# Question
Title: How to create irregular pronoun paradigms
My language has several cases. I have their affixes worked out for the nouns, as well as the proto-affixes, but what I want to know is, how can I get the *pro*nouns to have different-looking cases? I know I can just simplify (e.g. the dative was **-lū*, and 1sg **īs*; deriving the 1sg dative from **īlu* instead of the proper **īslū* gives modern *yel* vs. 1sg *ye* \[properly *yes*\]), but I want something more like *she* vs. *them*, or *I* vs. *me*. How could I do that?

# Answer
To get a disconnect that extreme between different cases of the same pronoun, there's really only one tool for the job: **suppletion.**

Suppletion is the process where Word A gets reanalyzed as an inflection of Word B. For example, in English, the adjective *good* has the comparative and superlative forms *better* and *best*, respectively - but we would regularly expect **gooder* and **goodest* if *good* worked like all other adjectives, so how did this disconnect happen? Was it some horrifically complicated sequence of sound changes? Nope! *Better* and *best* descend from a completely different Proto-Germanic root than *good*. They were originally the comparative and superlative forms of an entirely different word, **bataz*, until - for some reason, lost to time - **bataz* fell out of use and was regularly replaced by **gōdaz* (from whence *good*), but the comparative/superlative forms of **bataz* for some reason didn't get replaced by the comparative/superlative forms of **gōdaz*. Thus, **gōdaz* snuck into the co-opted the inflections of **bataz*, making them now irregular inflections of **gōdaz* instead. Suppletion!

Pronouns can be susceptible to this too. As you mention, "I" and "me" look very different, very possibly the end result of some suppletion, but that wasn't English's doing, or even Proto-Germanic's. This weird suppletion-looking "I/me" distinction can be reconstructed all the way back in Proto-Indo-European, and got inherited into all its daughter languages. Since the *result* of (I'm assuming) suppletion goes back as far as the comparative method is capable of taking us, it's hard to say which form was originally what other word - they've been linked together for as long as we have data. You could do the same, and make different cases of the same pronoun look totally different as far back as the proto-language, and not bother to explain it beyond "well who knows why the proto did that; if we could reconstruct further back than the proto, then *that* would be the new proto ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯".

If you insist on *evolving* suppletive pronoun forms though - it's telling that IE languages all seem to derive their 3rd person pronouns from **demonstratives** \- words for "this one" or "that one". If you already have a word for "he/she/it", and then derive *another* one from a demonstrative, you can smoosh them together to get case suppletion. We can see this in action in Georgian: the 3rd person singular pronoun, in 6/7 cases, is derived from *m(a)-* (ergative მან *man*, dative მას *mas*, instrumental მით *mit*, etc.) which looks suspiciously like the ergative case ending; one is maybe derived from the other. But the nominative case is ის *is*... which also happens to be the distal demonstrative pronoun ("that one").

Hungarian took the word *mag* "body" and derived a number of reflexive pronouns from it, e.g. *magam* "myself", *magunk* "ourselves", etc. But the most important one is *maga* "him/her/itself", which acquired a dual meaning as a formal, polite *2nd person*, non-reflexive pronoun. Later, Hungarian derived another formal 2nd person pronoun, *ön*, from a reflexive affix. They're both just polite ways to say "you", but deapite both being derived from a reflexive form, they fundamentally come from completely different roots. This hasn't happened in Hungarian yet, but you could imagine a scenario where, if *ön* is preferentially used in certain cases but *maga* is preferentially used in other cases, then they could be smooshed together into a single, suppletive pronoun with e.g. nominative *ön*, but accusative *magát*.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Hungarian is an interesting example - the (personal) pronouns are not inflected by the (agglutinative) suffixes, but vice versa, the suffix is inflected by the pronoun.

E.g. the dative suffix is *-nek* (simplifying a bit):

*ember* -\> *ember-nek*, "to the human"

but:

* *én* (1st person singular pronoun, "I") -\> *nekem*
* *te* (2nd person singular pronoun, "you") -\> *neked*
* *ő* (3nd person singular pronoun, "he/she/it") -\> *neki*
* mi (1nd person plural pronoun, "we") -\> *nekünk*
* ...

you get the picture (this is different from Finnish).

Then apply repeatedly regular phonetic changes and case merging and you end up with a completely different though still regular pronoun paradigm.
> 1 votes

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Tags: diachronics, case, pronouns
---


# Question
Title: Do I need to start with a phonology when creating a new conlang?
The few conlangs I've read about/watched being developed in videos (such as those by Biblaridion) either started with phonology, or the description begins that way.

Whether that's a representative sample or not, is there a benefit to starting with phonology, especially when making a natural conlang?

It feels like an easier thing to add in later, vs. things like grammar.

# Answer
> 8 votes
### NO.

Videos and how to books often present a cookie cutter method of language construction. There is nothing wrong with this at all. Except that it leads many people to a) follow the recipe and b) get stuck on phonology.

The truth is we can start working on a new language anywhere. We can start with phonology or grammar or syntax. I often start with poetry. The other truth is that there is no particular benefit to the glossopoet or to the language maker of starting in one place over another.

# Answer
> 7 votes
You don't have to start there. But it is a convenient place to start; it's hard to create words or grammar if there's nothing to make them concrete. If I have a phonology, I can start creating words and then short sentences. If I don't have a phonology, I can't create words without creating some sort of phonology; "london" and "rover" and "fog" imply an l-r contrast and nasals and fricatives and plosive and some sort of voicing or aspiration distinction. If you want to have a reasonable Latin orthography, you either have to change the words or accept a phonology consistent with that. If you don't have a phonology or words, grammar is a lot more figurative; "plurals are indicated by an s on nouns and a lack of an s on verbs" implies you have an s in your phonology and that noun + "s" is reasonable for your phonology. Starting with phonology leaves everything else a blank slate; starting somewhere else is going to create a lot of phonology implicitly.

# Answer
> 3 votes
You don't have to start there, but it is a good place to start. What often tends to happen if you don't start with phonology is that you will default to the phonology of your native language, perhaps with an additional "weird sound" or two thrown in if you try hard.

There's nothing *necessarily* wrong with this. That said, if you don't set your phonology at the beginning, it's very hard to make changes later. Everything else you build about your language will use your implied phonology, which again, is likely to be the same as your personal native language's phonology with minor changes.

# Answer
> 1 votes
No, you don't. However, it may be easier to start with phonology, especially when you don't have specific features you want your language to have. If you do have features you do want in your language, you can think about the sound changes that could lead to those features and work backward to figure out what phonology would have led to those changes. Biblaridion actually does this in his Conlang Case Study series

You do still need to come up with the phonology early on.

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology
---


# Question
Title: Are there languages where traditional verb features exist on nouns, or noun features on verbs, etc.?
I am looking at the sidebar on Wikipedia.

Are there languages which have "case" or "gender" or "number" or other "noun features" but instead of (or in addition to) being applied to nouns, they are applied to verbs, adjectives, or other word forms? Likewise, are there languages which have modality, person, or tense or other "verb features", but applied to nouns/adjectives/others instead of or in addition to verbs?

I am curious how broad these properties apply in natural and conlangs, and if you can have things that sit outside the traditional box.

# Answer
OK, that sidebar reflects the features of the well-known Indogermanic languages (Latin, Greek, Russian, Sanskrit etc.). We see gender on verbs in Semitic languages and to a lesser amount also in some Latin and Romance contructions (e.g., Perfect Passive *laudatus sum* (m) vs. *laudata sum* (f) "I was lauded"). Although number is assigned to the nouns in the Wikipedia sidebar even the classical languages conjugate their verbs according to number.

While "traditional" languages only have gendered third person pronouns, many other languages also gender the first and second person pronouns.

You also could argue that the popular prefix *ex-* applied to nouns (as in *ex-boyfriend* or *ex-girlfriend*) adds some notion of the typically verbal category tense to the noun.
> 3 votes

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Tags: vocabulary
---


# Question
Title: How to handle modifiers within modifiers in noun phrases?
I asked How does Chinese handle the -ing and -ed in common names, like "Black-bellied whistling duck"? in an attempt to learn better how analytic languages deal with complex noun phrases like:

* Black-bellied whistling duck
* Black-capped warbling finch
* Black-striped woodcreeper
* Black-throated blue warbler
* Chipping sparrow

These are all "proper names" for birds in English. By having the -ed and -ing, it is constructing adjectives which are applied to the final noun. Modifiers within modifiers, essentially. I am still unclear how Chinese deals with them, but that is beside the point.

In the conlang I am working on, the "base" word form is a noun-verb-adjective all at the same time, and you suffix this "base" word with `-a`, `-i` or `-u` to make it those, respectively. But it's starting to get cumbersome with this approach (it seems), because to do the above would be basically (using this word list):

```
veg   balin leg     wisal   mek  barvaza
black belly contain whistle make duck

```

But really this is composed of (as english demonstrates) modifiers within modifiers (the -ing and -ed being modifiers on the modifiers). So I was thinking of:

```
vegu balin legu wisal meku barvaza

```

Here, the `-u` "compiles" the previous unsuffixed things into a modifier/feature/adjective (whatever you want to call it). Then the `-a` tells us the final noun.

Would this be unambiguous or would it lead to ambiguity? What are the pros and cons you can see with this, where does it break down?

Basically, I am still struggling figuring out what is a word-within-a-word and what is just a word, sometimes it seems to be 3 levels of nesting:

```
[big [black [belly -ed] [whistle -ing] duck]]]

```

I was thinking of somehow capturing this nesting, but then you would have to end with like 3 words at the end saying essentially "remove parenthesis remove parenthesis remove parenthesis" haha, and that would be hard to understand when communicating (and speaking).

So what do you think of my approach, will it break down or have ambiguities that you can see? If so, what is an example and how might you resolve it? This language is highly analytic (I think of it as "atomic" where everything is a word, like Chinese or Vietnamese).

To elaborate further, sometimes these phrases are composed of many "compound words". The only example I have is "skilled circumciser" (I was looking at Jewish tradition words, sorry).

```
skill -ed circumcise agent
[skill -ed] [around cut] agent
skill -ed  around cut   agent
kasal legu sok    kratu zeka

```

But "around cut" (or "circumcise"), that is a verb really, but I am making it into an adjective. So it feels incorrect to me what I'm doing, I feel like I should make it a verb, but then people would maybe hear:

```
skill containing around, CUT agent

```

Which is kind of non-sensical... But still, I am confused. Looking for some guidance.

