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Does anybody here know a good website with info how different noun classes can manifest in a language?

I mean, there's as one possibility different suffixes for nouns.
And/or different articles ("the" and "a" having one translation per noun class)
Noun-adjective agreement.
Noun-verb agreement.
Different pronouns, including demonstrative pronouns.

And I don't know what I'm missing.

I don't know, I guess I'm kinda looking for a collection of examples.

becka_sutton

Really hope I'm not hogging the place. (BTW Thanks to

anke I found the setting and made it so members can tag stuff now).

So Noun Cases.

Mountain/Sea

Mountain/Sea is a nominative/accusative language

The Mountain and Sea People tend to have a very structured view of their world and this shows up in their language in the large numbers of genders and cases. I did consider going the full Finland with the cases (it would eliminate prepositions) but it seemed like it might be more trouble than it was worth.

Note: Not all genders decline in all cases. When there is dash in the chart that gender does not decline in that case.
Note 2: I haven't come up with all the suffixs yet. Blank with no dashes will have to be filled. Also I probably need to have more than one suffix in some genders (lest every character name end up ending in lha).
Note 3: what suffixes I have so far are the singular ones.

	Divine	Persons	Animals	Plants	Natural Features/Forces	Natural Objects	Artificial Features/Forces	Artificial Objects	Abstract
Nominative	-rid	-lha	-nya	-bin
Accusative	-rif
Dative
Ablative
Genitive
Vocative	-rin				—	—	—	—	—
Locative									—
Instrumental	—

Island

Island is an ergative–absolutive language, but apart from the the first two the cases are not set. I may drop the genitive and find some other way to show the possessive and merge the dative into the absolutive (Since really the dative will always be the object of a transitive verb since it the noun to which something is given).

	Animate (edible)	Animate (inedible)	Inanimate
Absolutive
Ergative
Dative
Genitive

What do people think?

capriox

Hullo, I know most of you from elsewhere, but in case I don't, I'm capriox, I read a LOT (no surprise there), I sometimes attempt to write fiction, and I'm a farmer. I've been mildly obsessed with linguistics, the English language, etymology, and conlang since, oh, forever. The term conlang is actually new to me as of the twitter discussions that led to this group, but I distinctly remember my first foray into it. I read Tad William's "Tailchaser" way back in middle school (~15 years ago) which has a partial conlang in it, including a glossary of those terms and names in the back. I promptly did my best to deconstruct/re-construct that sample into a full-on language for my own imaginary games (i.e. proto-story writing). I've been hooked ever since.

For my current writing project, I'm using horribly bastardized versions of Welsh and Hebrew/other ancient semitic dialects for the languages because I don't have enough creative time for both writing and conlang'ing. (Also, Welsh looks wonderfully strange and incomprehensible when written, which fills me with glee when it results in a main character named something intimidating-looking like "Prydferthaethnen"). But I'm happy to lurk and offer tidbits I've learned and articles/references I come across.

anke

Becka had asked for a list of all syllables of her first language, and I made a little script using javascript (because you only need a browser to "run" that).
You can see it here. If you'd like to adapt it for your own language, save that page to your own computer, and open it in a text editor (for example Notepad). If you want to see the results, open the file in a browser.

Becka would also like a list of all syllables from her pseudo-polynesian language according to the rule (C)V(stop or nasal)

So, let's get to changing the script.

( Read more... )

The pseudo-polynesian syllables

I hope that makes sense.

lilfluff

I'm Steven, who is likely better known to those here as LilFluff since that's the username I've been using for almost a decade now on the Internet. I am uncertain whether it was a one page article in Boys Life magazine (which I had a subscription to for a while in my few years in Scouting) or if like many I first became aware of language creation by way of discovering that Tolkien had created multiple languages while developing the setting of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels.

Then came the Internet. I came across a service on the very early Web that had a list of several hundred email lists sorted into various categories. This lead to my continuing almost-entirely-lurking presence on the CONLANG listserv (which I am rather extremely far behind on reading). This also lead to a subscription to the Constructed Cultures world building list (where I also almost-entirely-lurk) and a now defunct email list dedicated to building a language for the Vilani from the role playing game Traveller, who were descendants of humans kidnapped by aliens thousands of years ago.

As in the last few days discussion of kinship words has come up on Twitter, here's a link to an article from 1995 that looked at the subject from a conlanging perspective. Model Languages: Kinship Terms. Earlier the same year the Model Languages newsletter included an article on Naming Languages.

The most recent language exploration I've done was pushed in part by 1.5 pieces I've done for the second 30 Days of Flashfic, (Prompt 7: Frigid and an as yet incomplete Prompt 15: Ascension). I have a document with a few words and first inklings of a grammar for the language of the lizard people Osita has found himself traveling with. What better an excuse to indulge in some language creation that sticking a character among people who speak a language they don't know and will have to learn?

Current Mood: full

aldersprig

Hi, I'm Lyn, and this whole thing is entirely new to me.

By "entirely new..." I have a degree in English, I majored in English in High School, and somehow I got through that WHOLE THING without learning a damn thing about grammar or language structure. Yes, including 4 years of French and 2 semester of Spanish. No, I can't explain it either.

So I'm going to be blank-staring a lot, and trying hard to understand things. At some point I may cry and ask someone to call me on the phone, because I learn a lot better by speaking/listening than reading. But um, don't feel obligated there.

(Note to self: making intro posts while In a Mood not all that helpful).

