# Question
Title: How can I add irregularities to a morphological paradigm?
So, I'm trying to make something with a naturalistic feel, even though the current phonetic system distinguishes about 38 phonemes... Let's say I'll tackle this later. I have issues with grammar... I want to use Proto-Kartvelian as a root source but make a language that has Indo-European grammatical structure. So... When I tried making noun declensions I generally end up making something that turns into agglutinitive suffixes... E.g. if we have a masculine noun ending in -o, I simply use consonants after the -o to express cases, then change the -o to -a for plural and repeat. E.g. -o/ -og/ -ot/ -om/ -ol vs -a/ -ag/ -at/ -am/ -al... It is too regular. How do I change certain things so that it looks less artificial, but still maintain some logic... I need advice.

# Answer
**One possibility**: perhaps your "-a- for plural" derives from an ancient word for "many" that was of a different declension, having different endings, so you could posit:

S **-o / -og / -ot / -om / -ol**
vs
P **-a / -az / -asis / -amis / -ay**

**Another possibility**: the historical importation of a foreign declension pattern into words of certain classes, which practice later infects native words of other classes either in whole or in part.

Consider the Latin words that have Greek declension and extrapolate from there.

**A third possibility**: the later "regularisation" of ancient defective words actually introduces an irregularity. For example, your modern word for "mob" might be an ancient plural form of "person", so you could posit:

S **-a / -ag / -at / -am / -al**
vs
P **-a / -az / -asis / -amis / -ay**
> 5 votes

# Answer
Introduce sound changes.

For a simple example, say that the sequence *-om-* becomes *-um-* in all situations at one point in the language's history, and *-at-* becomes *-it*-.

This would (using your examples) mean that instead of

* -o/ -og/ -ot/ -om/ -ol
* -a/ -ag/ -at/ -am/ -al

you'd have:

* -o/ -og/ -ot/ -um/ -ol
* -a/ -ag/ -it/ -am/ -al

Now introduce another one: in the case of back vowels (o and u), if they're followed by a voiced stop, the stop becomes devoiced.

* -o/ -ok/ -ot/ -um/ -ol
* -a/ -ag/ -it/ -am/ -al

So, irregularity but obviously still based on what was originally a completely regular system.

**ADDENDUM:**

One thing I should have noted is that the two sound changes only effect the affixes, but that's not how sound changes work. Once you take into account what the affix is attached to, you can introduce even more irregularity.

Now let's introduce two masculine nouns, say *minano* and *nukugo*. Under your original system they'd be:

* minano / minanog / minanot / minanom / minanol
* minano / minanag / minanat / minanam / minanal
* nukugo / nukugog / nukugot / nukugom / nukugol
* nukuga / nukugag / nukugat / nukugam / nukugal

After the first sound change:

* minano / minanog / minanot / minanum / minanol
* minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
* nukugo / nukugog / nukugot / nukugum / nukugol
* nukuga / nukugag / nukugit / nukugum / nukugal

Okay, no problem, still sort of regular, no difference between the two nouns, the only change has been to the affix.

And after the second:

* minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
* minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
* nukuko / nukukok / nukukot / nukukum / nukukol
* nukuka / nukukag / nukugit / nukukum / nukukal

Now add a third sound change: If you an unvoiced consonant between two identical vowels, that consonant is dropped and the vowels become one lengthened one

* minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
* minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
* nuuko / nuukok / nuukot / nuuum / nuukol
* nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal

Okay, now we have a situation where you've got *nuuum*. Let's suppose the phonotactics of your language don't allow vowels that long or the same vowel repeated that often, and if that situation ever arises, that third vowel is replaced by a glottal stop followed by a schwa (that I'll write as *'e*).

* minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
* minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
* nuuko / nuukok / nuukot / nuu’em / nuukol
* nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal

Final sound change: if a word final *-t* or *-l* is preceded by *-ku-* or *-ko-*, the vowel is dropped.

So here's the final outcome of the two words:

* minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
* minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
* nuuko / nuukok / nuukt / nuu’em / nuukl
* nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal

The first has remained pretty regular, the second not so much.
> 5 votes

# Answer
"Indo-European grammatical structure"—I presume you are referring to the highly inflecting state of most ancient languages. This will be quite an undertaking, given that Sanskrit nouns have eight cases and three numbers and several declension classes, given the complexity of the Ancient Greek verbal system. Study those systems to some detail and than decide what you want to take from them.

Also look at derivative morphology: There are common verbal prefixes among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Germanic (at least), and there are common methods to form compound nouns. Also several means to create nouns from verbs or verbs from nouns go far back in time and can be reconstructed for the protolanguage.

I wish you a lot of fun and good look with you conlang project!
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, grammar, morphology
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title: Finnish as if it were English

text:
# Question
Title: Finnish as if it were English
I am fascinated by Finnish and sound changes. I had an idea for a funny version of Finnish where it has these properties:

Orthographic \[k\] changes to \[q\]. \[Q\] is pronounced /ð/ (voiced TH) before e or i (unvoiced TH) and /θ/ otherwise. There are no noun cases. Orthographic \[h\] changes to phonetic and orthographic \[/f/\]. There are a few irregularities. For example, even though hän is he, it becomes 'faqin'. There is a word for a or the. It is 'ifi' and derived from the Finnish word for one. The words are read as if they are English otherwise. Words are translated word for word. Phonetic /s/ or /f/ is removed before or after orthographic \[q\] Word endings are copied from English. (-ed is same as English past tense, and verbs are conjugated though I don't have time to describe.) Here is an example from Lord of the Flies (first three sentences):

*Ifi poiqa qansa reilu fiqet lasqet faqinitqe alas ifi qesta farwat ilqa after roq qofti ifi laguni. Waiqa faqin omisted oted faqin qoulu wilapaita ia ialited se nit alqen ifi qasi faqin paita iutuned eta faqin fiuqsetwaes qipqied faqin farma paita iutuned eta faqin fiuqset qipqied faqin otsu. Qaiqi piorista faqin ifi piqa murqated osaqi ifi widaqo waes ifi iqilpi after lampo.*

The question is about mutual intelligibility and translating things. I am curious about how this "reconstructed Finnish" translates to actual Finnish. I looked up how words are ordered, and it said that the word order tends to be the same as English. I suspect that the word endings and sounds (dental fricatives, voiceless labiodental fricatives, and more vowels) will pose major barriers to intelligibility.

Bottom line: if I were to speak this version of Finnish to someone in Finland who spoke Finnish, would they be able to understand without English?

# Answer
Since this question was closed in Linguistics, I think it appropriate to note the answer here.

> I speak English and a reasonable amount of Finnish, and I could make absolutely no sense of any of that at all, even knowing the sound laws you posit and where the text comes from. It was basically utter gibberish from start to finish. I’m guessing the first three words are meant to be ‘with the boy’, but after that, I’m lost. –-- *Janus Bahs Jacquet (9.APR.2020)*
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, natural-languages
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# Question
Title: How to choose a writing system for a conlang?
When one creates a conlang, it notionally has its own writing system (although in many cases actually working out the writing system is ignored, and everything is simply done in transliteration). If one is going to actually work out the writing system, how should one decide/evaluate whether to create ideograms, an abugida, an abjad, a syllabary, or an alphabet?

# Answer
> 5 votes
The answer mostly depends on your grammar and phonotactics:

# Alphabets

Examples: Latin, Ogham, Mongolian. Alphabets are a pretty reasonable writing system for most spoken languages. I think there's a good reason why the majority of languages with standard written forms use some sort of alphabet. That said, they seem to take a long time to develop, so alphabets are unlikely for concultures that recently discovered writing.

# Abjads

Examples: Arabic, Hebrew, Tifinagh. Abjads are good for languages with few vowels and very few minimal pairs distinguished by vowels. It's especially good in languages with triconsonental roots or other forms that undergo dramatic vowel shift as part of regular grammatical processes to improve coherence across grammatical forms.

# Abugidas

Examples: Devanagari, Ge'ez (Ethiopic), Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. Abugdias are pretty good for languages with relatively simple syllable structure (ideally not more complex than (C)CV(C)). Based on the real world, it seems that they're best suited for languages with a high number of tones or phonations.

# Syllabaries

Examples: Hiragana\*, Vai, Cherokee. Syllabaries are really only appropriate in languages with relatively simple phonology, ideally not more than (C)V (or adopt a pseudo-syllabary like the kana with separate symbols for coda consonants). Otherwise the number of characters grows exponentially, or will not do a very good job representing all segments of the language, though this is not necessarily a dealbreaker (cf. Cherokee).

* Hiragana is not a true Syllabary because each kana actually represents a mora, not a syllable.

# Logographies

Examples: Chinese, Cuneiform, Mayan. Logographs are best suited to isolating and analytic languages. The earliest writing systems seem to be logographies though, so cultures that only recently discovered writing are most likely to have logographies.

# Answer
> 4 votes
# Trial and Error

Natural languages tend to end up with a writing system because it was, at some point in time in history, foisted on them. The Sumerians wrote in cuneiform. This later got foisted on the Akkadians, the Hittites, the Iranians, etc. The Romans wrote with an alphabet, and that got foisted on just about the whole world, even those prestigious languages that have long had their own systems. Mostly as a matter of convenience to online existence.

As a language inventor, you get to play with these forces and circumstances. And I at least advocate out several forms of writing for a language to see which you think is the better fit. Especially if you happen to be, as a matter of philosophy, a language ***inventor***. If you happen to be a language ***discoverer***, then you might come to the realisation that such-and-such a language uses a particular system, and you'll just live with it.