I'm wondering if I can do without the `-u` and just do:

```
veg balin leg wisal mek barvaza

```

Would that make sense? Seems like Chinese might do it like that more.

Another example:

```
מְנוֹרָה
menorah
7-armed candelabra
7-armed candle holder
7   arm contain candle hold tool
xab lim leg     lazup  rug  tula

```

# Answer
> 2 votes
In Sumerian, the first noun of a phrase is the "head" (the thing the others are modifying), and the end of a phrase (whether it's one word or multiple words) is marked with a clitic that indicates its role. (The clitic for "noun modifying another noun" is =ak.)

For example:

> simug nanše=ak=ra
> smith Nanshe=GEN=DAT

Or with brackets:

> (simug (nanše)=ak )=ra
> (smith (Nanshe)=GEN )=DAT
> to Nanshe's smith

Adding in more layers isn't a problem:

> mu ensik ŋirsu=ak=ak=še
> name governor Girsu=GEN=GEN=TERM

With brackets:

> (mu (ensik (ŋirsu)=ak )=ak )=še
> (name (governor (Girsu)=GEN )=GEN )=TERM
> for the name of the governor of Girsu

In general, a new noun acts as an open bracket, and a case marker acts as a close bracket. This works just as you'd expect with multiple modifiers:

> udu gu=a sipad=ene=ak=am
> sheep consume=PART shepherd=PL=GEN=be

Bracketed:

> (udu (gu)=a (sipad=ene)=ak )=am
> (sheep (consume)=PART (shepherd=PL)=GEN )=be
> these are the used-up sheep of the shepherds

# Answer
> 1 votes
In Lingála, modifiers are tagged with the gender of the noun they modify. Since Lingála has at least fourteen genders in the literary dialect, this tends to eliminate any ambiguity.

Numbers in the glosses indicate gender marking, from 0 (personal names and words for family members) to 15 (actions).

> e-lamba y-a m-pembe
> 7-garment 7-of 9-whiteness
> a white robe

> n-tina y-a li-kambo li-ye
> 9-cause 9-of 5-problem 5-this
> the cause of this problem

> e-pai y-a n-zete y-a bo-moi
> 7-place 7-of 9-tree 9-of 14-life
> the location of the Tree of Life

> ma-koki m-a ∅-yo m-a mw-ana w-a li-boso
> 6-right 6-of 0-you 6-of 1-child 1-of 5-front
> your rights as the firstborn child

This can still sometimes cause ambiguity, when there are multiple nouns of the same gender in the sentence:

> m-buma y-a n-zete e-ye
> 9-fruit 9-of 9-tree 9-this
> the fruit of this tree **or** this fruit of the tree

Does "this" attach to "tree" or "fruit"? In this case, it's almost certainly the former; if you wanted to indicate the latter, you could put "this" right after "fruit". As a result, the ambiguity isn't really an issue in practice.

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Tags: nouns, phrase-structure
---


# Question
Title: Asian and African auxlangs like Interslavic?
What are examples of African and Asian auxlangs like Interslavic?

# Answer
> 4 votes
The simple answer is Asian languages don't share a common ancestor like Slavic languages do, and don't have the same degree of mutual intelligibility. Knowing Ukrainian will help you understand Polish; knowing Korean won't help you understand Vietnamese in the same way.

Many African languages do share a common ancestor (they're part of the Bantu family) but they've also diversified much more than the Slavic languages have since that era. I wouldn't be surprised if someone's tried to create a pan-Bantu conlang, but it's also not surprising if they haven't. It's a much harder task than making Interslavic.

# Answer
> 1 votes
There is the case of Union Ibo, a version of Igbo created by missionaries and used in the Igbo Bible translation. It is a rather inconsistent make-up of different Igbo dialects/languages of Nigeria and it is termed *an Igbo Esperanto*, for a reference see e.g., this paper Ben Filford (2002). An Igbo Esperanto: A history of the Union Ibo Bible 1900-1950.

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Tags: list-of-languages, zonal-languages
---


# Question
Title: How likely is it for conlangs to have verbs that have the same conjugation as another verb?
So I have been studying Spanish recently (mainly verb conjugations because I'm great at constructing sentences, but still am horrible when it comes to verb conjugations), and decided to teach myself the verb conjugation for `ser` (to be, used to identify something in a permanent state) in the preterite form.

However, I thought that I was getting a feeling of déjà vu because it looked sort of similar to the verb conjugation for `ir` (to go) in the preterite form. I looked back at my notes to refresh myself on the conjugation of `ir` in the preterite form to make sure that it was just a fake feeling of déjà vu, however, it turned out that the verb conjugations were in fact the same in the preterite form.

For anyone who wants to know, these are the verb conjugations for `ser` and `ir` in the preterite form:

```
Yo          fui
Tú          fuiste
Él/Ella/Ud. fue
Nosotros    fuimos
Vosotros    fuisteis
Ell@s/Uds.  fueron

```

---

### Proof:

---

1. Conjugation of `ser`
2. Conjugation of `ir`

---

This made me think: Is it usually okay for conlangs to have verbs that have the same verb conjugations, leading to the listener having to interpret what is being said entirely based on context, or should this happen more as the language evolves?

---

### Japanese and Chinese

---

I bring up Japanese and Chinese because I feel like they would make good examples of where pretty much *anything* that is said in those two languages is interpreted based on how the listener chooses to interpret what is being said, although being natural languages and not conlangs.

| Example for Mandarin Chinese (Simplified) | Example for Japanese |
| --- | --- |
| "我吃了一个苹果" (`Wǒ chīle yīgè píngguǒ` "*I ate an apple*") could be interpreted by the listener as "我吃了依各凭果" (`Wǒ chīle yī gè píng guǒ` "*I ate yogurt*", although could be interpreted as "*I ate the fruit of Ezekiel*", a more *oldspeak* way of saying it, per se) | This one is more obvious, albeit it being different from the previous example because this example is more just similar sounding words, like "参加" (`sanka` "participation") could be interpreted as "酸化" (`sanka` "oxidation"). Some other examples of this are "漢字" (`kanji` "Chinese characters") and "感じ" (`kanji` "feeling"), "死亡" (`shibou` "death"), "脂肪" (`shibou` "grease") and "志望" (`shibou` "ambition") |

---

### On the topic of Old Spanish

---

| Old Spanish |
| --- |
| I wasn't really able to find anything that really related to similar sounding words/verbs on the Wikipedia for Old Spanish, since the only thing that I could find to relate to this was `osso` "bear" v.s `oso` "I dare", which while looking different despite being pronounced the same, apparently are written the same in Modern Spanish today (`oso` "bear" and `oso` "I dare") so I feel like this would at least be a somewhat good example at least. |

---

#### According to the Old Spanish Wikipedia

---

> The Old Spanish spelling of the sibilants was identical to modern Portuguese spelling, which, unlike \[modern\] Spanish, still preserves most of the sounds of the medieval language, and so is still a mostly faithful representation of the spoken language. Examples of words before spelling was altered in 1815 to reflect the changed pronunciation:
>
> > ...
> >
> > *osso* 'bear' versus *oso* 'I dare' (Modern Spanish *oso* in both cases, cf. Portuguese *urso* \[a borrowing from Latin\], *ouso*)

> For anyone who is wondering, "`cf.`" means "confer".

---

### My question

---

Is it likely that new conlangs will have verbs that will be conjugated the exact same as another verb, or should this happen more as the language evolves?

---

#### Links that I used when researching this

---

1. Old Spanish Wikipedia
2. Similar sounding words in Japanese source
3. Google Translate (I usually use Google Translate to get rōmaji "ローマ字" (Literal translation to English: Roman characters) and pīnyīn "拼音" (Literal translation to English: Pinyin) if I can't remember it off of the top of my head.)
4. DeepL Translate (This is more for getting an extremely accurate translation if I want to provide an example to what I am talking about, however I usually always then go to Google Translate to get the pronunciation if I can't exactly remember it)

---

#### To clear up any confusion

---

1. I am sorry if I lost you really anywhere in my thought process, I'm good at writing short questions but I feel like whenever I try to write a long essay explaining my question, it always has seemed like I tend to more or less accidentally go off track on what my question is supposed to be about.
2. This is more of an addendum to point #1, but I also feel like sometimes I also don't seem to add a whole lot of evidence to long essays that I write, so sorry if it feels like that.
3. I am also sorry if any of my are not related to my post.

# Answer
This is known as *suppletion*: when a particular verb, for whatever reason, is missing some of its forms, and they have to be filled in by another verb. This is why "go" and "went" look so different in English: "go" is missing its past tense, so we've filled it in with the past tense from the unrelated verb "wend" (as in "wend your way"). For a more modern example, "can" has no future tense, so we have to fill in the gap with "be able to" ("she could do it", "she can do it", "she will be able to do it").

In Latin, as in English, the verb "to be" ended up becoming an amalgamation of a bunch of different stems via this process. Some forms are cognate with "is", from a PIE root meaning "be" (*sum*, *est*, *esse*, etc), and others are cognate with "be", from a PIE root meaning "become" (*fuī*, *futūrus*, etc). This process only got worse in Spanish: regular sound changes made some of these forms indistinguishable, so forms from another verb (*sedēre*, "reside") were co-opted to fill in the gaps. This is where forms like *ser* come from.

Meanwhile, the verb "to go" in Latin was fairly regular, but had a very short stem: a single *i-*. This meant that a *lot* of its forms became indistinguishable when sound changes merged this stem into the endings. As a result, Spanish once again co-opted forms from other verbs to fill in its gaps: some forms come from *vadere* "to walk" (like *voy*), while others were taken from the already-suppletive verb for "to be".

So, how common is this? Suppletion is very common! But if it creates too much ambiguity, more suppletion will happen to reduce that ambiguity: in Latin, the past tense of *tollere* "lift" were used to fill in gaps in the paradigm of *ferre* "carry", so *tollere* started using the past tense of the prefixed form *sustollere* instead.

Evidently in this case, the ambiguity didn't create too much of a problem, so it survived unchanged (like "can" and "be able to" in English). But it's easy to imagine Alternate Spanish where things turned out mostly the same, but *ir* borrowed a different verb's past tense to reduce this ambiguity (like how the past tense of "wend" is now "wended" instead of "went").

