going to be a Split-S system, with Dative subjects used for experiential and cognitive verbs. Ok, I'm babbling, but what I did was do just that....babble until I came up with some random nonsense words I liked, then I started slicing them up to come up with a plausible morphology. The sample sentences I was working with (with some modifications already):

  • "Isasro ka munek ki bára emtol yal" = He did not hit or shout at any visitor yesterday.
  • "Manetór ki pidá daşélek mi" = He was indeed stung from the poison ivy/He experienced pain (from) the poison plant indeed.
  • "Manjate ki nihlave" = He likes apples.
  • "Os kánáto bihók şilmá" = I sow wheat every day.
  • "Os kánárato bihók şilmá" = I used to sow wheat every day.

Ok, gotta go to bed soon. I'll transfer my prototype verb template from my Word doc here tomorrow or whenever I get the chance.

6th Grand Relay of the Linguifictorials

I pass ye torch to ye, nobel sar: Sixth_Linguifex_Relay/KakkåCEIGE⟨TAWK⟩ 19:51, 26 August 2018 (CEST)

That arm...that so mysterious arm... Anyar (talk) 05:32, 30 August 2018 (CEST)