Trying out several systems at once, perhaps using a well known example text, will give you a good feel for how it meshes with the language structure. This exercise will also teach you how well (or how poorly) you understand either that kind of writing system or your own language's make-up! If you think a fixed syllable structure might benefit from a syllabary, then try it out! But if you discover that your "fixed syllable structure" is full of complications, exceptions, alterations, and so forth, you might find that a syllabary becomes unwieldy. That's not necessarily a bad thing --- scribes and writers have long had to deal with terribly complex writing systems (Egyptian! Sumerian! Chinese!)

Creating a few "temporary" writing systems for use with any later invented language project could also be useful. Doing this, you won't have to invent a whole new syllabary, a whole new alphabet for each future language project. The actual symbols won't necessarily be the symbols that get used for any language; they're just a tool to help you evaluate compatibility.

As for an evaluation tool, first I'd do some research into how many symbols various natural language systems have. In English, which uses an alphabet, we basically have 26 symbols. Abjads only notate consonants. So if English used an abjad, that would be 19 to 21 symbols (depending on how you count w & y). At the other end is Chinese, whose logogrammes number over a hundred thousand (according to WP's citation of a modern Chinese dictionary); but you'd only need about 2000 to read a newspaper.

This will you give a rough idea of how much work is going to go into devising characters for the invented language vs how much work is going to go into inventing the language.

Then, you'll want to consider how different writing systems work vs how your language works. No writing system perfectly captures the sounds of any language, except for the IPA. Everything else is a compromise. A language that is heavy on nuanced content words, a logography might be too unwieldy. A language with few lexical items might be very comfortable with logogrammes. A language with lots of vowels may not get along with anything but an alphabet: is PN abjad spelling for pan, pawn, pain, pean, pen, pin, pine, pane, pone, pon, or pun?

You'll also want to consider aesthetic qualities of the writing system. If you find cuneiform logogrammes are just the bees knees, then aesthesis might outweigh the difficulties of having to make hundreds of symbols. If calligraphy is more your style, then an alphabet or an abjad might be better choices.

Lastly, don't neglect combination systems! If you really like the aesthetics of logograpmmes, but don't want to bother with hundreds or thousands, consider a hybrid system where certain symbols have come to take on syllabic or alphabetic function, while certain words or classes of words continue to be written using full logogrammes.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I would say that depends on the structure of your language. If you have a small inventory of phonemes, then an alphabet might be best; if you have a fixed syllabic structure, then you might want to use that.

In general there is no reason why you only need one writing system. For toki pona you have a normal Latin writing system, but you also have ideograms and even a meso-American-style hieroglyphic writing system.

It depends what you want to use it for. Klingon has some very nice looking characters, but they are rather impractical, so mostly an ASCII transliteration is used. I would definitely recommend having a transliteration to make it easier to write the language on computers.

Other than that, it's up to you what works best!

# Answer
> 1 votes
The writing system of the language mostly depends on the grammar, syntax, and structure of the language. i.e. The writing system of a language always evolve in such a way that it would be easy enough to write the language without any difficulties in writing the language. To be more clear, here's the comparison,

```
|---------------------|----------------------|
|      Language       |         Writing      |
|        type         |          type        |
|---------------------|----------------------|
|    Inflectional     |   Alphabet / Abjad   |
|---------------------|----------------------|
|    Agglutinative    | Abugida / Syllabary  |
|---------------------|----------------------|
|      Analytic       |        Ideogram      |
|---------------------|----------------------|

```

As you can see in the above table, most of the world languages are by this. European languages and Semantic languages are highly inflectional, and they use Alphabet and Abjad respectively. Indian languages like Tamil(Dravidian), and Japanese(Japonic) are agglutinative, and use abugida and syllabary respectively. Chinese is a highly analytic language and it uses ideograms.

But it has to be noted that writing systems also depend on the languages and cultures that are nearby, but languages like Japanese still created its own script (Hiragana and Katakana, which are syllabaries) so that it would be easy to write.

Coming back to the question, choosing the right writing system is necessary as it is the first thing people are going to study in a language.

* If you choose ideogram like Chinese, it would be easy if the conlang is analytical. It would be a nightmare to see Latin like highly inflectional languages in ideogramic symbols.
* If your conlang is agglutinative, abugida and syllabary would be a great choice. Alphabets too make a fine choice, but trust me, representing agglutinating parts in alphabets is not efficient. Korean might be an exception.
* Alphabets are universal, and could be used for any type of language. But if you want to increase the complexity of the language and need more elegant and unique language, it might not be great to choose alphabets.

Thank you for reading.

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Tags: writing-systems
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# Question
Title: If 'Amlonde' were a word in Sindarin or Quenya, what would it mean?
I learned that in the real world Amlonde is a given name of South African origin (I cannot be more precise on linguistic background or meaning). But the word looks suspiciously like a word from Tolkien's Elvish languages. I looked it up in Helmut Pesch's dictionary, but it is not attested there.

So my question is: Can this word be analysed in Sindarin and/or Quenya, and what would it mean than?

EDIT: Some clarifications on possible answers: I am not looking for arbitrary suggestions of a meaning. Any analysis shall be based on published material on Sindarin and Quenya, including diachronic development and lesser known dialects. An answer that the word is in fact impossible in Quenya or Sindarin with some argument why this is the case is also a legitimate answer.

# Answer
> 4 votes
There is actually a neat analysis in Quenya according to a Tolkien Dictionary Site:

> *am-*: is a prefix that means "up"
>
> *londë*: means "(landlocked) haven"

So you can imagine it describing a place that once was a harbour, but through geographical changes has become landlocked, and is possibly on a hill or mountain. Or it could be a refuge, a safe place in the mountains.

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Tags: tolkien-elvish
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# Question
Title: How many words should I create in a conlang?
*Question 1:* How many words are minimal for a naturalistic conlang? (1000, 1500, 3000 or even more)

*Question 2:* How many words do the conlangers usually create?

# Answer
Let's start with some numbers: Esperanto started with 900 radicals (which is different from the number of words that can be formed from that radicals) while Interlingua debuted with a dictionary containing the impressive number of 27000 words. The last number is surely very much on the upper end for a conlang creation, one tenth of it is more realistic.

So a realistic starting number for a not too schematic language (e.g., avoiding something like the Esperanto prefix *mal-* as an obligatory tool to construct an antonym) would lie in the region of 2000 words including some derivational morphology.

I don't have statistics on how many words conlangers create on average, but there are certainly some conlang enthusiasts out there who just love to create words and to give them etymologies (based on the real world or fictional ones). Those enthusiasts may create very rich constructed vocabularies.
> 5 votes

# Answer
**The answer to both of these questions lies somewhere between "it depends" and "let's speculate a little".**

* The act of inventing a *naturalistic* language does not necessarily mean that you must also create a *naturalistically* large lexicon. After all, it's the grammar, the syntax, the usability in a wide variety of normal contexts that determines naturalism. A natural language might have anywhere between 15000 and 1,000,000 words. And as you can see from the several English entries, there's not even a consensus as to how many words there are in a language. The number of words you ***should*** create is entirely up to you. A more interesting question, interesting in the broad sense of course!, is *how many words is enough words to create?* This is not only more interesting to consider, but also harder to answer because there is no pat response and any answer given will be purely opinion.

I'd argue that 2000 is a bare bones lower estimation, given that this is the lexicon size for Basic English. But B.E. isn't exactly "naturalistic", so that figure is undoubtedly low. Somewhere between 3000 and 6000 gives you a little more than dry bones to gnaw on!, but still hardly approaches the naturalism of a natural language, to say nothing of the works of the more gung ho kind of lexicophilic glossopoets!
* As for the second question, we do have some recent figures. The results of a recent survey of language inventors determined a spread of approximately 500 (+/-) to \>5,000 over 246 respondents. Of note are the lowest and highest categories, with about 70% of respondents falling into the \<500 & \>5000 categories. The remaining 30% fall between 500 and 5000 words.
> 6 votes

# Answer
Information on a minimum useful vocabulary size appears within this answer to a question on Worldbuilding SE.

> I don't have a reference but some philologists and linguists have speculated that you could survive (explain who you are, ask for employment and food, etc.) in a foreign land with as few as 500 words. Henry C. Fenn, author of several language texts, felt that a vocabulary of 5000 words was sufficient to support learning new words by context, e.g. by conversing with natives and reading newspapers. In my own experience as a linguist and translator I found 5000 generic words plus about 2000 topical words (those popular for only a few years) sufficient for keeping up with current events. This gives you some idea of the vocabulary size you should be considering.
> 2 votes

# Answer
1. It depends on the type of conlang you are creating.

I have read, for example, that certain highly polysynthetic languages such as those Eskimo-Aleut, Salishan, and Wakashan stock tend to have only a couple to a few thousand roots, while analytic and fusional languages such as the Austroasiatic Aslian languages, such as Semai and Jahut, have thousands of roots in a category completely lacking in SAE languages, namely "expressives" or ideophones.

Now, obviously roots are not identical to words, but I recall reading in a grammar Inuktitut that there are hundreds of "postbases"—suffixes with often highly salient meaning such as "to help" or "to hunt"—, while likewise the Northwest Coast Wakashan and Salishan languages have hundreds lexical affixes with similarly or even more precise and concrete meanings, such as body parts, common spatial relations, and the like. If I am correct, however, though extremely morphologically complicated, remarkably regular rules apply to these affixes; if your conlang was to adopt say a hundred lexical affixes, it could cut down on the need for separate lexical stems quite significantly.