It's also possible for verbs to end up with the same conjugation, not because of suppletion, but because sound changes made them into homophones. Similarly, when this happens, either the ambiguity will be acceptable, or it won't be (and one of the verbs will fall out of use as a result).
> 8 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, history, verbs
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# Question
Title: How is it not ambiguous that the parts don't add up to the whole when creating compound words?
This question was sparked off a recent question: Are Sanskrit words more than the sum of the parts? I am serious when I ask, because as an outsider to Sanskrit, I would think the parts would add up to the whole, but they don't. Likewise, in English (as @Draconis pointed out), the word "fireman" has no notion of "fighting fires", but that's what it means.

So from a conlanging perspective, I have been fighting with this issue for probably a year. At one point I was thinking about wrapping noun phrases in affixes to let it be known:

> This is a *formal* gray fox or gorilla ("large monkey" in the conlang), we are not simply describing a gray fox or a large monkey.

So it was either going to be:

```
a- [...noun phrase...] -wa

```

as opposed to just

```
[no prefix] [...noun phrase...] [no suffix]

```

So like `a-gray fox-wa` or `a-large monkey-wa`. Then I thought, maybe create words instead (bounding words), so `form gray fox morf` or `form large monkey morf`, but then things started to get long and verbose.

So coming across Sanskrit, and coming to this realization that in real languages, you can have words which mean more than the sum of the parts, that means I can say "large monkey" (without any extra words or affixes), and have it be known that "large monkey" is always talking about gorilla. This seems like how Chinese works actually, but I always thought that was kind of limiting or strange.

For example, in Chinese, "river horse" is "hippo", but if you want to talk about a horse of the river, you can't say the string "river horse", you have to say something else like "the horse of the river", otherwise you are talking about hippo. In Chinese, these words must be memorized and avoided, which to me that would cause errors, because say in year 1800 you said "The river horse was cool" (talking about a horse of the river), then in year 1900 "river horse" came to be defined as "hippo", then the old text would maybe be misinterpreted (you would have to take the day of writing and word origin history into account when interpreting, jeez!).

So I am wondering, how can you reason with yourself to determine that saying "fire man" in your conlang means "fire fighter" basically, and yet also be able to say the abstract descriptive "fire man" (meaning man of the fire, or other meanings based on context)? Is it okay to leave off my affixes (or extra words), and do like Sanskrit does and just have "fire man" mean "one who fights fires"? Rather than saying "a-fire man-wa" (which would be more unambiguous). How do I make sure that you can still talk about fire man as a general adjective thing, if this word takes up a specific meaning?

I don't get how to think through that and make sure the conlang isn't going to run into problems.

# Answer
Fundamentally, all words have meanings by convention, and a learner of the language simply has to learn them. Even when the meaning of the whole *does* come straightforwardly from the meaning of the parts, how do you know that a "firefighter" fights *against* fire, while a "swordfighter" fights *with* a sword? The answer is that you've learned this as part of your knowledge of English. Similarly, you can't replace "firefighter" with something like "firekiller" that seems like it should mean the same thing: that's simply not the word for this thing.

Compound words exist because they're an easy way to make new words, and they're easier to learn than just a random string of syllables. But they're still *words*, which have to be learned as part of the mental lexicon.

As for ambiguity, since a compound word is made of *specific* pieces, you can get the literal meaning by just exchanging a synonym for one of those. Something like "flame fighter" doesn't have the fixed meaning that "firefighter" does.

Or you can use different syntax: in Latin and Greek, compound words remove the case marking from all components except the last one. In English, compound words are single words, so they take different stress patterns than a full phrase would: "ríverhorse" vs "ríver hórse". And so on.
> 3 votes

# Answer
TLDR: It is very ambiguous, with some regularity.

I struggle with the problem of ambivalence versus economy a lot. I have terrible memory, and I think I am much too afraid of ambivalence. In reality, such an awful lot is context-dependent, convention-dependent, semi-systematic, and it still works.

I think that the details are largely due to intuition, convention, and just day-to-day use. People need a word for someone who kills others. Killing-man, killer, murderer, dead-making-person, king of collecting heartbeats - whatever, one of them sticks. If there are two competing words, and both survive, they will likely mean something slightly different.

How do I know that a fireman fights fires, as opposed to lighting them? Only from hearing the word many times. There is some rule to it: I know that -man is often used for a "-doer" (because only men were allowed in the workforce in the past, I guess). I can make educated guesses. But ultimately, as a foreign speaker, I just have to learn it.

Indeed, many jokes work by misinterpreting those conventional meanings. "Haha, look how his head burns, he's a real fireman..." (it's a TERRIBLE joke, I know) - hahaha, how funny.

In a naturalistic conlang (for worldbuilding), I would try and find a few "compound schemes" like XYZ-doer, ABC-type-thing, DEF-abstraction etc., derive those from some root, and try not to copy too much from my own language. And I would have a few separate root-words for a concepts specific to that culture. Eg "free slave", a derogatory term for an employee - "money worker", a neutral term for the same, and "tidhi" - a term of endearment.
> 2 votes

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Tags: vocabulary
---


# Question
Title: How to ensure a NATO-esque spelling alphabet works?
I thought my conlang would need a NATO-esque spelling alphabet. In my current sketch, they are words borrowed from Korean and few other languages. They are to serve as mere spelling alphabets, and not to have any meaning in my conlang. (And sorry for changing the phonology and orthography *again*)

| Spelling alphabet | IPA | Origin | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **A**GAŠI | ɑ gɑ ɕi | Korean "아가씨" | madam |
| **Ä**GUGGA | æ guk kɑ | Korean "애국가" | anthem |
| **C**ÌNAMI | t͡sɯ nɑ mi | Japanese "津波" | tsunami |
| **Č**IČARÌM | t͡ɕi t͡ɕɑ ɾɯm | Korean "치찰음" | sibilant |
| **E**IGO | e i go | Japanese "英語" | English |
| **È**RINI | ə ɾi ni | Korean "어린이" | child |
| **G**IRÈGI | ki ɾə gi | Korean "기러기" | goose |
| **I**SUNŠIN | i sun ɕin | Korean "이순신" | Yi Sunsin |
| **Ì**MGÌGSÈN | ɯm gɯk sən | Korean "음극선" | electron beam |
| **K**ARSENTÈR | k͡xɑɻ sen təɻ | Korean "카센터" | garage |
| **L**ISSÌNÈR | lis sɯ nəɻ | English "listener" | - |
| **M**INARI | mi nɑ ɾi | Korean "미나리" | dropwort |
| **N**APOLI | nɑ po li | Italian "Napoli" | Naples |
| **O**SAKA | o sɑ k͡xɑ | Japanese "大阪" | Osaka |
| **Ö**SAMČON | ø sɑm t͡ɕon | Korean "외삼촌" | maternal uncle |
| **P**AULA | pɑ u lɑ | German "Paula" | Paula |
| **R**OMEO | ɻo me o | English "Romeo" | - |
| **S**AMAGÜ | sɑ mɑ gy | Korean "사마귀" | mantis |
| **Š**IGTAGPO | ɕik tɑk po | Korean "식탁보" | tablecloth |
| **T**EGAMI | te gɑ mi | Japanese "手紙" | letter |
| **U**RETAN | u ɾe tɑn | Korean "우레탄" | urethane |
| **Ü**SSARAM | ys sɑ ɾɑm | Korean "윗사람" | elder / senior |

At first glance, this seems to work well, especially for the syllables are distinctive per alphabet. But how can I ensure this? Is there a caveat I've overlooked?

# Answer
> 4 votes
The best way is to do the same thing they did in real life: test it! Record yourself spelling something out with these words, distort it and add some static, then see how well you can make out the words. (Or better yet, see how well *someone else* can make out the words.) See if any of the words sound too similar, or if you could shorten some of them without causing a problem (the NATO one has several one-syllable words).

# Answer
> 4 votes
A NATO style phonetic alphabet needs three things:

1. The words have to be clearly distinct from other words in the list.
2. The words should ideally be short with uncomplicated sounds.
3. The words should be unique enough that if you know the alphabet, you don't need to actually hear the entire word to know what it is when transmitted over a bad radio connection or in a noisy environment.

Give you an example: let's say you have a patrol out in a city and they report having come under fire from a building, and for whatever reason they don't use grid coordinates but instead give you the street address. This is what you hear over a bad radio connection:

> "...number fife niner tree lima *(static)* -dia papa *(static)* -erra *(static)* -arlie alpha *(static)* -ovem- *(static)* india."

If you know the alphabet, you wouldn't have much of an issue decoding that even having only received fragments of the words: they're reporting the building as 593 Lipscani. This works because none of the words share a sequence of the same syllables, or nearly the same syllables, in the same order.

So looking at your word list, you have "OSAKA" and ÖSAMČON. You have both words starting with two similar sounding syllables, and both are three syllables long. That can cause confusion over a bad connection.

Your word list should also keep it simple as possible for non-native speakers. The first phoneme is obviously the most important as it represents the required letter, but the rest should be as "basic" as possible, using sounds that are as common in multiple languages as possible to make it as easy to pronounce by as many different speakers as possible.

Going to the NATO alphabet, take "whiskey". You need it to represent "w", but the actual phoneme /w/ isn't present in many languages, thus you don't see that phoneme present in any of the other words. Someone speaking who doesn't have that phoneme in their language doesn't even have to worry about trying to pronounce it: if you hear "viskee" or "hwiskee" or "isskay" or something, it doesn't matter because you know what word they are trying to pronounce, thus what letter they are indicating.

And that works for all of the words. "Quebec" is often pronounced "kwa-bek" by English speakers, but is properly "kay-bek". Doesn't matter, it's distinct enough from all the other words that the receiver knows that word it's supposed to be.

**ADDENDUM**

You should also consider if you expect people with assorted accents and/or dialects and/or other first languages to be using this alphabet. "OSAKA" and ÖSAMČON provide the example here again. The speaker and listener may not differentiate between those two initial vowels; their own language may pronounce them the same, or they may not have one or the other, or neither. So that's why you need the words representing them to be as different as possible. Consider, in the NATO alphabet, "KILO" and "QUEBEC". If you pronounce the latter properly, both have the same initial consonant but there is absolutely no way to confuse the two words, and thus what letter they represent. Similarly, in my accent, the initial sounds in "ALPHA" and "OSCAR" aren't that different, but the words are so distinct there isn't a problem in determining if I mean "A" or "O".

# Answer
> 1 votes
To extend on Keith Morrison answer:

Split up all the words per syllables and put them in a spreadsheet program. Sort alphabetically and manually go through to validate that there's not a repetitive sounding written patterns.

Then go over sounds in a similar manner.

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Tags: conlang-creation
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# Question
Title: Are there any general rules for creating verb conjugation for a conlang?
So I have been thinking a lot about trying to make my own conlang. I have attempted before to create one in the past, however, all of them have sadly been abandoned. Looking back at them (since I still have the original pieces of paper for all of them), it seems that I have always had a difficult time with creating the verb conjugations for the conlang for some reason. Are there any general rules for creating verb conjugation for a conlang, or is there not?

Edit: Sorry about the confusion that I caused with my question (as pointed out by @nearsighted), I am asking about creating conjugations.

# Answer
You should clarify if you mean creating *conjugations*, or *morphologies*. The former refers to entirely different ways that a verb can inflect. For example, a language might have *samel-ôŋ* "to run" become *samel-iz* "I run," while *vêsa-kh* "to cough" becomes *vêsa-nu* "I cough" ─ two completely different patterns. The latter refers simply to the forms that they take, and how they are used and interact with other morphological units. I'll adress each of these, and for both naturalistic and non-naturalistic languages.

## Naturalistic

#### Conjugations

If you're making a naturalistic language using diachronics, then you should probably be able to make conjugations via sound change. Maybe the old suffix for 1st person was an *-n* suffix, and sound change nasalized vowels before nasal codas and replaced word-final CC clusters with CCa ─ then you get Conjugation 1 (words ending with vowels): nasalize the vowel, and Conjugation 2 (words ending with consonants): *-na*. ─ Or maybe the suffix was *-gh*. Then it disappeared and lengthened the vowel, and the long vowels raised to new short vowels. Now you get a vowel shift for words ending with vowels.

Or you could do something like this: perhaps the proto-language contrasted telic with atelic verbs, or some similar contrast, and different object pronouns were used ─ perhaps, like we sometimes do in English, atelic verbs could use prepositions before the objects (cf. "shot," "shot at"). Then the object pronouns attach to the verb to become agreement, and then the telicity distinction is mostly lost ─ now you have two conjugations.

#### Morphologies

This is much simpler. Just have an old multiword expression collapse into the verb (do some study on syntax and grammaticalization).

## Non-naturalistic

If it's not naturalistic, just make everything up! But if you need inspiration, look up some real-world language's verbal systems, and take some ideas from those.

But non-naturalistic languages don't feel very fun ─ you can just do whatever you want. I would advise you to tread the beautiful path of naturalism, instead of making non-naturalistic languages (unless you're an auxlanger or engelanger).
> 2 votes

# Answer
The first you should do is separating two things: What should be expressed in the conjugation, and the concrete design of the conjugation tables.

Note that languages can exist without any verbal conjugation, and all categories expressed by verbal conjugation can be expressed using other means or completely left out when sufficiently clear from context.

When you have verbal conjugation, there is a distinction between finite verb form and non-finite ones. Essentially, in a finite verb form all verbal categories are explicitly specified, but non-finite verb forms are deliberately vague about some or even all of them. The non-finite verb form comprise things like infinitives (a language can have more than one infinitive, Latin, e.g., has 6 of them), participles, verbal nouns, supines, verbal adverbs. The number of non-finite verb form varies greatly between the languages of the world, and there are even languages with (almost) no non-finite verb forms (see this question and its answers https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/46570/9781 for interesting examples).

Now to the point of what to put into a conjugation table, there are actually a lot of verbal categories (see The chapters labelled "Verbal Categories" in wals.info: Tense, Aspect, Voice, Mood, Evidentiality, Polarity (i.e. Negation), Person, Number, Gender, ... , and as conlanger you can be creative here and invent new verbal categories fitting to the world you build.

Last to the point of designing the conjugation tables: Take care of some kind of redundancy, when you have person marked in the conjugation, reuse the person markers, e.g., for different tenses (there may be some variation in them). Starting with a fully agglutinative morphology and than blurring it by using sound shifts and elisions of sounds is a good idea to achieve this. And you can have different conjugation classes, as covered in @Nearsighted's answer.
> 3 votes

# Answer
The thing about an artificial language is that you get to create the rules.

They can resemble any real language or be totally outrageous.

I recommend to you:

1. Skip over some general rules on how verb conjugation works
2. Look at some examples (I recommend more than 10 distinct languages)
3. Try to find a pattern, twist it, flip it, at the end that's how you'll arrive on what conjugation ought to achieve in your language
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, grammar, verbs
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# Question
Title: Are there languages that don't prefix verbs with "to be" or "to do" in continuous or progressive aspect and the like?
I am working on a conlang and wondering how we can rework the "continuous" aspect, like present continuous, looking for how other languages implement such a grammatical verb feature. Some examples in English are:

> The boy is laughing.
> My parents are always making me go to school!

Chinese seems to have:

* 现在 - xiàn zài - now
* 此刻 - cǐ kè - at the moment
* 目前 - mù qián - at present, currently

As in one example:

> 他现在过得怎么样?
> Tā xiànzàiguò dé zěnme yàng?
> How is he doing now?

But I don't speak Chinese yet, still working with English. What are 2 or 3 examples from some other non-English language which have the continuous aspect \_without the verbs "to do" or "to be" around them, like we have in English?

I would like to say:

> He eating.
> He wearing clothes.

Why do we need the "to be" as in `is` in there to make it sound right in English? Is that just an English quirk? Are there languages that have it exactly like I've written? Or even better, where the `-ing` is itself also a separate word/particle, like in this pseudo-gloss:

```
He eat <ASP.continous>

```

I think Chinese has continuous aspect separate, but not sure about the "to be" part preceding it.

Are there languages which do continuous aspect very differently than even these 2 approaches I've described? For example, maybe they have a new word instead of a "to be" form prefixing the main continuous verb, or perhaps they do something else entirely.

I guess I could also ask the same for the perfect aspect, if there are languages which don't precede verbs with "to have" in this context.

> "I have always guided him".

# Answer
Note that continuous aspect is kind of optional. Many languages don't express it at all by default, though there are always means to express it when emphasised or needed. Here's an example from a natural language (German):

*Er geht zur Schule* "He goes to school" (habitual)/ "He is going to school" (continuous); depending on context.

*Er geht **gerade** zur Schule* "He is going to school right now" (continuous aspect emphasised through the adverb *gerade*, here translated as "right now".

In this example there is no special gramatical form for the continuous aspect, it is only highlighted by use of an adverb. Note that *gerade* also works in other tenses, like

*Er ging **gerade** zur Schule, als ...* "He was going to school, when ..."
> 4 votes

# Answer
English has two main ways of indicating the tense/aspect/mood/etc of a verb.

Mood (a real event vs a hypothetical, etc) is indicated by a word at the very beginning of the verb phrase: can, should, might, may, etc. Future time is also indicated this way ("will"). Past vs non-past doesn't get an explicit marking here, but the next verb after this point in the sentence changes its form, so syntacticians generally say there's an invisible element which exists in that position and tells the next verb to change its form. This position in the sentence is generally called "T", for "tense".

Aspect and voice, on the other hand, are indicated by *auxiliary verbs* in between "T" and the verb: it *was* written, it *was being* written, it *had been being* written. This position in the sentence is sometimes called "Aux", for "auxiliary".

Some syntacticians claim that this is universally true. All languages work like English and have a "T" position and an "Aux" position and the "Aux" position is used to indicate aspect and voice. According to these syntacticians, if a language *doesn't* indicate aspect with an auxiliary, it's because there's actually an *invisible hidden auxiliary*, it's there but we can't see it. You may have run into these claims before.

Many other syntacticians, though, think this is stupid. Because many languages really don't seem to have auxiliary verbs for aspect like English does. In Latin and Ancient Greek, for example, it's marked directly on the verb:

* *Currebam* "I was running", *cucurrī* "I ran"
* Ἔφευγον "I was running", ἔφυγον "I ran"

Other languages, such as German (see jk's answer for examples), don't have any explicit marking for this sort of aspect distinction at all.

Still others use something other than an auxiliary verb. Egyptian uses a preposition:

* *jw.f ꜣtp ꜥꜣ.f* "he loads up his donkey", *jw.f **ḥr** ꜣtp ꜥꜣ.f* "he **is** loading up his donkey"

*Ḥr* is a preposition literally meaning "on", derived from a noun meaning "face" or "surface".

If you don't go for the "every language actually works exactly like English" theory (most linguists nowadays don't), I suspect English is in the minority here. Auxiliary verbs for aspectual information show up in some other non-English languages as well, such as Lingála, but most languages either put the marking directly on the verb, or don't mark it explicitly at all.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Latvian language uses verb conjugation to indicate "to be" and "to do". In fact, many perceive "to" as a separate concept in English, i.e. they don't perceive "to be" as a unit, which it clearly is.

Examples: Es skrienu. I run. Es skriešu. I am going to run. Es skriedams. In middle of a run, I am. Es skrēju. I did run. Es kļūšu par skrējēju. I will become a runner. Es vēlos būt skrējējs. I want to be a runner.

Analysis of the last example: Es (I) vēlos (wish to) būt (to be) skrējējs (a runner).

Different examples: Es mācīšos. I am going to study. Tu mācīsies? Are you going to study? Mēs mācīsimies! We are going to study. Ja mēs mācīsimies, tad tu mācīsies un es mācīšos. If we are going to study, then you are going to study and I am going to study.

Analysis of last example: Ja (if) mēs (we) mācīsimies (will study), tad (then) tu (you) mācīsies (will study) un (and) es (I) mācīšos (will study).

And this one represents exactly what I mean.
> 1 votes

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Tags: verbs
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# Question
Title: What are mandatory words groups a language have to have?
I'm creating Merovian (meroo) constructed language since about 2004 and I have yet to settle down on standartisation. Merovian currently has 5 word groups and "other words".

Noun Verb Adjective Science/Field of study/Work industry Executor/Noun conjugated in a way that refers to the agent who's doing the thing non represents

Other words are broad, catch-all category that includes items such as: and, if, me, you, us, also, etc.

Is there a word category I absolutely must have?

# Answer
### Word

You can get away with having only one category, and this has been done before. I won't claim to have read very deeply into how it works, but Tom Breton came up with an invented language in the 1990s that works at least as a proof of concept that you can get away with making a language that has only nouns in it. Technically, in addition to all of its nouns, he uses four grammatical "operators", which are punctuation marks, but those could easily be replaced by nonce words.

Check out this ancient relic of an invented language in all its ur-internet glory here! --- ALLNOUN.
> 4 votes

# Answer
It seems to be generally agreed that all languages have "nouns" and "verbs"—or if you prefer, some way to refer to entities and some way to refer to predicates.