On the other hand, if you opt for sound symbolism and a fusional and/or isolating route, you probably need at least 3,500-8,000 lexical items; I say 3,500-8,000 because that is the range I regularly run across as between the number of Chinese Characters in common usage and the number of characters the average, college-educated Chinese adult knows. I am aware that Chinese Characters and words or even morphemes do not have a 1-to-1 mapping, but nonetheless I see that as a reasonable range for an isolating language.
2. This I cannot answer very well, but I can say that I would assume it is significantly lower than a thousand, because so many conlangs are never fully able to be usable or are just naming languages. But for usable conlangs, I would guess around 3,000 or a little more, excluding naming languages and highly developed conlangs.
> 2 votes

# Answer
As the other comments have said, this number can vary drastically depending on how in-depth you want to go. To get literally every concept that exists in say, English, you'd need tens of thousands. However, as Zipfian laws have shown, 20% of words receive 80% of the use, and the most common words are used exponentially more than the less common. I tend to strive for 1000 words as a start; the top 207 of which can essentially be a Swadesh list. When going for larger sums of words you can use lexicon generators like Awkwords. This could be used to create phonologies, or even morphologies if you use the formatting correctly.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I think, it depends on

* Language type
* Language usage

First, language type plays an important role in determining the number of words in that language. i.e., Let us take English as an example. English mostly do not create words from the root, rather it kind of borrows from other languages. Languages like Chinese and Tamil do not borrow words, it creates new words from the existing words. So, if a conlang you are going to create is like English, it might need more words.

Secondly, where and how this conlang is going to be used plays an major role too. For example, take Dovah language, a conlang. This language does not need words related to technology and science as this language is not going to be used in modern timeline, but an ancient timeline. So if the conlang is going to be made for a specific purpose, it is not necessary to add unrelated words.

So, number of words could be even 340 words(*Taki Taki (also called Sranan), 340 words. Taki Taki is an English-based Creole spoken by 120,000 in the South American country of Suriname.*) to 250,000 words(*English*) and it has to be noted that Taki Taki is not a full-fledged language and English is one of the most spoken language.

---

And as a personal advice, before creating a conlang, please refer to the grammar and phonology of other language families other than your mother tongue language family, it would help you to make a unique conlang easily.

---

Thanks,
> 2 votes

# Answer
The number of words in a conlang is up to you- you can start small, then add on layers and layers of vocabulary.

For example- Toki Pona started with just 120 words, but added on a few extra words.

Remember that you can never stop adding words. Whenever you find that you need to add words, just add them.
> 0 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
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# Question
Title: Are there any sites you can use to develop an online course for your own conlang?
Creating a conlang is usually only half (or less than half!) of the necessary effort: someone has to be able to learn it, unless you want to keep it as your own private secret code.

I use Duolingo to learn various languages, and it does of course have an Esperanto course on it, as well as Klingon and High Valyrian. However, it is unlikely that it will feature many more Conlangs, especially not one that you will develop yourself.

Now, it is of course not feasible to re-implement all of Duolingo's features, but I was just wondering if there are any apps/websites that you can use to develop an on-line course for your own conlang (it has to be fully automated, with no human teaching involved).

Is there something along the lines of Duolingo available where you can create your own courses?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Apparently folks can do this with Memrise, as evidenced by the Sajem Tan lessons.

There's been talk that I found on Duolingo forums, but if they're at all serious, they probably won't allow "dabbling". You'd need a serious effort to make and maintain enough lessons for people to actually learn a language.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Elon.io lets you make your own lessons and courses. It spaces your repetition of each word/phrase based on how often you have been getting it right. It provides computer pronunciation options based on real world languages, as well as statistics on your set of words and performance.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Try using YouTube.

Advantage- There are a lot of people on YouTube that could see your course.

Disadvantage- This is a double-edged sword. You may not get many views since there are so many people and your video could get lost among the sea of videos.

Another platform is Udemy.

Advantage- It gives you look and feel of an actual course, and if you get 1000 people on Udemy for a $10 course (let's say it's a 50/50 split between you and Udemy) you get $5000. But you need 1000 subscribers AND 4000 hour watchtime (your subscribers need to be interested and you can't be just another YouTuber they subscribed to) just to start making ads. And those ads pay when someone clicks on them.

Disadvantage- Let's be real, many people just want the freebies. And even if someone is interested in your course, Udemy is probably having some discount for your course.

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Tags: tools, conlang-learning
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# Question
Title: Are there any good programs out there to help when constructing languages?
Are there any tools out there to keep track of which works you have already defined, managing your lexicon easily, and storing conjugations and the like?

Barring that, what are some good strategies to keep everything organized in text files?

# Answer
Polyglot is a piece of software made specifically for the organisation, and management of conlangs as a whole. I haven't used it personally (preferring pen and paper to a large extent), but I've heard a fair few positive things about it.

Conworkshop includes a bunch of different tools for storing and organising things, but I've personally not found it particularly useful, and I have heard from people who have looked at the backend that you *do not* want to look at the backend, though I think they are doing a rewrite.

SIL Fieldworks is a vocabulary management program, and while developed for natlang lexicographers, it's also useful for conlangs. It's a rather powerful tool, but it has a significant learning curve to it. SIL also publishes other potentially useful free software such as *Toolbox*: https://software.sil.org/products/

Lexique Pro is a piece of software for making and editing presentable dictionaries. I haven't used it but it apparently offers compatibility with Fieldworks.

In addition to these, a regular spreadsheet program and a text editor can be quite useful, and there is a sea of both web and downloadable word generators (e.g. Gen, Awkwords, Lexifer) and sound change appliers (e.g. SCA2, GSCA), and for writing publishable materials, LaTeX, combined with a variety of packages for extra functionality such as Lingmacros and TikZ can produce fantastic results.
> 27 votes

# Answer
Personally, I use (Xe)LaTeX, as well as a Perl6 script to convert a custom-made dictionary format into LaTeX markup. Don't really need anything else, other than the occasional pen and paper for jotting down ideas.

You could also do everything on paper as Isoraķatheð does.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Like bb94, I use XeLaTeX, but I want to specifically mention the `glossaries` package (`\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}`), which lets you use Xindy to automatically sort your words. Use XeLaTeX+Xindy because it supports Unicode. This lets you include glosses (`\usepackage{gb4e}`) and charts of irregular declensions right in your dictionary. It's a little technical, but you get really nice output and don't have to worry that you've put entries in the wrong order.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, tools
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# Question
Title: I'm creating a constructed language. Does this type of conlang exist?
Is there a type of conlang which tries to combine and simplify French and English? (Few word examples)

1. I- Mi
2. You- Vu
3. We- Nu
4. This- Di
5. That- Do
6. Who- Ve
7. What- Ku
8. No- No

Note:- This language is not just French and English combined. It also makes up similar sounding or entirely different words.

# Answer
Probably something similar already exists. Languages of this type are called somewhat despectively *Euroclones* in the conlang community and the field of such languages is pretty well trotted out, though most designers prefer English-Spanish blends with simpler phonology over English-French blends. Euroclones are often marketed as International Auxiliary Languages by their respective proponents.

For the personal pronouns, Ido looks like a good match.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: typology, creoles
---


title: Implications of secundative alignment

text:
# Question
Title: Implications of secundative alignment
There are two different ways to handle ditransitive verbs like "give." For the purposes of this post, in the sentence "John gave Bill the ball," John is the **donor** (D), Bill is the **recipient** (R), and the ball is the **theme** (T).

# Indirective

With indirective alignment, the theme is marked the same as the patient of a monotransitive verb and the recipient is marked differently (often with a dative case).

```
John-a   read the book-i  .
John-NOM read the book-ACC

John-a   gave the book-i   Bill-e.
John-NOM gave the book-ACC Bill-DAT.
"John gave the book to Bill."

```

# Secundative

With secundative (or daechtycatiative) alignment, the recipient is marked the same as the patient of a monotransitive verb and the theme is marked differently (often with an instrumental case).

```
John-a   read the book-i  .
John-NOM read the book-ACC.

John-a   gave Bill-i   the book-e.
John-NOM gave Bill-ACC the book-INST.
"John gave Bill with the book."

```

What other grammatical features are likely to be affected by secundative alignment? What considerations do I need to make?

# Answer
So, here are some of the implications of choosing secundative alignment. They aren't really strict implications so much as Stuff You Might Consider Thinking About™. I think the effects of choosing secundative alignment are pretty local overall and won't have cascading effects on your grammar. In my opinion, the thorniest issue here is dealing with valence-changing operations on verbs.

* What do secundative languages tend to look like in the real world?
* How does secundative alignment manifest itself in morphology or syntax?
* Valence-changing operations
* Relative Clauses

### Real World Secundative Languages.

If you want your language to be naturalistic, I suggest taking a look at WALS to see what kinds of combinations of features are typologically uncommon. If you are not trying to make a naturalistic language, knowing what natural languages tend to do is a good way to spend your "weirdness budget" wisely.

This map marks the strategy used for the verb `to give`. This analysis could be misleading because it's possible for the verb `give` to use a different strategy from other verbs, but I think this feature is the best fit for what you're after of the available WALS features.

Looking at the map, my assessment of the *broad* areal trends is that Eurasia is dominated by the indirect object construction. The secondary object construction seems to be common in North America and in New Guinea.

The WALS Chapter for this feature provides some examples of the different types of constructions as well as a note about what other features commonly co-occur with secondary object marking, excerpt below:

> ...head-marking languages with verb indexing of two core arguments tend to show the secondary-object pattern...

### How does secundative alignment manifest itself?

Basically, there are four ways your language can manifest secundative alignment.

* word order
* presence of dedicated adpositions
* case markers
* verbal agreement

I think most of the real world secundative languages are secundative because the recipient in the verb `to give` or other similar verbs gets indexed in the verb the same way that a prototypical direct object would.

This can occur in a language with no case marking. So, I give you the book might be something like

```
book.sg  give.1sg-subj.2sg-obj

```

In this example, book bears no case marking but is clearly the theme.

The case marking strategy is covered in your example.

For word order, we can take an example from English.

```
I give you the book

```

`you` is the recipient, but occupies the position directly after the verb. In English you have a choice between using a preposition like `to` or `for` instead. If no such option existed, this would be a pristine example of syntactic secundativeness.