Everything else is optional, or can be covered by one of these categories. Treating pronouns as a subset of nouns, for example, is quite common. In Swahili, many English adjectives are expressed with nouns instead: to say that something's green you use *-a kijani*, literally "of leaf". Same for most prepositional phrases: "the cat is in the box" is *paka iko ndani ya sanduku*, "cat is-located interior of box". Akkadian uses nouns for most English determiners and quantifiers: "all the kings" is *šarrū kalû=šunu* "kings, entirety of-them". In Mandarin, most English adverbs and prepositions are expressed with verbs, sometimes called "coverbs": instead of doing something "for you", you attach the extra verb phrase *bāng nǐ* "(and) help you".

The hardest things to reduce to either nouns or verbs are small grammatical markers, like "and" (a conjunction). But some languages do without these entirely: in Ancient Egyptian, for example, there's usually no explicit marker of how one sentence connects to the previous one. Others, like Biblical Hebrew, mark this on the verb instead of using a separate word.

So, is there any language that has *only* nouns and verbs, and no other categories? Probably not. I certainly can't think of any. But for any category other than nouns and verbs, there's *some* language that doesn't have it. So the answer to "is there any other category I absolutely *must* have" is no. Every other category can be done without.
> 6 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, parts-of-speech
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# Question
Title: Is a language in which a person will not have rhotacism, neither lambdacism when speaking it realistic?
I imagined a language created by humans, not common humans (*Homo sapiens*), I mean a fictional species named tusked humans, commonly named orcs (their scientific name is *Homo desertum*) (which means human from deserts).

In the most common language created by orcs, the following phonemes are:

1. There are two nasal consonants: the /m/ sound (as in English mother) (as in French *mère*, which means mother) (as in Spanish *madre*, which also means mother), and the /n/ sound (as in English night) (as in French *noir*, which means black) (as in Spanish *negro*, which also means black);
2. There are six fricatives, four voiceless, and two voiced: the /ɸ/ sound (as in Maori *whakapapa*, which means genealogy), the /s/ sound (as in English snake) (as in French *serpent*, which means both snake and serpent) (as in Spanish *sangre*, which means blood), the /x/ sound (as in Spanish *juego*, which means game), the /h/ sound (as in English house), the /z/ sound (as in English zoology), (as in French *zoologie*, which naturally means zoology), and the /ɣ/ sound (as in Spanish *amigo*, which means friend);
3. There are six plosives (or stops, if you want), four voiceless, two voiced: the /p/ sound (as in English *princess*) (as in French *père*, which means father) (as in Spanish *padre*, which also means father), the /t/ sound (as in English turtle) (as in French *tortue*, which means both turtle and tortoise), the /k/ sound (as in English kilogram) (as in French *kilogramme*, which means kilogram) (as in Spanish *casa*, which means house), the /q/ sound (as in Somali *qaab*, which means shape), the /d/ sound (as in English dipteran) (as in French *diptère*, which means dipteran), and the /g/ sound (as in English green) (as in French *gorille*, which means gorilla);
4. There are five affricates, three voiceless, and two voiced: the /ps/ sound (as in French *psychologie*) (which naturally means psychology), the /ts/ sound (as in French *tsar*, which means czar), the /dz/ sound, the /ks/ sound, and the /gz/ sound (respectively, as in French *réflexe*, which means reflex, and as in French *xylophone*, which naturally means xylophone);
5. There is only one subfricate (which means inverted affricates): the /sk/ sound (as in English scarlet) (as in French *scarabée*, which means scarab);
6. There are three semivowels: the /j/ sound (as in English yellow) (as in French *hyène*, which means hyena), the /w/ sound (as in English world) (as in French *oiseau*, which means bird) (as in Spanish *abuela*, which means grandmother), and the /ɥ/ sound (as in French *fruit*, which naturally means fruit);
7. There are ten standard vowels: the /a/ sound (as in French *arbre*, which means tree), the /æ/ sound (as in English cat), the /ə/ sound (as in French *atelier*, which means workshop), the /e/ sound (as in French *étranger*, which means stranger), the /ø/ sound (as in French *bleu*, which means blue), the /o/ sound (as in French *automne*, which means autumn), the /i/ sound (as in English hippie) (as in French *illusion*, which naturally means illusion), the /u/ sound (as in English cook) (as in French *ouvrier*, which means worker), the /y/ sound (as in French *univers*, which means universe), and the /ɯ/ sound (as in Japanese *kuki*, which means air);
8. There are zero nasal vowels;
9. There are seven diphthongs: the /aj/ sound (as in English knife) (as in Spanish *aire*, which means air) (as in French *chandail*, which means shirt), the /aw/ sound (as in English cow) (as in Spanish *menopausia*, which means menopause), the /ej/ sound (as in English day) (as in Spanish *rey*, which means king), the /ew/ sound (as in Spanish *neutro*, which means neutral), the /oj/ sound (as in Spanish *hoy*, which means today), the /ow/ sound (as in English show), and the /uj/ sound (as in French *ratatouille*, which naturally means ratatouille).

So, I wonder why would a language created by humans almost completely lack approximants (the only ones are semivowels).

# Answer
To answer the actual question asked, lacking `/r/` and `/l/` doesn't seem especially odd. It's very plausible for `/l/` to turn into `/w/`, for example, or for `/r/` to turn into `/z/` or `/h/`.

But the rest of your inventory strikes me as very weird in its asymmetry. It's not just about what sounds are missing, but about what sounds you *have*.

To see this, I recommend putting your phonemes into a table, rather than listing them out like this; most conlangers already know what `/d/` means (or can easily look it up if they don't), and giving English and French examples with translations is just clutter. It also doesn't offer much clarity into the pronunciation, because e.g. English and French `/d/` are pronounced somewhat differently—is your intent to have it be alveolar, like in English, or dental, like in French?

Once you make a table, some things will stand out:

Having only a labial nasal is quite weird. Is there a reason for the lack of `/n/`? Similarly, the stops are strangely asymmetrical. Having `/p/` and `/d/`, but no `/b/` or `/t/`, is quite unusual. Having gaps in the inventory is fine, like how Arabic has `/b/` but no `/p/`, and `/q/` but no `/ɢ/`. But these gaps usually still have a pattern to them: notice how these gaps in Arabic happen right at the edges of the inventory, to the frontmost and backmost stops.

If you add `/t/` and `/n/` to your inventory, it'll be more symmetrical and come off as more naturalistic.
> 5 votes

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Tags: phonology, phonetics, biolinguistics
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# Question
Title: Why are sign languages considered to be natural rather than constructed languages?
Linguists consider sign languages to be natural languages. Surely they had been invented/constructed at some point in time by someone.

So why are they not categorized as constructed, but as natural languages? And in what circumstances could they be considered to be constructed languages?

# Answer
The history of sign languages is more akin to that of creoles than that of a constructed language which later gained native speakers. Consider the following two examples:

The grammar of **Esperanto** and a large chunk of its vocabulary was created, codified and written down by L. L. Zamenhof. People who were interested learned his language according to his rules and later passed it on to their children, creating the first native speakers of it.

The development of **Tok Pisin** is described as follows: Contact between English speakers and locals of Papua New Guinea gave rise to a pidgin, an incomplete and bare-bones not-quite-language that was just good enough to communicate - everyone would have spoken it a bit differently at that point in time. It became used more commonly and was passed down as a native language to children, creating a full-fledged language. At no point however did its speakers sit down and decide on what grammar Tok Pisin ought to have.

Now compare these with the case of the **Nicaraguan Sign Langauge**, the currently only natural langauge which we have actively seen develop. Deaf children of Nicaragua previously communicated with the people closest to them with improvised home signs and gestures (in other words they had at best something akin to a pidgin). When they were brought together in a new school for the deaf, they had the need to communicate with each other. The school encouraged use of mouthing or fingerspelling Spanish, but the students, who were not native speakers of Spanish failed at learning these skills. Instead, they started communicating by using their own home signs, forming a pidgin that developed over the following years and was taught to younger students who later arrived. Over time, the language developed complexities similar to what you would find in other signed languages - evidence that it had developed beyond the initial pidgin stage.

It is clear that the example of Nicaraguan Sign Language is much more similar to that of Tok Pisin than that of Esperanto.
> 27 votes

# Answer
The constructed versus natural language distinction is less of a binary opposition, and more of a continuum. There are many spoken languages as well that can partially qualify as 'constructed', including Standard Italian and Nynorsk. Every language to some degree has been modified by someone's conscious choice. A conlang is set apart largely by the degree of conscious choice that's been applied to it.

Signed languages, though they are relatively new on a linguistic scale, are not typically made up by a majority of constructed grammar rules and so on. The signs themselves are often consciously created (though just as often not), but the grammar around them is mostly generated spontaneously as the language is used more and more - rules begin to coalesce as people need to use their language in more and more circumstances. No one sat down and decided that in ASL, for example, you could set up a location as a pronominal referent and direct future signs toward that location as a way of referring to that pronoun. It simply happened - someone started doing it, what they were doing was sufficiently clear to get across, and then it was grammar. In a conlang, that grammar would have been the result of a conscious choice.

Honestly, spoken languages could have a very similar history. There's nothing that sets signed languages apart from spoken ones in this regard except their newness - we've watched sign languages come into being out of nothing, while all spoken languages are derived from some ancestor that's been lost in the depths of time. Spoken languages could have had an absolutely identical genesis, for all we know.
> 12 votes

# Answer
The basic explanation is that sign languages often emerge from home sign, meaning the system of gestures that emerges when a deaf child does not have exposure to a formal language while a constructed language is created by one person as a system of communication with new syntax and semantic rules. However, there is no language that has no constructed elements especially when dealing with numbers or words that are used for specific subjects. It is equally true that there are basic elements of language that are natural and required such as a basic set of concepts, the basic communication functions, and way to construct utterances with more than one word or gesture.
> 0 votes

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Tags: terminology, sign-languages, classification
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title: How do mora-timed languages work?

text:
# Question
Title: How do mora-timed languages work?
So I was researching a bit on different types of languages, mainly languages from Eastern Asia, because those seemed to have been very intriguing to me, when I came across Japanese. Now, here's what the Wikipedia page on Japanese says:

> Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonatics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent.