Note that the language can be *partially secundative*.

For instance, the following is possible.

```
you.sg.DAT book.sg.ACC give.1sg-subj.2sg-obj

```

In this example, the two non-agent arguments `book` and `give` receive indirect-object-style case marking, but the verb shows secundative alignment.

### Valence changing operations

It is important to think about how the *passive voice*, if it exists, should behave.

Suppose we have a language with secundative alignment in its cases.

```
I.NOM you.OBJ book.INST give.PST
I gave you a book.

```

If you were to passivize the verb, which argument would be promoted to the agent? Would (101), (102), or neither be acceptable?

```
(101) you.NOM  give.PSV.PST
(102) book.NOM give.PSV.PST

```

Do you have an *anti-applicative* voice that deletes the recipient and promotes the theme to primary object? As far as I know, *anti-applicative* voices do not exist in the real world, but applicative voice does exist. It's possible to allow this promotion without an explicit voice for it.

```
I.NOM book.OBJ give.ANTIAPP.PST

```

This situation gets murkier if the language is both ergative and secundative.

```
I.ERG you.ABS book.INST give.PST
I gave the book.

```

In this case, the antipassive voice would delete the absolutive argument and promote the ergative argument.

```
I.ABS book.INST give.ANTIPSV.PST
I gave the book (to someone).

```

Some ergative languages mark instruments and agents the same way.

```
I.ERG book.ERG you.ABS give.PST

```

In this case, the antipassive voice could potentially target either argument.

```
I.ABS give.ANTIPSV.PST

```

or

```
book.ABS give.ANTIPSV.PST

```

### Relative clauses

Deciding how relative clauses in secundative languages should work might present some subtle issues.

Languages frequently have a limit on what kinds of arguments can be targeted by relative clauses.

You may want to choose to make only the agent and the primary object extractable, but not secondary objects.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: syntax
---


# Question
Title: Syntactic word that carries no meaning - is there a name for that?
Is there a name for words that exist purely for syntactic reasons and carry no lexical meaning?

Reason:
Some forms of sentence in my language don't have verbs, but information such as tense and mood are indicated by affixes on the verb. So, in cases where you need to modify the verb, a meaningless verb fills in; the verb carries no meaning on its own, existing just to hold affixes.

**Example:**
Here is a sentence without a verb. No verb is used for just applying an adjective to a noun. Adjectives are applies directly to the noun.
Mopifa-di-mopi
*Life-(adj-on)-wood*
The wood is alive.

But (for example), past tense is marked by a suffix on the verb so it needs a verb to attach onto; ta "stands in" for the absent verb, giving -to (past tense) something to attach to.
Ta-to mopifa-di-mopi
*(null)-(past) life-(adj-on)-wood*
The wood was alive.

"Ta" is the word I'm talking about.

# Answer
> 6 votes
One general term would be *function words*; these are words that do not carry any lexical meaning, but are used to link content words together and clarify their relationships (eg in the case of prepositions or conjunctions).

It is indeed difficult to see exactly what you have in mind without any examples; other possibilities would be *particle*, which is eg used in Japanese to mark certain grammatical features (such as 'direct object').

Some people use the term *empty verb* for the auxiliary in phrases like *to have/take a shower*, where you could just use *to shower* directly; here you can add the tense feature to the auxiliary as in *She **had/took** a shower*.

As an aside: there are no words that "carry no meaning". If a word has no meaning, it is redundant, and would not be there at all. In linguistics you distinguish between lexical meaning and functional/grammatical meaning: the former you would find in a dictionary definition, whereas the latter is not always easy to put into words, as it describes relationships between elements in and structure of a sentence.

**Update after example:** Hard to say. A particle usually doesn't change its form (at least in English and most other natural languages I know), so the fact that the marker *-to* is attached to it would rule that possibility out in my view. That would leave *empty verb* as the most likely option, but then it is not really necessary when the marker is not used. I guess it would still be my preference, though.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I am not aware of a generic term covering all instances of function words without meaning, but only some specific cases. The pronoun *it* in phrases like *It's raining* or *It seems that ...* is called a **dummy pronoun**, **pleonastic pronoun**, or **expletive pronoun**.

Extending from this example one may call the particle *ta* in the question a **dummy verb**.

# Answer
> 3 votes
A common term for such a word would be **auxiliary**. An example from the Australian language Walmajarri is *ma-rna-n-ta-lu*, where *ma* is the auxiliary to which the suffixes are attached. However as your word is used for carrying the TAM (Tense/Aspect/Mood) suffixes another term is **copula**. Copulas are often verbs (such as the English *be*) but not in all languages.

For a natlang I would strongly warn you that just because you haven't yet identified a meaning for the auxiliary, you shouldn't assume that it does not has one. As you're making a conlang you can declare that it truly has no meaning whatsoever, but do realise that makes it rather unnatural. In natlangs it's extremely uncommon to say something without it meaning something. For example, in Walmajarri the *ma* auxiliary is one of two auxiliaries, which communicate different modality or information structure meanings. Unless the auxiliary is very short (in which case it could be analysed as epenthetic or just an allomorph of the tense morpheme) then if naturalism is at all a design goal it should carry some semantic or pragmatic meaning. This gives you an opportunity to think of something interesting and perhaps even unique for your conlang.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This word is acting as a **copula**. It is entirely reasonable for the copula to be omitted in some contexts and not others. For example, Hungarian requires zero copula for third-person constructions in the present tense (the second item here is ungrammatical):

```
  Róbert öreg ∅.
  Robert old COP
  "Robert is old"

* Róbert öreg van.
  Robert old  COP
  "Robert is old."

```

But uses the normal copula "lenni" (highly irregular) in the past tense:

```
  Róbert öreg volt.
  Robert old  COP.PST
  "Robert was old."

```

# Answer
> 2 votes
I have heard the term "Proverb" used to describe the word "do" as it is sometimes used in English, and that seems to be something you're trying to achieve here.

Example:

> Q. "Did he go to the store?"
>
> A. "He did."

In this case, "did" is used to refer to "go" in the previous sentence, analogously to how a pronoun is used to refer to a noun. I hope this is what you're looking for? It's a bit more specific than *function word*

---
Tags: grammar, terminology, syntax
---


# Question
Title: Dealing with core argument loss from syntactic applicativization
If a language limits its relative clause heads to core arguments of a verb such that item 1 below is ungrammatical, it may become necessary within discourse to use an applicative to promote an auxiliary argument into object position as in item 2:

```
1) *  1 see Bill with the telescope that is on the hill
      "I see Bill with the telescope that is on the hill."

2)    1 see-APP the telescope that COP on the hill
      "I see with the telescope that is on the hill."

```

However, since this is getting done for syntactic reasons, it is not desirable to lose entirely the normal object. How can I reintroduce Bill to the sentence while maintaining the applicative construction that allows the telescope to be relativized?

# Answer
I don't think there are any attested languages that limit the role that relative clause heads can have in the matrix clause. The accessibility hierarchy is a theory explaining the capabilities of various languages to produce relative clauses where the head has specific roles in the relative clause.

If we take your example and exchange the matrix and embedded clauses, you get the following examples. I'm changing the first example also to use a resumptive pronoun.

```
1a)  *The telescope that I see Bill with it is on the hill.

2a)   The telescope that I see-app is on the hill.

```

If you want to reintroduce the demoted argument `Bill`, you can use an adposition or a case. Suppose you reuse the preposition `towards` for this purpose.

```
2b)   The telescope that I see-app towards Bill is on the hill.

```

One interesting choice would be to use neither cases nor adpositions.

```
2c)    The telescope that I see-app Bill is on the hill.

```

Since the embedded clause already has a subject and obliques can't be relativized, that forces the interpretation of Bill as an oblique.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: syntax
---


# Question
Title: Name of a group of languages with has "less is more" property
Is there a name of a group of languages that try to remove instead of adding things? Examples:

* Newspeak: reduces words (e.g. bad will be ungood (prefix "un" meaning not), eliminate expression that are not "good" (more here
* the Sij: according to author it has 10 word (or at least morpheme).

So in other words makes a language that (one or more):

* is less complex
* has less word
* has less tenses
* just "less" of something

I have only found term "Micro (artistic) language" in the wiki but it was deleted. Here is the last version that mention it. I am not sure if such term is even used.

# Answer
> 5 votes
These languages could be called **minimalist** conlangs. This term has been applied to languages like Toki Pona quite regularly, as a Google search will bear out. The term has also been used to describe a number of languages on the CBB, such as Sint and Nomadic.

The same word can be applied to parts of a language, e.g. Davush on CBB refers to their Shiruitoan language as having a minimalist phonology.

---
Tags: typology, terminology
---


title: Official resource on simlish language

text:
# Question
Title: Official resource on simlish language
I know that Simlish language is not fully created. It is just a list of words and sentences. Where can I find the full list (official source)?

**P.S** I wanna create this language as fully created conlang.

# Answer
According to the Font of All Knowledge, Simlish

> worked best as a "language" made up of gibberish words that could not be translated, so that the dialogue's meanings would be left open to the imagination of the player.

and that William Wright, the Sims creator, intended it to be that way.

Here's a good Youtubeumentary on the topic. The voice actors, the audio director, they aver that it's gibberish. Meaning or emotion without form: while some words and phrases may have acquired "meanings", it doesn't seem like they've actually acquired "translations".

For example, if an English speaker says *sulsul* means "hello" while a French speaker says it means "bon jour", that doesn't mean hello = good day. All three are greetings, and I think that's rather Wright's point: *sulsul* has acquired universal meaning without actually acquiring a specific translation.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, resource-request
---


# Question
Title: Is num-det-n-adj-rel a reasonable order for a noun phrase?
In English, noun phrases are det-num-adj-n-rel (e.g. "The five orange balls that John saw"). In Spanish, noun phrases are (mostly) det-num-n-adj-rel (e.g. "Las cinco pelotas naranjas las que Juan vió," lit. "The five balls orange that John saw"). Is num-det-n-adj-rel a reasonable order (e.g. "Five these balls orange that John saw").

My determiners are prefixes on the noun, so I can't put numbers between determiners and nouns. Do I have to put numbers after the noun in this case to be naturalistic? My language is primarily head-initial (SVO default word order, adverbs come after verbs, etc.)

# Answer
It is reasonable, but I'm having trouble finding unambiguous precedent for it in natural languages.

This handout shows the frequency of different orders of demonstratives, adjectives, nouns, and numerals in a sample of 528 languages. Demonstratives and determiners are not identical, but there is considerable overlap.

The order `Num-Dem-N-Adj` is not attested.

More broadly speaking, demonstratives seem to show a clear tendency to be closer to the edge of the noun phrase.

From the handout,

> The adjective and numeral tend to occur closer to the noun than the demonstrative when the demonstrative and the adjective or numeral (or both) occur on the same side of the noun.

Furthermore, in cases where the demonstrative is to the left of the noun, there seems to be a very strong tendency for it to be the leftmost thing.

That being said, a demonstrative is a very heavyweight thing and not always a determiner. Without knowing what kinds of things are determiners in your language, it is hard to tell how much, if at all, the handout applies.

Here are approaches you might want to consider.

### Put demonstratives at the right edge of the noun phrase and other determiners directly before the noun.

Demonstratives show a strong but not overwhelming tendency to appear on the opposite side of the noun as the adposition. I think that, in general, demonstratives are not the heads of the noun phrases they appear in cross-linguistically. Since you mention that your language is head-initial, I am assuming that it is prepositional.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that your inventory of determiner prefixes marks definiteness and number only.

```
DEF.PLUR-book red
The red books

DEF.PLUR-book red that
Those red books

5 DEF.PLUR-book red that
Those five red books

```

### Repeat the determiner on the number

As far as I know, this is also unattested, but it does solve the problem of the determiner not appearing early enough in the noun/determiner phrase.

```
PROX.DEF.PLUR-5 PROX.DEF.PLUR-book
These five books

ANY-5 ANY-book
Any five books

```

### Make numbers occupy the determiner slot

This works well if your set of determiners is small, but doesn't work very well if it contains demonstratives.

```
INDEF.PLUR book
Some books

5 book
Some 5 books / the 5 books / 5 books

```

### Make the determiner a clitic that attaches to first word in the noun phrase

This doesn't work if your language is fusional and it doesn't make sense to split the prefix from the base noun.

```
 DEF.PLUR book
 the books

 DEF.PLUR-5 book
 five books

```
> 1 votes

# Answer
**Reasonable: sure!**

We do this in English, fronting the number for emphasis or for poetry. There's no reason why you couldn't do this as a matter of ordinary in your language.

Five the orange balls that Johnny saw flew through air and bounced to jackadaw.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, syntax, nouns
---


# Question
Title: Is it reasonable for numerals to behave like verbs?
I am aware that adjectives can pattern like verbs in some natural languages. Is it reasonable for numerals to do the same? Thus

```
Some balls four.
There are four balls.

Fouring the balls were orange.
The four balls were orange.

```

Of course, my conlang has more interesting verbal forms than we have in English. Is something like this attested in a natural language?

# Answer
One clear-cut example of a language that treats many things like predicates, numerals included, is Khoekhoe.

Khoekhoe marks many kinds of predicates the same way, including *numerals*. The paper argues that all three of the open word classes (nouns, verbs, and adjectives) in Khoekhoe can be analyzed as primarily predicates and non-predicative usage requires more morphology, specifically person-number-gender (PNG) affixes. Nominalizing stuff with a PNG clitic is extremely productive in Khoekhoe.

Here is an excerpt from page 3 of 21 from *Predication and NP Structure in an Omnipredicative Language: The Case of Khoekhoe* by Michael Hahn.

> Khoekhoe is an SOV language. The V slot may be occupied by a word from any of the three open word classes: a verb (1a), an adjective (1b), or a noun (1cd). Both commons nouns (1c) and proper nouns (1d) can be used. Even deictic elements (1e-f), numerals (1g), and possessives (1h) can act as predicates. While the choice of the TAM marker depends on the predicate, the syntactic behaviour of the different predicates is entirely parallel:

Here are some examples from the paper.

```
1a) saa=ts  ge   ra  |khii
    you=2ms DECL TAM come
    You (m) are coming.

1b) om=s      ge    (a)  kai
    house=3fs DECL  TAM  big
    The house is big.

1c) saa=ts    ge    (a)  gao-ao
    you=2ms   DECL  TAM  king
    You are a king.

1d) saa=ts    ge    (a)  Petru
    you=2ms   DECL  TAM  Peter.
    You are Peter.

1e) om=s      ge    (a)  nee.
    house=3fs DECL  TAM  this
    The house is this one.

1f) tii=ta    ge    (a)   saa
    I=1sg     DECL  TAM   you
    I am you.

1g) tara=di   ge    a  !nona
    women=3fp DECL TAM three
    The women are three.

1h) om=s      ge    a   tii
    house=3fs DECL TAM  mine
    The house is mine.

```
> 4 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, naturalism, syntax, verbs, natural-languages
---


# Question
Title: How typologically unusual is using postpositions in an otherwise head-initial language?
My conlang is predominately head-initial (SVO, n-adj, mostly suffixing), but has postpositions because I'd though that the noun was the head of an adpositional phrase. Wikipedia, however, says that the adposition is the head.

So how unlikely is a language with postpositions that is otherwise head-initial?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Such languages are uncommon but not unattested. However, they are more common than prepositional SOV languages and are present in a number of unrelated families around the world.

This WALS map shows us that in general, the order of object and verb and adposition and noun phrase is very highly correlated. In the map, postpositional VO languages are the group with the third highest number of total languages, but they are less than a tenth as common as the most frequent types.

```
 Postposition / OV    472
 Preposition  / VO    454
 Postposition / VO     41

```

There are some parts of the world such as West Africa where there are many SVO languages with postpositions. There seems to be a cluster of them around Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. I think the languages in question are proven or suspected to be Niger-Congo languages. The westernmost group of these languages has both VO and OV languages as well as some *intermediate* types like SOVX languages and postpositional VO languages.

Another example of a postpositional VO language is Finnish. I think Proto-Uralic is generally reconstructed as having verb-final word order. However, many of the modern groups of Uralic languages have SVO word order.

There are a few cases of languages with verb-initial word orders with postpositions. One such example is Yagua. Yagua is an interesting case because the verbs are very highly inflected, but the nouns are not.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Are you aware of the World Atlas of Linugistic Structures (WALS)? Combining three chapters of WALS into this combined view I found 21 languages in the sample with the combination NA/SVO/Postpositions. Among the languages are Guarani and Ewe. On the other hand, NA/SVO/Prepositions has 229 languages in the sample, showing a strong typological tendency for consistence.

---
Tags: conlang-creation, syntax
---


# Question
Title: Should I include morphology in my proto language?
Most, if not all natural languages have some form of morphology, such as noun case or poly-personal agreement. However, these features are usually evolved from prepositions and auxiliary verbs, and require time for them to appear. This was my original route for creating languages, to create proto languages without morphology and then to evolve them later on. I then started researching proto-indo-european and proto-afroasiatic, and I found out they had morphology such as noun cases, even though they were supposedly the original languages for their regions.

The main question is: Would it be naturalistic to insert morphology into proto-language(s)?

# Answer
> 11 votes
I am not at all certain why you would assume that protolanguages must have no morphology. PIE is just a language like any other before or since. If we review the relevant article, the Font of All Knowledge explains that *morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.*

Whether your language has affixes, adpositions, or some other means of distinguishing roles all of that falls under morphology. Thus, I'd argue that it is "naturalistic" to insert morphology into your protolanguage. After all, it's already there! Else, your daughter languages most likely wouldn't have the concept at all. (And that kind of speculative invented language would be very interesting indeed!)

Standard examples, consider Latin & English:

john bit the dog
the dog bit john
the dog bit john
john bit the dog

johannem momordit canis
canem momordit johannes
canis momordit johannem
johannes momordit canem

Morphology tells us how the words are related to each other. Just because English got rid of almost all of its endings doesn't mean we did away with morphology! We just tucked it away somewhere else, in this case, word order. This is why Latin can put the agent or the patient before the verb, but English, except in unusual circumstances, can not. We expect that whatever noun comes before the verb is the agent, be it the dog or be it John.

Morphology has even been proposed for Nostratic, the protolanguage from which PIE descended.

# Answer
> 9 votes
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Afroasiatic (PAA) are just the earliest ancestors we can reconstruct with reasonable certainty for their respective language families. That does not at all mean that they were the first languages of their regions or the earliest languages that existed.

They didn’t materialize out of thin air. They, too, had ancestors and were influenced by neighbouring languages that didn’t leave any other trace. Humans probably had been speaking for (at least) hundreds of thousands of years at the time of PIE (possibly somewhere between 4500 BCE and 2500 BCE) or PAA (possibly somewhere between 16000 BCE and 10000 BCE) and there are proposed larger families and attempts at reconstructing proto-languages that would group language families like Indo-European and Afroasiatic together (e.g. Nostratic), though they are controversial.

Unless time-travel gets invented, we will never know how exactly the first language(s) came to be and what they were like, if they were immediately fully-formed or if they lacked features we now consider universal (possibly subordinate clauses?). Maybe they weren’t even fully oral but rather gestural with accompanying sounds.

That does not mean, however, that your proto-language cannot be the first language of its world. If that’s what you want to create, it’s up to you to speculate what a language like that could be like. The origin of language is so uncertain that anything plausible can be counted as naturalistic.