---

Now here's what a "mora-timed language" is:

---

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According to the Wikipedia on mora-timed languages when it comes to Japanese/dialects of Japanese:

> Most dialects of Japanese, including the standard, use morae, known in Japanese as *haku* (拍) or *mōra* (モーラ) rather than syllables, as the basis of the sound system. Writing Japanese in kana (hiragana and katakana) is said by those scholars who use the term *mora* to demonstrate a moraic system of writing.

And according to that same Wikipedia page at the top:

> A **mora** (plural *morae* or *moras*; often symbolized **μ**) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as *ba* consists of one mora (*monomoraic*) while a long syllable such as *baa* consists of two (*bimoric*); extra-long syllables with three moras (*trimoraic*) are relatively rare. Such metrics are also referred to as syllable weight.
>
> The term comes from the Latin word for 'linger, delay', which was also used to translate the Greek word χρόνος : *chrónos* ('time') in its metrical sense.

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Now here's how I would assume how a mora-time conlang would work:

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1. Similar to how most mora-timed languages that are widely used today, there has to be something as the sound basis of the language (as why I think \[although this might not necessarily be true\] English would not be a mora-timed language)
2. Now, ask yourself: are there/are there going to be (as this might be a constructed language) any different types of morae present in the language?

And I ask what I did in Note 2 because of this:

> For example, in the two-syllable word *mōra*, the *ō* is a long vowel and counts as two morae. The word is written in three syllables, モーラ, corresponding here to *mo-o-ra*, each containing one mora. Therefore, scholars argue that the 5/7/5 pattern of the *haiku* in modern Japanese is of morae instead of syllables.

Therefore, it is sufficient to say that my example as to why I put Note 2 there is valid because it is possible to have more than one *type* of mora in a language. The Wikipedia only mentions that trimoric syllables are rare in languages that we hear today.

3. More of an addendum to Note 2, however, this only really applies to syllables in a language, and nothing else.

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# Other examples of mora-timed languages

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## Ancient Greek

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According to the Wikipedia for mora-timed languages, short vowels (such as ε "*e*") in Ancient Greek have one mora, and longer diphthongs/vowels contain 2 mora (such as η "*ee*"). It also says that there are two types of accents that is only placed on one mora of a word:

1. The **acute** accent ´

What this does: It represents a high pitch on a single mora or the last mora of a long vowel, for example, έ "*é*" and ή ""

2. The **circumflex** accent ~

What this does: It represents a high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel, the most prominent example being ῆ "*ée*"

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## (Old) English

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Here's how mora-timing worked in Old English:

1. Monophthongs (a word that has a single perceived auditory quality) and short diphthongs (such as *ai* or *oi*) counted as one mora, while long diphthongs and monophthongs were considered to be bimoric. Also, consonants ending a syllable counted as one mora on their own.

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# My question

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Is my understanding of how mora-timed languages work correct, or how could I better understand how they work?

# Answer
> 3 votes
The most important thing to note is that **moras, like phonemes, are a theoretical abstraction**. Some mora-timed languages really are *timed* that way—as in, each mora takes approximately the same amount of time to speak. (Japanese is like this.) Others aren't, but moras are still useful to the analysis.

So they're a theoretical abstraction. But, they're often a useful one! As you pointed out, in Ancient Greek, the accent doesn't just fall on a vowel: if the vowel is long (or a diphthong), the accent can fall either on the first part, or the second. This suggests that we should break vowels down into smaller pieces when talking about accentuation.

Similarly, in Akkadian, to figure out where to put the accent, you need to put syllables into three different categories. *Light* syllables have a short vowel and no coda, *heavy* syllables have either a long vowel or a coda, and *ultraheavy* syllables have an ultralong vowel, or both a long vowel *and* a coda.

This seems like a place where moras would help. We can say a short vowel is one mora, a long vowel two, an ultralong vowel three, and a coda consonant adds one. Then the three categories of syllables are one mora, two moras, and three or more moras.

It's not likely that each mora was actually pronounced for around the same length of time, like in Japanese, because of how the writing system works: long vowels were sometimes written twice to emphasize their length, but usually weren't (which is odd if they were literally twice as long). Similarly, in Ancient Greek (*unlike* in Japanese) syllables with more than two moras were treated exactly the same as syllables with two moras in poetry. But the moras help explain the facts of the language, and thus are useful to us.

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Tags: phonology, writing-systems
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# Question
Title: What is the relationship between order of object and verb and the position of adverbs?
I've been researching ways to make conlangs more naturalistic. So far, sources such as WALS and a linguist YouTuber Colin Gorrie have stated the relationship between object-verb order and adjective-noun order. But what about *adverbs?* Do adverbs tend to mimic the position of the adjective?

Thanks!

# Answer
First, the site behind the link you provided argues against any correlation of object-verb order and adj-noun order.

> The order of adjective and noun is often claimed to correlate with the order of object and verb. \[...\] \[T\]he data provide no basis for thinking that OV languages have any stronger preference for AdjN order than VO languages do.

However, verb-adverb and verb-object order are correlated. Dryer (1992) "The Greenbergian word order correlations" (English, restricted access) states

> ADVERB. Although manner adverbs and other adverbs often pattern similarly, I consider only manner adverbs here, because many other kinds of adverbs are interpretable as sentence adverbs and exhibit greater flexibility of word order in many languages. Table 10 shows that manner adverbs overwhelmingly precede the verb in OV languages and generally follow the verb in VO languages.

From the table one can see that 89% of the OV languages also position the manner adverb before the verb, and 76% of the VO languages position the manner adverb after the verb.

So if you want to make your language more natural, the natural place for adverbs will be the same as the object if seen from the verb. But I would strongly discourage you from restraining the position of the adverb too much. Even in English, which has an overall fairly strict word order, adverbs can move around in the sentence and all languages I know at least provide a way to move adverbs more front or more behind than usual.
> 4 votes

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Tags: naturalism, syntax
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# Question
Title: Were there serious a priori fictional languages before Tolkien?
By serious I mean somewhat complete, with a working grammar. So the examples in Gulliver's Travels are probably not really "languages" (or are they, I'm not sure).

# Answer
> 4 votes
Baleybelen (~14c?) is often considered as the oldest well-documented a priori conlang. Much older than Solresol (1827). Unfortunately, I know no Turkish so I can't really tell what the content. The Wiki page say that, akin to Lingua Ignota, Baleybelen is thought to be a religion-motivated or language for poetry (maybe related to Sufism?). But unlike Lingua Ignota which borrowed most of its structure and vocabulary from Latin, Baleybelen is thought to be an a priori language.

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Tags: history, list-of-languages, artlangs
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# Question
Title: What's the best repository of spoken language samples with romanization included that I can use for inspiration?
I'll often scout the ILoveLanguages! channel on YouTube for inspiration for what aesthetic to use, because its videos typically display a relatively long sample with both spoken audio *and* a romanized transcription; this is useful for assessing whether an aesthetic I think looks cool on paper actually sounds as cool in practice.

But I have multiple problems with it as well. It very often seems not to have samples of many of the Caucasian, Ethiopian, Berber and Pacific Northwest languages I'm interested in - which is not helped by the fact that it seems like most of the older videos were purged a while ago? (Some languages from these areas, like Haida, Tlingit, Ossetian and Kabardian, seem to have had a video some time in the past, got deleted, but then got re-uploaded somewhere or by someone else?) The background music is distracting. Their relatively recent shift to summarizing culture *as well as* the languages, in the same video, means something like 2/3 of the content in any video is now irrelevant for my purposes. Smooshing multiple languages into one video (e.g. Chechen/Ingush, instead of just a seperate Chechen video and Ingush video) cuts up one perfectly good long-form sample into a bunch of unhelpfully short samples, and interlacing the different languages makes it unnecessarily hard to extract the desired information about just one of them.

I'm aware of a couple other sources of spoken language samples in a standardized format. Omniglot *sometimes* has spoken samples of the UDHR article 1 along with its transcription, but it's not consistently present, the transcription is not always romanized, and UDHR1 is just in general too short a sample. Wikitongues is good for having a large volume of long spoken samples that include some of the more obscure languages, but they have no transcription at all, romanized or otherwise, so it's rarely clear how to choose my phonology/phonotactics/shapes of my morpheme to be able to replicate the sound and feel.

Is anyone familiar with a better collection of the sort of long-form spoken samples with romanization that I can use for scouting interesting language aesthetics?

# Answer
Romanization is the act of converting text from a different writing system to Latin script using a consistent method. As such, technically, if you have either a sound or text sample and a certain system designed for said language, everything can be transcribed (if it's spoken) or transliterated (if it's written). There will always be some trade offs and imperfections because the target language usually contains systems of distinctions that is incommensurable with the script of the reader's language. That's why transcription with deeper level such as IPA exists—limitations of the limited letters of Latin script greatly expanded with the use of any typographic glyphs (diacritics, various combinings, or any method to create new graphemes to represent some degree of detail) available and constructed in some way to explain the multitude of phones.

To answer the question, there are no list of such sites I know of (yet), although it'd be nice to know one myself. But if you don't mind doing a bit of work, there are standards organizations that govern most of the languages, and some documentations of them are available on the net. There are ISO, ALA-LC, PCGN/BGN, Yale's systems, and many regional systems available. Such documentations are useful to proceed to do any romanization with whatever source you have.

I hoard articles and a handful of grammar documentation of world languages, and my personal method is to read grammar books and study how they treat all the distinctive phones has proven useful. A bit much for a safari, but it gets the immersion right.

Not a wow answer, I know. Feel free to improve this, though.
> 3 votes

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Tags: natural-languages, speaking
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# Question
Title: Term for common derivational suffixes which are also standalone words
I'm here trying to learn a better term for the type of suffix I seem to have made. I'm writing a grammar, so I'd like the term to seem right to folks like you.

**Compounds?**

Like compound word modifiers--e.g., *fire* modifies the head *man* for the new compound word *fireman*: a sort of man--for fires!--my set of suffixes are real words that make new sorts of words. However the odd thing is that these 8 words do this way more often than any other words. Other words can also compound; these 8 are the go-to.

**Derivational suffixes?**

Being a small group very commonly used for making new words, they're like derivational suffixes (*-er*, *-ish*, and some of their friends). However, I think that by definition derivational suffixes are not also standalone words with the same meanings.

**Noun classes?**

The 8 suffixes form two groups of contrasting concepts. Well, okay, common word-endings that distinguish related words by repeating certain contrasts. Sounds like gender. Could they be noun classes like gender? I don't think so: they don't prompt agreement from other words (*la* amig*a* mexican*a*); and they're common across all parts of speech but technically most words lack them.