If you just want to create a naturalistic proto-language for a family of languages, that isn’t the(/a) first language to exist, there really isn’t any difference to creating any other naturalistic conlang.

---
Tags: conlang-creation, grammar, naturalism, unnatural-features, natural-languages
---


# Question
Title: What is reduplication used for in natural languages?
According to WALS Feature 27A, 278/368 languages surveyed have productive full and partial reduplication. Chapter 27 gives the following example of partial reduplication in Pangasinan:

```
báley "town" -> balbáley "towns"

```

And this example of full reduplication from Sahaptian:

```
té:mul "hail" -> temulté:mul "sleet"

```

But what is reduplication often used to express?

# Answer
WALS Chapter 27 describes a number of functions for reduplication. All examples below come from chapter 27 unless otherwise noted.

# On nouns

Pangasinan uses reduplication to mark plurals:

```
báley "town"
balbáley "towns"

```

Ilocano uses reduplication on nouns to mark a distributive plural:

```
sábong "flower"
sabsábong "various flowers"

```

Ilocano also uses reduplication to turn nouns into reciprocal verbs:

```
bales "revenge"
balembales "to avenge each other"

```

Chukchi uses reduplication to mark the absolutive case:

```
jokwat "eider duck"
jokwajow "eider duck (ABS)"

```

Kayardild uses reduplication to turn nouns into adjectives:

```
kandu "blood"
kandukandu "red"

```

Yawelmani uses reduplication to mark associatives:

```
k'ɔhis  "buttocks"
k'ɔk'ɔhis  "one with large buttocks"

```

# On verbs

Luiseño uses reduplication to mark the number of an inherent object:

```
lawi "to make a hole"
lawlawi "to make two holes"
lawaláwi "to make more than two holes"

```

Mountain Arapesh uses reduplication to mark carelessness on the part of the subject or agent:

```
su "to touch"
susu "to touch all over"

```

Luiseño also uses reduplication to turn a verb into an adjective:

```
lepi "to tan, soften"
lepélpiš "pliable"

```

Ancient Greek used reduplication to mark the perfect aspect (Ancient Greek Press Book Chapter 42):

```
γράφ "write"
γέγραφ "have written"

```

Tigak uses reduplication to turn a verb into a person who regularly performs that action:

```
giak "send"
gigiak "messenger"

```

# On Adjectives

Turkish uses reduplication to mark intensity:

```
beyaz "white"
bembeyaz "very white"

```

# Automatic Reduplication

Additionally, automatic reduplication is possible, where an affix requires reduplication of the root with no additional meaning. Chapter 27 gives this example from Ilocano:

```
singpet "behave" + agin-
aginsisingpet "pretend to behave"

```
> 6 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, naturalism, morphology, natural-languages
---


title: How to make names in a conlang?

text:
# Question
Title: How to make names in a conlang?
So, draconic in the setting is used to name places, people, and communication in general. I skipped through most of the phonotactics as I'm using the Hungarian template. So as I filled out entries in my Swadesh list, I ran a small experiment:

arán (sun) + kile (feather) = Oh, f@ck me! **How am I supposed to combine two words, this incompatible, into a pair of names?**

More precisely, I had a name, *Amrar* (pronounce: Ámrár), created before through a different method and without having a whole conlang in mind. Compared to *Aránkile* (which I modified into *Áranki/Árenkil*, a male and a female form) its soft m, loud and clear á, and grizzly r does a good job of giving off the vibes you'd expect from a golden dragon, regal, powerful, intimidating but still kind. This worked when I was going for vibes, even if it had no meaning or roots in a language at the end. However, I feel like I'm writing myself into a corner with this vocabulary.

I don't want my language to sound like it was generated on vulgarlang.com. I have to maintain my control over the "loudness" curve of each word, their length and which phoneme I use, based on their place of articulation. **What should I do to balance the "sounds like an orc/elf/typical politician" with the "names have a meaning"?**

# Answer
Note that you as the conlang designer control both ends of the chain: The final wordform and the etymology. So you can play with both parts until the result meets your wishes.

So you can start with the wordform *Amrar* and search for an etymology, splitting it up as *Am-rar* and find some meanings for *Am* and *rar*, say *am* is short for *amon* "hill, mountain" and *rar* is "roar, load noise", making your mighty dragon a "moutain-roar(er)". Tolkien used this approach a lot. The backside of this approach is that the conlang becomes difficult to maintain.

EDIT: Going the other way, starting with *arán* and *kile*, you can vary the order of the two stems, Maybe *Kilarán* sounds better than *Aránkil*? It is your decision. You can also throw in some sounds between the two stems, say *Aránskil* with an inserted s, you can insert a vowel, say a, to yield *Aranakil*, you can assimilate the n to the k giving *Arángkil*.

Starting with roots from your conlang, there are still a lot of creative possibilites to combine them in compounds: Inserting a *Fugenelement* (example from German *Herz-ens-sache* "affair of the heart", from *Herz* "heart" and *Sache* "thing, affair", *ens* being the *Fugenelement* without meaning), applying some assimilations or dissimilations, dropping syllables from long words (syncope), ...).
> 3 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, history, names
---


# Question
Title: How to say, 'Haters gonna Hate' in Toki Pona
The closest I could find was

> jan ike | awen pali e ona | pilin ike tawa
> enemy | continue | hate

But I've not figured out if that the right way to combine those phrases

# Answer
> 5 votes
The consensus answer (thanks Oliver Mason) for how to translate `Haters gonna hate` into Toki Pona is the following:

```
 tenpo ale la jan ike li ike

```

`Tenpo ale la` translates as `at all times` and captures the sense of *inevitability* in `haters gonna hate` in English. It also serves to rule out other possible readings such as the tautological `bad people are bad`. Here `ike` is used as "commit evil acts", one of which is presumably hating.

---

I interpret `Haters gonna hate` as a phrase for dismissing all criticism as inevitable or unfounded regardless of its content.

I don't think `hate` in this context literally refers to feeling hatred/enmity, but to `hating on`, which is not quite the same thing and covers things like insults and ridicule.

I think we strip out a lot of the detail of `haters gonna hate` and get something reasonable.

```
jan    ike    li   ike
person bad    PRED bad
bad    people are  bad

```

Since `jan ike` is so much broader than `bad person` in English, I think this does a good job of conveying the intent of the expression. People predisposed to ridicule or insult you are going to ridicule or insult you regardless of what you do.

---

The right way to combine the phrases you gave above would be

```
jan ike li awen pali e pilin ike tawa.

```

However, there are a few constructions in there I'm not sure about

```
li   awen  pali
PRED keep    do

```

I don't know whether you can use `awen` like this as an auxiliary verb of sorts to mark habitual or progressive aspect, as you seem to be doing here.

```
pilin   ike  tawa
feeling bad  towards

```

I don't know whether you can use an objectless preposition attributively like this. My guess is yes since prepositions besides `e` (if analyzed as a preposition) do not form a distinct word class in Toki Pona. I'm having trouble finding an explicit citation for the non-existence of prepositions as a distinct word class, this is the closest I can find.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I'd say something like

> jan pi lawa ike li wile e ijo ike tawa sina lon tenpo ale

Which means: "People of bad heads want bad things for you, always".

You could also use:

> jan pi toki ike li wile e ijo ike tawa sina lon tenpo ale

Which means: "People of bad talking want bad things for you, always".

---
Tags: toki-pona, phrase-request
---


# Question
Title: How long do I need to influence language development?
Taja is a language with Verb-Subject-Object word order. However, emperor Kai wants to always be the first, so, he wants all sentences where he is the subject to have a Subject-Verb-Object word order.

Obviously, people at the court follow this rule. Farmers in a remote region probably not that much. If Kai dies a few years later and his successor goes "Stop this stupid word-order thing" this would be forgotten quickly.

If, however, Kai lives long enough (or his successor also likes it this way), other nobles would start to require their servants to put them first as well, eventually even remote regions would pick it up. Finally, it becomes part of the language.

How long does this need to stay in effect until language development integrates it into the language? Such that even after replacing monarchy with democracy, the "Subject-Verb-Object" word order is still used when the subject is a person, and the speaker wants to express his/her respect?

**Update:**

Let me answer the questions in the comments.

* First of all, Kai is not planning to systematically change the language. He is just pleasing his ego. So while he will punish people who do not do it (if he notices), he is not going to start a large-scale education program.
* If the emperor is the object of the sentence, the sentence stays as it is. So "peasants must pay taxes to the emperor" stays unchanged.

> What is the equivalent Earth date for technology?

agricultural, probably medieval.

> How physically and demographically large is the country?

An entire continent. Think about the Roman Empire.

> How much trade is there with other countries?

I haven't given this one any thought. I guess less trade helps, so, let' say very little.

> How strong is/are the religious influences (a big deal with language)?

weak to medium

> How effective is the collection of taxes and the dispensation of justice?

Things are quite organized, however, this is a personal spleen of Kai. A judge (or policemen) in a remote province is very unlikely to sentence/imprison someone for not following this.

# Answer
Assuming emperor Kai puts a strong pressure on his subjects, having the change permanent would be a matter of one or two generations. Once one generation is brainwashed and use naturally the new form, and that there is no backward trend (emperor Kai's death penalty may be a strong incentive to avoid such trend), consider that adoption should stay.

This however assumes that language is mostly spoken and not written (or you need to change writings as well), that teachers are supportive of Kai and teach the new proper way of speaking to all, etc.
> 3 votes

# Answer
# Control the schools and the culture

Education and culture are critically important to language development. Children of immigrants generally speak the local language, including the local dialect and slang, even if their parents struggle with it. If you can control the schools and the culture, you can force a new speaking style. It's tough to know exactly what this would look like without knowing the technology level of your world, but since you want a timeframe, let's say 50 years. That works out to one or two generations (one generation in the modern world is between 19 and 31 years).

**Education**

Require that "Modern Taja" be used in all schools and forbid the use of "Traditional Taja" in education. Send all teachers to mandatory continuing education classes about how Taja is to be written and spoken. Rewrite all educational materials. Emphasize the importance of education and build schools in areas with poor literacy rates.

**Culture**

It sounds like not everybody in your world attends formal education, even with the expanded schools. The king should sponsor great cultural initiatives, including theaters in the cities, the publishing of books, and traveling theater groups that venture deep into the country. In every instance, emphasize Modern Taja and either don't use Traditional Taja or only have the dumb country rube characters use it.

Several studies (example) emphasize the importance of what a child's friends and parents speak in determining how the child speaks. If Modern Taja is all that someone has seen in school and culture for her entire life and it's primarily what her parents have seen for their entire lives, Traditional Taja will sound really weird.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: diachronics
---


title: How can I name my days of the week?

text:
# Question
Title: How can I name my days of the week?
In my conworld, months are divided into twelve-day weeks. That seems a bit too long (since I recall that people complained that the ten-day weeks of the French Republican calendar were too long), so I've divided my week into two halves, so I don't want the names for the days to have numbers, in order to avoid silliness like "first firstday" or "second thirdday." I know that English days of the week are named after Norse gods, but since my months are named after gods, I want to avoid that, too.

What are other attested etymologies for names of days of the week, in either traditional calendars or the modern Gregorian one?

# Answer
While in English (and German) the days are named after (North-)Germanic gods or the sun and the moon, the months are also name after gods (and emperors), albeit from a different set (Roman), with some numerical ones thrown in (September/October/November/December); so there is no need to be consistent.

In Irish it's similar: some names have been taken from Latin, others have been added in with cultural/religious significance.

I was just looking at another language which is from a different family (Hawai'ian), but I guess they no longer have the weekdays they had before they had contact with Western powers: their days are literally "Night-one" (Po'akahi) to "Night-six" (Po'aono), plus Sunday being "Pray Day" (La pule). The month names are just localised versions of the English ones ("Ianuali", "Pepeluali", etc). Indonesian weekday names also seem to be derived from the names of (arabic) numerals.

You could choose anything where you've got a set: celebrities/rulers, planets, plants, animals, whatever. I don't think anyone would look at it and think it weird to have a "fox-day", or an "oak-day". Add a regular prefix or suffix to the word that means something like "day", and it should look alright.

And if you have two half-weeks, why not have an animal half followed by a tree-half?
> 7 votes

# Answer
The modern weekdays are actually not named directly after gods, but after **planets**. This system started with the Babylonians, who named each day (\*) after one of the seven classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun. This system was borrowed by the Egyptians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, then various Germanic peoples, using local equivalents to the Babylonian names each time, which is why we now have "Sunday" and "Monday" (from "sun" and "moon") and "Saturday" (from Saturn, who had no Germanic equivalent) alongside an eclectic assortment of Germanic deities.

If astrology is important in your conculture, a similar system would make sense. You could name the days of the week after planets, constellations, important stars, or any heavenly objects that are important to these people.

(\*) Strictly speaking, they assigned each *hour* to a planet, then named each day after the planet that governed its first hour. Cassius Dio has a more elaborate explanation.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Following all the restrictions given in the question, I propose using *letters of the writing system* as names for days of the week.

If your society is literate and the number of symbols in the writing system is relatively small, the canonical order of letters is going to be very well known.

I don't know of any natural languages that actually do this, although the heavenly stems were historically used to label days of the week based on which sacrifices and rituals were supposed to be performed when. So, the heavenly stems form a small closed system with additional meaning besides designating a day of the week.

Tying the symbols-as-days-of-week to a religion, current or historical, is probably a good way to make the system plausible in your conworld.

---

So, you specifically mentioned *not* wanting to name days after numbers, but some very widely spoken languages do exactly this.

I think you can make the 12-day week in two halves thing make sense by having a duodecimal number system with six as a sub-base. In a system like this, some or all the numbers in the 7 to 12 range would be derived from the words for 1 to 6.

In Mandarin Chinese, the days of the week are simply numbered, with Sunday being an exception to the pattern.

In addition, some number systems have a sub-base.

For instance, here is a numeral system developed for an Inuit language with a vigesimal number system by speakers of the language. The number system has a sub-base of 5, which is reflected in the forms of the numerals.

Here is the table in the article reproduced below. The system is not completely regular, but many numbers in the `1-20` range, *particularly those congruent to 2 or 3 mod 5* are transparently derived from a small multiple of 5 followed by the word for 2 or 3. Some numerals have irregular forms or are represented subtractively like 9, 14, 19.

```
0         1                2                   3                    4
-         atausiq          malġuk              piŋasut              sisamat

5         6                7                   8                    9
tallimat  itchaksrat       tallimat malġuk     tallimat piŋasut     quliŋuġutaiḷaq

10        11               12                  13                   14
qulit     qulit atausiq    qulit malġuk        qulit piŋasut        akimiaġutaiḷaq

15        16               17                  18                   19
akimiaq   akimiaq atausiq  akimiaq malġuk      akimiaq piŋasut      iñuiññaŋŋutaiḷaq

20
iñuiññaq

```
> 3 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
---


# Question
Title: What to do when my conlang has a word that means something in one of my languages?
This is a bit subjective problem. As a Hungarian who knows English, I have the high ground when it comes to making up words, as I can mush the English and Hungarian words together with some outliers (usually Japanese-sounding words) and things I make up. However, first, let's take a look at a composite I created with my WIP Swadesh list:

**rén**+*kile* = **red** *feather* = rékile/régile

Red Feather is a rare genetic mutation among tengu (based-off of Japanese mythology; anthro birds, six-limbed variant). Those who are born with this mutation have striking red plumage, yellow/golden beak and eyes, along with an unusual pointy crest, similar to that of a cockatiel. Rékile is often translated to phoenix in Common (British English). While the resemblance is hard to deny, rékile tengu don't set themselves on fire, nor revert into younger forms.

Now, régi means old in Hungarian. And Ré is Hungarian for Ra, who just happened to be a god with a bird's head and is associated with the Sun (which is a deadly laser). Rékile is still passable, but some words are so reified in my mind that even lookalikes carry unwanted connotations.

who? (“?” not) = námó (I keep hearing nani)
what? (“?” not) = názá (Názáreti Jézus)

dog = gadór (csador *Oh no!* or csahol *I'd prefer to go with that one*)

I know it sounds and is dumb, but I can't concentrate when I look at my language and I can still see the anime references and Hungarian words in my mind. I don't want to throw out Hungarian entirely, but I'm still afraid people will pick up these accidental collisions of my languages. **How can I minimize the number of those collisions?**

# Answer
These sorts of coincidences are somewhat inevitable. Just try to accept that there's a limited number of ways to arrange sounds in your language, and some will sound similar to words in other languages.

When I was trying to learn Hungarian, I came across a number of words that reminded me of words I knew in English and other languages. Some examples:

* *repülőter* "airport" / re-polluter
* *csillag*"star" / ceiling
* *és* "and" / *es* "it is"
* *a nap* "the sun" / a nap
* *a bolt* "the store" / a bolt
* *öt* "five" / *otto* "eight"

I also had a recent case on the CBB where I posted my conlang Atili's word for "citrus" *zilu*, and immediately got asked if I borrowed that word from Kankonian (another conlang) *tzelua* "citrus." I hadn't. CBB thread

Then there is the fairly well-known case of the Mandarin filler phrase 那個 / 那个 *nèige*, which sounds to many English speakers like a racial slur. See this posting on the Chinese language stack for more details: Very frequently used word in Mandarin that sounds like "nica" or "nigah"
> 5 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
---


# Question
Title: How can I talk about weather without expletives?
In English, it is necessary to use a syntactic expletive ("it") when talking about weather:

```
It   is     sun-ny.
EXPL COP.3S sun-ADJ

```

Pro-drop languages can easily avoid the explicit expletive by excluding it (Spanish):

```
Hac-e sol.
do-3S sun

```

But in this Spanish example, there's still an implicit expletive subject. How can I completely avoid using expletive subject when talking about the weather?

# Answer
Here are some ideas haven't been listed yet

* Allow nouns denoting weather phenomena to form clauses by themselves
* Use an existential construction
* Make the subject a location
* Use an all-purpose weather verb

### Weather noun clauses

If a normal transitive clause looks something like the following, then a weather clause can just be a noun by itself.

```
student-NOM book-ACC read-past-3sg
the student read the book

```

Here, the noun appears in the nominative case, which tends to be unmarked cross-linguistically.

```
rain-NOM
It's raining/was raining/will rain

```

This way, it can be modified with adjectives just as it normally would be.

```
many/much rain-NOM
It's raining a lot/It's pouring/It was raining a lot/...

```

### Use an existential construction

Ceqli, or at least an old version of Ceqli from years ago, uses an existential construction.

```
baran hay
rain  exist

```

### Make the subject a location

I think this is similar to Circeus' example, but I can't tell whether it's identical or not. If it's identical, I'll remove it.

Locative subjects are perhaps uncommon or unattested cross-linguistically, but in principle nothing stops you from making the weather verbs intransitive verbs whose subject is the location where the weather is happening.

```
Here-NOM rain-past-3sg
It was raining here.

Spain-NOM principally plain-LOC rain-pres-3sg.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Lit: Spain rains mainly at the plain.

```

So the few references I can find to *locative subjects* are mainly things like *this*, which describe locations moving to or appearing in the first position in a clause rather than verbs whose subject position has a locative flavor.