**Well, I don't know what to call them. What do you want to call them?**

I'm happy to show the 8 suffixes if it helps. I wanted first to avoid an intimidating-length for the post. Thank you for your time.

# Answer
> 2 votes
If I were you, I would call them compounds because your frequently compounded morphemes can stand alone and possess lexical meaning.

What is more, it is doubtful that your frequently compounded morphemes have the same semantic relationships with the morphemes that they are compounded with across the lexicon.

Consider "-man," in the sense of 'person':

A "fireman" is a man who helps douse structural or wild fires.

A "milkman" is a man who brings the milk.

A "businessman" is a man who conducts business for a private company.

A "policeman" is a man who works as a law-enforcement officer for a police force.

Contrast this with "-er" as in "doer." The semantic relationships between "-er" and the verbs that it converts into nouns is far more uniform than with the compounded "-man."

A seeker is one who seeks.

A sweeper is one who, or that which, sweeps.

A burner is that which burns.

A cleaner is that which cleans.

A miner is one who mines.

I don't think that the fact that some morphemes are compounded more often than others has a bearing on what you should call them.

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Tags: vocabulary, morphology, compounding
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# Question
Title: How to reanalyse collectives in High Valyrian?
*Note: For the purposes of this question, please do not assume that the Tongues of Ice and Fire Wiki is correct*1 *unless it references somewhere else.*

The High Valyrian \[grammatical\] number page of the *Tongues of Ice and Fire Wiki* contains the statement that

> Collectives often acquire a special meaning (e.g. muña "mother" → muñar "parents.") Sometimes this results in them being reanalyzed into entirely new words, with their own plural (e.g. azantys pl. azantyssy "soldier" → azantyr pl. azantyri "army").

High Valyrian has few irregularities (it is a conlang after all) and generally, when they exist, they're clearly noticed and pointed out. The issue I have is that, while there is a rule where collectives keep the gender of the word they're derived from, that 'rule' doesn't state whether or not completely new words do the same.

To give two opposing examples:

> ābrar \['aːbrar\]
>
> n. 6col.1lun. life. (Relexicalized collective from ābra)

In the above, ābrar is listed as a lunar2 ('lun.') noun, as it is derived from a lunar noun (ābra). However, if it was reanalysed into a *completely* new word, it could potentially instead be listed as an aquatic ('aq.') noun, such as:

> jēdar \['jeːdar\]
>
> n. 6col.1aq. year (col. of jēda time.)

If the rules are applied as consistently here as they are in the rest of the language, I'd either expect ābrar to be aquatic or jēdar to be lunar, so **is there some rule that dictates if/when a reanalysed collective keeps/looses the gender of the word it's derived from?**

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1 It often has errors and part of the reason for asking this is to find and fix those errors

2 High Valyrian has 4 genders: lunar, solar, aquatic and terrestrial. Relevant to this question is that lunar nouns generally end in a vowel and aquatic nouns generally end in '-r'

# Answer
> 1 votes
I'm assuming that you're asking this question with regard to comparison with natural languages, as it appears that there is no overtly stated rule for High Valyrian in particular.

Whenever you're dealing with reanalysis, there generally aren't going to be rules ACROSS examples, even though there may be patterns. To illustrate, there are a handful of words in Modern English which start with an /n/ but come from older words without it (e.g., 'newt,' \< Old English 'efete'), and symmetrically a handful which start with a vowel but came from older words which started with /n/ (e.g., 'adder,' \< OE 'nǣdre'). In both cases, these are the result of rebracketing (a kind of reanalysis) of noun phrases with the article 'a(n),' during the period in Middle English when it was losing its final /n/ before consonants. But as you can see, the reanalysis could go in either direction, and of course there are many words (in fact the majority of such words) which retained their original character (e.g., 'acre' \< OE 'æcer'; 'night' \< OE 'niht'). This we cannot formulate a rule to explain these changes, although we definitely identify patterns, such as the fact that only nouns beginning in vowels or /n/ are affected.

It's also worth noting that in HV specifically, there is also a correlation between gender and animacy. In particular, lunar and solar nouns tend to be animate, while terrestrial and aquatic nouns tend to be inanimate. Given the meanings of the two words you cited, it is possible that speakers have resisted reanalyzing ābrar as aquatic because 'life' is arguably the most quintessentially animate word possible. 'Year,' on the other hand, presents no such problem, and so it is free to be reanalyzed as aquatic. I would wager that stuffy grammarians would likely formulate an artificial "rule" to the effect that zero-derived collectives like these maintain the gender of the base noun they come from, and that speakers adhere to that rule about as much as English speakers adhere to not ending words with prepositions (which is to say, not much). Of course, HV is a prestige language, so it is also conceivable that its speakers strive to speak a "pure" version of their language as a way of asserting their status, something we also see in nat langs.

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Tags: grammar, morphology, song-of-ice-and-fire
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# Question
Title: Famous or memorable ways make sequences of numbers express something?
I was thinking about a way to memorize arbitrary sequences of digits by having the numbers actually represent a language, have a second meaning.

There are, presumably probably, infinite things the language of numbers could express.

One interesting property of this language unlike some human or programming languages is it is “total”: every possible arrangement of “letters” maps to an extension (its meaning, whatever the language represents).

I think there could be two primary focii in analyzing this.

One, the cognitive domain the arbitrary mathematical sequence maps to (sounds, colors, concepts, English words, other number sequences, shapes, or even all of the above?)

Two, the inherent mathematical structure or relationship between the sign and signified - is it the sum of the digits that determines its meaning? Is it a complex algorithm taking various functions on each incoming digit, individually? And so on.

I am just interested in any interesting number languages of any kind that have been developed in history. (Of course, we could start by thinking about ASCII-encoding and UTF-8, and maybe imagine how a base-10 encoding could map to some 10 fundamental elements of human communication, so as to always produce coherent, specific and meaningful concepts or sentences, no matter the choice of digits).

I personally like the idea of classifying all concepts by some well-known ontology and considering there to be 10 choices at each level. A level is like, a sub-concept in a hierarchy or taxonomy of concepts.

In other words, “178” could mean “crustacean”, because on level 1, we have 10 broad categories to classify all things in the universe as (exclusively or inclusively, I’m not sure if categories could overlap) - 1 is “life” - the next level subdivides life into types, so maybe 7 is “aquatic” - and then somehow 8 is the crustacean family. Another digit brings us more specific - 1785 is “Alaskan King Crab” (or something, for example).

# Answer
The big difficulty with an encoding like this is that the functional load is distributed very unevenly across the syllables. If you miss the sixth digit/syllable, that's not going to affect much. But if you misunderstand the *first* digit/syllable, now the entire meaning has gone awry! For human communication, it's best to distribute this functional load as evenly as possible, because speech is a very noisy channel. So these encodings don't tend to be very practical as languages.

But you can find some conlangs experimenting in this direction. The most famous is probably Solresol, which encodes everything in base seven (so that it can use the seven steps of a major scale or the seven classical colors). The encoding changes depending on the length of the word:

* One- and two-note words are the most common function words
    + Two-note words with repeated notes are verb tenses
    + Two-note words without repeated notes generally come in pairs; reverse the order of notes to get the other element of a pair (like *fasol* "why" and *solfa* "because", or *sido* "same" and *dosi* "other")
* Three-note words are the most common content words
    + Three-note words with a pair of repeated notes are the *most* common
    + If a three-note word has a clear opposite, reversing the order of the notes produces it
* Four-note words are other content words
    + The combination of the first notes, and whether or not the word has a pair of repeated notes, sorts it into one of 14 categories
* Five-note words are types of plants, animals, and minerals

The 14 categories don't have a consistent system of subcategorization, but it's a start!
> 2 votes

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Tags: number
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# Question
Title: Inventing A Plural Form For First And Second Person
I am working on the pronoun system for my conlang.
The table below illustrates what I have ended up with so far.
I am looking for suggestions on how - if even needed - to implement a *plural* form that *only* includes the *first* and *second* person, but *not* the *third* (1+2+2+...).
Should I replace the *dual* form and let it be up to the context, wether its 1+2 or 1+2+2+...
Or should I implement a total new form for it and how would I name it then?

# Answer
After thinking about this a bit, I realised that you are basically describing a *minimal–augmented* pronoun system. In a minimal–augmented system, each person comes in two pronominal forms: *minimal*, which is singlar for 1, 2 and 3, but dual for 1+2; and *augmented*, which is more than minimal. Slotting your pronominal table into this system gives the following:

| Minimal | Augmented |
| --- | --- |
| 1 | 1+3+3+… |
| 1+2 | 1+2+3+… |
| 2 | 2+2+… |
| 3 | 3+3+… |

But now that I look at this table, I notice something odd. See, the augmented form of 3 is many 3s, and the augmented form of 2 is many 2s. But the augmented form of 1 refers to many 3s! This is odd, especially considering that a first person plural pronoun is usually 1+1+… — no need to drag random third persons into it. Similarly, your augmented 1+2 pronoun should be many first and second persons, without third persons. Thus, your 1+2+2+… form should be the *augmented 1+2* pronoun:

| Minimal | Augmented |
| --- | --- |
| 1 | 1+1+… |
| 1+2 | 1+2+1+2+… |
| 2 | 2+2+… |
| 3 | 3+3+… |

Or, if you prefer, you can shoehorn it into a more ‘traditional’ form and call it a first person inclusive plural:
> 4 votes

# Answer
Have you considered agglutinative pronouns? At least initially, in the precursor language, henceforth "Old Simplicius". Start with three pronouns that are strictly 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person with a singular and plural form. Then to specify "me and you" just straight up say "me and you", and so on for the other combinations. As Old Simplicius evolves into Middle Simplicius, these get ossified into particular forms - so "me and you" is always "meyou" rather than "youme" or whichever way you go, it's up to you. Then as Middle becomes Modern, they get smushed up by sound changes until they look as little or as much like each other as you please.
> 3 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, number
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title: Generate random alphabet or glyphs?

text:
# Question
Title: Generate random alphabet or glyphs?
Is there a good program for generating a new alphabet or set of glyphs?

I found this which is a good start:

https://github.com/hmltn2/glyphgen/blob/master/script.js

https://undefinist.com/glyphgen/

I think it was part of a school project but the quality is excellent.

Or using AI? https://towardsdatascience.com/alphabet-gan-ai-generates-english-letters-589637068808

# Answer
You can pick the brains of AI art generators for styles and make variations. The one I tried for the purposes of answering this question couldn't do real writing correctly, which was good.