### All-purpose weather verb

Have a verb that means *to be the weather*, and use it with the name of the weather phenomenon.

```
Rain-NOM weather-pres-3sg
It's raining.

Snow-NOM weather-pres-3sg
It's snowing.

Cloud-NOM weather-pres-3sg
It's cloudy.

Cloud-NOM weather-pres-3sg-NEG
It's not cloudy.

```

This has the advantage of making questions about the weather resemble their declarative counterparts.

```
what-NOM weather-pres-3sg
How is the weather?

how-much cloud-NOM weather-pres-3sg
How cloudy is it?

```
> 6 votes

# Answer
There are also language with impersonal verb conjugation, and of course, nothing prevents a verb from being used only in the impersonal. Nahuatl has an impersonal voice, but because it's only used with verbs that normally have animate subjects, its weather verbs function much like Spanish's, ironically enough.

In my own conlang Mfalen, weather verbs function as descriptors, so one says the equivalent of "X is raining" (i.e. It's raining on/in X) the same way one says "X is cold" or "X is windy" (or indeed, "X is red").
> 5 votes

# Answer
Hungarian avoids expletive subject when talking about weather by using an appropriate non-expletive subject. To say that it's sunny in Hungarian, you say

```
Süt     a   nap.
bake.3S the sun
"The sun is baking."

```

To say that it's raining, you say:

```
Es-ik   az  es-ő.
fall-3S the fall-N
"The rain is falling"

```

In this sentence, *eső* is used as the word for rain, but is in fact transparently derived from the verb *esni*, to fall, thus the sentence could actually be translated as "The falling thing is falling!"

Of note, however, this latter example can be shortened to just *esik*, "it falls," though the implicit subject here is *az eső*, "the rain," and could therefore still be considered non-expletive.
> 2 votes

# Answer
In russian:

* The sun is shining — Солнц-е свет-ит. (Sun lights)
* It is raining — Ид-ет дождь-ø. ("Goes rain"≈"The rain is going"
> 2 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, naturalism, syntax
---


# Question
Title: Has AI technology yet provide a language composed of multiple human languages yet?
I'm from South Florida and noticed that my Haitian neighbors speak a language called Creole. Then It got my fantasizing a possibility that is well within our reach of no more than a decade.

Using AI to create languages by mixing other languages.

## Question

Does anyone know any specific technologies that provide practical languages yet?

# Answer
Not really AI, but the vocabulary of the two logical languages Loglan and Lojban was created algorithmically from the vocabulary of pre-defined source languages. In this case, the phonemes of the words were picked by the algorithm which is different from the formation of a creole where whole words are picked by the human speakers.
> 4 votes

# Answer
The problem I can see with trying to do this is that you would first need to be able to encode the urlanguages in a way that a computer could understand. One could imagine giving it corpora from the urlanguages and having a machine learning algorithm produce a new corpus in some pidgin or creole, but it's not very useful unless the computer can then explain what the new texts mean.

The problem of encoding meaning is definitely unsolved - Google Translate has come a long way in the past decade, but it's still far off from a human translator.

So I think in the end, it depends on the criteria you want to use to evaluate it. Does a language whose syntax and vocabulary can only be inferred count?
> 2 votes

# Answer
This is something different from my first answer: **Mixing syntax**

There is a project named *Galactical Dependencies* where the authors started with dependency treebanks of some known languages and than created new artificial languages at a large scale by altering the typological features of the original language using features from other languages. This leads to new "languages" with a different syntax. Incidentally, the main motivation of that project was the lack of available treebanks for typologically interesting languages and so they created them artificially.

I am not aware of any conlanger tapping that ressource yet.
> 2 votes

# Answer
IF I ever get around to constructing a conlang I'll probably algorithmically generate its vocabulary from Wiktionary entries. Wiktionary includes pronunciations in IPA format (and audio files), spellings, and translations between hundreds of languages.

(I'd build up an inventory of easily distinguished phonemes, match words of like meaning, and then use machine learning to synthesize a vocabulary out of like-sounding synonyms.)

While some prominent conlangs have attempted something like this in the past, they were forced to cherry-pick and use subjective judgements. Today modern technology enables us to do it with a thoroughness and at a scale previously unfeasible. Lojban spliced together vocabulary from 6 languages; with machine learning and Wiktionary, we can algorithmically splice together hundreds.

I'd find it interesting to see what kind of language you would come up with if you algorithmically synthesized your vocabulary and pronunciations from Wiktionary's database of worldwide languages and developed your syntax from Galactical Dependencies' most representative grammars. Would it resemble Esperanto or Lojban, or would it look like something else entirely?
> 1 votes

---
Tags: creoles
---


# Question
Title: Usage of different plural systems in the same language
Let's assume a language once had an extensive plural system, indicating singular/dual/paucal/plural distinctions on nouns, pronouns, verbs, *et cetera*. Over time, as has happened in real languages, this was simplified to a simpler singular/plural system except in personal pronouns, which retained the original distinctions. In other words, the language would distinguish only between "woman" (one woman) and "women" (more than one woman), but when you used a pronoun, you'd have "she" (one woman), "she2" (two women"), "she+" (a few women), and "she++" (many women).

Your conversations would thus look like the following:

* "That woman came out of the store. She is carrying a bag."
* "Those women came out of the store. She2 are carrying bags." (Two women came out)
* "Those women came out of the store. She+ are carrying bags." (More than two women came out)
* "Those women came out of the store. She++ are carrying bags." (Many women came out)

A similar situation situation would occur with all personal pronouns.

So, the question: while this sort of thing is obviously possible, since I just described it, is this a feature which has been documented in a natural language? I'm not just restricting it the way I've done, but the general situation where the grammar of the language has simplified down the grammatical number, perhaps even to not having a singular/plural distinction at all, except for retaining a more elaborate grammatical number system in one single common grammatical element.

# Answer
> 5 votes
A similar system to the one you describe is attested in Fijian. Fijian has a single-dual-paucal-plural distinction in its pronouns only. However, almost every sentence *must* contain a subject pronoun. I'm not sure about the status of imperatives in Fijian. Fijian also has VOS word order, where S is a lexical subject.

Independent nouns themselves are not marked for number and the articles that introduce them are also not marked for number.

```
era la'o [a gone]
3PL go   DET child
The children are going

```

In other examples, `a gone` is glossed as `the child`. From this we can infer that the subject pronoun (or part of the verb phrase, depending on how you analyze it), is *usually* the only place in the clause where number is overtly marked. Pronouns can surface in other positions as well, and pronominal number contrasts are not neutralized when the pronoun isn't the subject.

As an interesting wrinkle, pronouns have a separate form that's used when they are the head of a noun phrase, including a subject noun phrase.

```
era sa  la'o [o   ira]
3PL ASP go   ART  3PL
"They are going"

```

But, pronouns can occur after the verb without being introduced by an article or a preposition if they are objects.

```
  o   aa   biu-ti  ira
2SG PAST leave-TR  3PL
"You left them"

```

More generally, it is somewhat common for pronouns or a subset of the pronouns to have a different number system than independent nouns. Proto-Germanic is reconstructed with dual number in first and second person pronouns and their corresponding verbal forms, but without the dual in the third person or in nouns.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Also attested in English, just not to the extent of your example.

Dual number existed in nouns & pronouns and was lost in nouns by Primitive Germanic times. Its use continued into West Germanic & Old English first & second person pronouns:

```
      s      d       pl
1     ic     wit     we
2     þu     yit     ye

```

# Answer
> 2 votes
An example from a different grammatical component, to widen the perspective.

In Czech, the former dual number has been retained as a special plural form for some paired body part nouns to distinguish them from their non-body-part meanings. For example, *ucho* means "ear" or "pot handle", *uši* \- the former dual form - means "ears" (but not "pot handles") and *ucha* \- the former plural form - means "pot handles" (not "ears"). Similarly for *oko* ("eye"/"flake of grease on a soup") with differing plurals *oči/oka*.

---
Tags: grammar, number
---


title: What things can `la` mark in Toki Pona?

text:
# Question
Title: What things can `la` mark in Toki Pona?
I was under the impression, until recently, the `la` in Toki Pona is a topic marker of sorts similar to the Japanese topic marker `wa` but used less frequently since Toki Pona is not topic-prominent.

In particular, I thought that `la`

1. Requires the noun phrase it marks to appear at the beginning of the clause.
2. Does not give the noun phrase it marks a particular semantic role.

However, a section about it on Wikibooks suggests that its usage is much more limited.

> *Time-Manner-Place Schema*
>
> Time comes first in a *la* fragment, manner is a modifier to the main verb, and place is always last in a *lon* prepositional phrase.
>
> `Time la S li V Manner lon Place`

What is `la` in Toki Pona? What are the limits on the noun phrases `la` can mark and the roles they can have in the clause?

# Answer
> 6 votes
The particle `la` in Toki Pona is used mainly for two scenarios.

**The first scenario** is for the `If/when something, then that` condition. The `la` particle is placed in the second half of a sentence. Some examples:

* mi lape lili, la mi pilin ike (*If I sleep a little, then I feel bad* or *When I sleep a little, I feel bad*)
* sina moku e telo mute, la sina anpa e telo mute lon tenpo lili (*If you drink much water/liquid, you are going to pee much in a short time*)

**The second scenario** is for the context, like time, possibilities, or even non yes/no questions. The `la` particle is placed in the first half of a sentence. Some examples:

* tenpo pimeja ni la, mi lukin e lipu sin (*I am going to read the new book tonight*)
* tenpo suno pini lili la, mi kute mute e kalama musi (*Yesterday I listened to much music*)
* ken la, pilin pi meli lili li pilin ike (*Maybe the girl's sad* —literally, "Maybe the heart of the girl feels bad")
* tan seme la, kulupu pi jan lili sona li tawa ala tomo sona? (*Why are the scholars not going to the school?*)

Hope this helps!

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Tags: toki-pona
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