Here are some prompts, styles I tried at https://dream.ai/create

a scroll with strange writing, nightly v2

an unknown alphabet, in the style buliojourney v2

a sentence in Indus valley script, realistic

a sentence in Maya writing, realistic

a sentence in Mongolian writing, buliojourney v2
> 2 votes

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Tags: writing-systems
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# Question
Title: Constructed language to minimize any interpersonal conflict?
Is there a conlang that tries to minimize interpersonal conflict based on a theory of how miscommunication can lead to strife?

What theory would it draw from?

For example, sometimes ambiguity of tone on social media can lead to misunderstanding and conflict, based on a misinterpretation of intention or tone.

Also, ambiguity plays a part - needing to provide context; acknowledge the other persons side, or have complete info before making judgments, not making assumptions; the need to be open, straightforward and transparent, without the ability to be sarcastic, condescending or patronizing; with a vocabulary of highly empathetically-twinged counterparts to some common words?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I've put some thought into this topic for some of the political elements of my world-building.

**Let's take Non-Violent Communication for our theory.**

In short, the idea is that if people can more comfortably and efficiently hear shared terms of the shared emotions and needs they experience, then they will more often be in a mood to voluntarily respond to the same. The goal is explicitly not to get people to do what you want, but to build understanding in shared terms.

This framework expects conflict in things like habitually interpreting others and telling them (directly or indirectly) how they feel or how they "make" you feel, in things like lacking a shared language for shared emotions and needs, and in things like spiking your "requests" with coercive responses or external rewards (which condition people to care about that reward, not to care about each other).

It recommends communicating via a cyclical process of 1) value-neutral observation of events, 2) statement of your own subsequent emotion where you are the cause of your own reactions (words like "mad" not words like "unimportant," which is a passive voice interpretation of the other party), 3) connecting your own experience to a shared human need (companionship, say), and 4) making a request (no coercion upon "no") for how you could meet your needs better and make life better. If your listener says no, listen for how they feel and what they need. Repeat this process to both refine your requests and make it easier to care about each other's internal and external well-being.

That's the theory.

A language could structure this with different grammatical structures for the four steps:

1. observation
2. emotion
3. need
4. request

**Observation** For example, these could correspond to grammatical moods. In the observation phase, you might grammatically need to do things like to encode evidentiality more carefully, and you can conjugate for all persons.

**Emotion** When using the grammatical moods for expressing emotion, suppose verbs only have conjugation for first person subjects, and you have to use quotation in the observation mood or something to reflect someone else's emotion. Moods can be limited in person in some languages: imperative and jussive (or was it hortative...) come to mind. The "prompts" of emotions might take the dative case to center the subject and predicate of emotion in the self (my conlang does this): "I anger toward it" instead of "It makes me angry." Perhaps phonological constraints somehow limit the verbs available to this part of the language, or else have some other way to prevent passive-voice pseudo-feelings like "I feel abandoned" (more an accusation or a metaphor than an emotion) here.

**Need** Suppose there were noun classes for categories of needs, thereby fixing their number...

... Nah, I hope you might enjoy to continue brainstorming for yourself.

**Some speculated limitations** You can't stop people from innovating your grammatical structures to go against your intention, and language does change anyway. You'd want to know more than I do about pragmatics and why some usage rules stick over time. You'd need the conception of needs, in particular, to make sense with the wider culture's notions of human nature and what's expected. You'd perhaps need some built-in nuances to play with or these formulaic constraints are going to get stale, because maybe every generation/social group will not cotton to speak exactly as people outside their set do forever.

Granting I do not currently believe language can minimize conflict in an absolute sense, I think a conlang could build some or other general theory of "conflict-reducing politeness" into its grammar.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The genre of "logical languages", such as lojban, are designed to eliminate ambiguity as much as possible in every way (structural ambiguity, semantic ambiguity, tonal ambiguity, etc). But ambiguity still exists nonetheless. It's simply impossible to provide so much context and specify the meanings of your words so thoroughly that there's no possible alternate interpretation.

It is, as far as we know, impossible for a language to eliminate sarcasm and condescension. If the language is expressive enough to usefully explain concepts, then that explanation can be given in a condescending way. You can, of course, simply forbid this from on high: "if you're using this language to condescend, then it's not this language any more, it's some corrupted dialect". But that's probably not a useful way of minimizing conflict.

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Tags: semantics
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# Question
Title: Challenge: compress all of English into the smallest symbol set
Imagine mapping English to short codes, like “a”, “aa”, “abc”, “cde”, separated by spaces. How would you do it?

In my opinion, this is very mathematical: because combinations of any finite alphabet are orderable, they are countable in the set-theoretic sense (like integers). Whereas it is difficult to conceive of a good “ordering” on the elements of English, but it is a good paradigm to explore and learn something from.

You can proceed from concepts, or a compression algorithm on sentences, for example.

You could take a frequency list of strings from an English corpus and make a basic algorithm that compresses each string to the first letter - if the letter is already taken, next it seeks the first letter of each word, if possible, to form a partial or total acrostic - it can also choose to add a numerical suffix, like a1, a2, a39, etc. It can also take common letters from words, like ‘cabbage’ becomes cbg.

What algorithm would you design?

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This is a simple, non-ideal example, in Algol. I don’t think it works perfectly. Work in progress.

It iterates over strings of letters from shortest to longest.

```
begin
    file f := stand out to "map-english-to-short-codes";
    char array alphabet[1:26];
    alphabet := ('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z');
    int i := 1;
    while i <= upb alphabet do
        begin
            printf(stand out, "Is %c a word? (1 for yes, 0 for no)", alphabet[i]);
            int response;
            scanf(stand in, "%d", response);
            if response = 1 then
                begin
                    printf(stand out, "What is its shortcut?");
                    char array shortcut[1:10];
                    scanf(stand in, "%s", shortcut);
                    printf(f, "%c %s\n", alphabet[i], shortcut);
                end;
            i := i + 1;
        end;
end

```

I am picturing making a tree of strings, like

```
(a, an)
(an, and)
(and, andy)
(and, andrew)
(bat, batch)
(bat, batter)
(batter, battery)

```

What is interesting here, is that in one direction, the tree is not totally ordered, but starting from the longest strings, every string has only one “parent” string.

This could be a way to find an ordering on English words, and map them into all possible alphabet arrangements, `a, aa, ab, abc, abcd, abdd,` etc.

# Answer
> 6 votes
The first step is to gather a corpus and use it to estimate the entropy: how many bits of information each signal conveys (where signals can be letters, syllables, words…your choice). The first reference I have on hand gives an entropy of 9.51 bits per syllable (page 58).

So you could count all the possible syllables, assign each one a number, and encode them that way. But this isn't quite ideal, since the distribution is very skewed: the syllable `/ɪz/` is far more common than `/strɪkt/`. Huffman coding gives an algorithm to encode signals into variable-length binary strings in a way that's guaranteed to be optimal—that is, averaging around ten bits per syllable.

But in many cases we can do better still! Sometimes the context affects the probability of the next signal. If you're looking at a sequence of letters, then `U` is not especially frequent, but the odds of seeing it right after a `Q` are almost 100%. If you look at the *conditional entropy*, taking the context into account, that will generally be significantly lower: the same source reports 7.09 bits per syllable for English using the previous syllable as context (page 61).

To take advantage of this, you can have a bunch of different Huffman trees, and choose which one to use based on the context. The more context you use, the more efficient the encoding becomes, but also the more trees you need to keep on hand for decoding.

As for whether it's more efficient to go by letters, phonemes, syllables, words…and how much context to use, that's something that has to be determined empirically. It comes down to a tradeoff between the level of compression and the ease of decoding.

# Answer
> 5 votes
This is basically what the Hutter prize is about. So far it achieved rather impressive results, getting about 8× compression. With the current avalanche of LLMs, we can expect further improvements, e.g. see the ts\_zip project (though computational requirements to train and quantize really large models are currently quite prohibitive).

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Tags: writing-systems, unicode
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# Question
Title: Specificities of VSO languages and common ones with SVO languages
I'm currently working on a VSO language and syntax is the next big step to tackle. However, I find it quite hard to find ressources on VSO languages and thought I could glean some informations quickly and easily here. So the questions are :

1. What are their main specificities ?
2. How close to SVO languages are they ?
3. Which features do they have in common ?

I've already found the following infos :

Strong tendencies

* Adjective comes before standard of comparison
* Verb comes before adpositional phrase
* Adpositions come before the noun phrase (i.e. they are prepositions)
* Verb comes before manner adverb
* Copula comes before nominal or adjectival predicate
* Auxiliary comes before verb (for those languages that have auxiliaries)
* Negative auxiliary comes before verb (for those languages that have negative auxiliaries)
* Complementizer comes before sentence
* Adverbial subordinator comes before sentence

Weak tendencies

* Head noun comes before genitive noun
* Question particle comes before sentence (in those languages that have question particles)
* Article comes before noun (in those languages that have articles)

I think what I'm mostly looking for is a general scheme of VSO syntax to understand its core and iterate around it. For example, how are conjunctions and prepositions generally handled ? Things like that.

I've read the following books on the subject of conlanging :

* The Language Construction Kit
* Advanced Language Construction
* The Syntax Construction Kit
* The Conlanger’s Lexipedia
* The Art of Language Invention

However, my understanding of syntax is really basic, that's the part I've the most difficulties with.

# Answer
As far as universals are concerned, VSO languages are generally "head-initial", just like SVO ones. In fact, it's common for languages to be categorized into "VO" versus "OV", without mentioning the subject, because whether the object comes before or after the verb is more telling than where the subject goes! That's where most of the tendencies you mention come in.

According to most types of generative syntax (the sort you've probably done if you've drawn any syntax trees), VSO languages are actually "underlyingly" SVO, and then the V moves to a special "tense" or "inflection" node before the subject. But there's only one of these nodes, which means if you have an auxiliary verb, you end up with the order Aux-S-V-O. It's sort of like how in English, when you turn a sentence into a question, only one auxiliary moves: "you have been doing well" → "have you been doing well", not \*"have been you doing well". There's only one slot available for the movement, so only one auxiliary gets to move, and the rest have to stay in their original places.

Finally, just remember that all of these are tendencies rather than absolute rules! VO languages *tend* to put nouns before adjectives, but just look at English. So if these tendencies conflict with the aesthetic you want for your language, feel free to ignore them! They're inspiration, not a restriction.
> 4 votes

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Tags: syntax, verbs
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