The language I am pondering creating belongs to my Reiassan setting, to the northern people, the Callanthe. Current plan is to start with the goat(*)-nomads that became, after 2-3 iterations, the Callanthe nobility. I may side-long create some of the other nation on the continent, the Bitrani, to allow for loan-words.

I have ~10 words of their language made up. I may have to scrap/redo some of that as I made it up on the fly.

becka_sutton

Since I tend to call my peoples by geographical descriptors until I come up with a name in their language. These people are hereby designated the island people.

I actually own the book version of The Language Construction Kit and it has an initial chapter about creating a simple naming language, For Island lingo this may be the place to start.

Wikipedia has an article on Proto-Polynesian which is quite useful and while I don't know want to completely ape polynesian I think the idea of a very simple phonology is intriguing.

And so:

	LABIAL	LAB-DENT	DENT	ALV	PAL	VELAR	GLOTTAL
STOP	p			t		k
FRICATIVE	f			s			h
TRILL				r
APPROXIMATE	w			l
NASAL	m			n

And I think I'll go for just three vowels - a,i and u but these will exist in short and long versions (like the inuit vowels). Yes, that really is eleven consonants and either three or six vowels depending on how you count them.

And where mountain/sea people language is fusional I'll make this language agglutinating and possibly ergative-absolutive. It's a different language family from mountain/sea people's language so I want it to have a very different feel.

I haven't even thought about phonotactics yet except that I want it to be not over-burdened with syllables.

Edit: Forgot Grammatical Gender/Noun Classes.

1. Animate Things which can be eaten (humans, 'younger siblings', food animals, fish, edible plants etc)
2. Animate Things which cannot be eaten (gods, 'elder siblings' and unpalatable, taboo, toxic or inedible animals/fish/plants etc)
3. Inanimate Things

Thoughts?

anke

Since not everybody is as far along as Becka and Freo, I thought some links might be in order. :D

Sounds section of the Zompist Language Construction Kit

One very helpful site is Paul Meier Dialect Service - IPA Charts, which has charts of IPA symbols that play the corresponding sound on click.

And since I mentioned IPA, here's IPA Helper, which helps with getting html code for IPA symbols.

becka_sutton

Hi I'm Becka (hi Becka) and it's my fault we're all here.

I'm currently building an initial language for my mountain and sea peoples. This language is as it existed in the immediate aftermath of the religious schism that led to the sea people. I will then need to use that as the basis for the languages as they exist later.

I also have a secondary language to build which I'm not sure where to start with because it's a proto-language spoken by a small near-human hominid similar to Homo floresiensis which is one of a number of prehuman hominid species (in many of the world' languages these are known as the younger siblings) which have survived in this world. (It's kind of ironic but the younger sibling races are older while the (magical) elder sibling races all post-date humanity).

I could also do with at least making the basics of the lingo (from a different language family) for a vaguely polynesian culture the sea people trade with.

Dang I'm going to be busy.

Anyway for the initial language here's a post about the sounds and here's one about the silly number of genders I have. I need to locate my list of cases as well so I can post it.

With regards to the sounds post - I'm considering adding another phonotactics rule that syllables that start with a consonant cannot end with an approximate. Does this seem like a viable rule?

anke

My name is Anke, and I've been dabbling and not getting much anywhere for a while.

My native language is German and I think I'm doing OK when it comes to English. I've also had 7 years of Latin lessons, most of which I've forgotten; 2 years of French, during which we did not even finish the first year's book, ditto; and a semester of Japanese during which I learned hardly anything. And I've got a habit of picking up random factoids, including about languages.

I'm a bit of a programmer, e.g. I got a little javascript thingy that prints all syllables that can be formed according to the rules that

becka_sutton posted in her journal, and I'm trying to figure out how to show and explain that so that other people can adapt that for their languages, even without programming experience.

My conlanging project is a language for a fantasy setting, the native language of a character from ny NaNoWriMo project this year. I have hardly anything done, and what I've done only on loose leaf, so I guess if we really go with weekls-or-so themes based on the construction kit, I can take things in order. ;)

One thing I'm wondering ahead of time is if the character names should have meanings taken from that language (or, well, retroactively assigned meaning to them), or not. What do you think?

freosan

Hi, I'm Freo (hi Freo!) and this is my conlang.

It is called Estzhen Igueris. Internet cookies to anyone who can figure out why from the grammar and dictionary. Because Estzhen Igueris is kinda long, I usually just call it Iguerisan.

Here is the grammar: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nie-zMWmNXTOfP_QtOLd8D8tm_UvpgBXtOhJ_nAdd1w/edit

And here is the dictionary: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar2tYfgdynP6dHZqX2RSY0xrRG52d084UTZVU3J6T2c

There is an alphabet, but I'm still trying to sort out exactly what phonemes I want to have, so I'll leave that for a later post.

Here are the stories that have thus far occurred in the universe in which this language is spoken: http://freosan.livejournal.com/tag/igueris

And here is the sadly neglected Tumblr in which I was planning to stick some of its art: http://encyclopaediaoftheworlds.tumblr.com/

Enjoy! And please do feel free to nitpick my grammar or worldbuilding skills.

becka_sutton

Well, we're all here because we're interested in conlanging and conversations on Twitter run into the 140 character limit pretty easily.

So how do we want to do this?

Random splurges about our lingos or something a little more structured like a topic for a week? Possibly following the order in the Zompist LCK.

Opinions, please :-)

Current Mood: thoughtful

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The Novice Conlangers Group

Recent Entries

Looking for gender/noun class info

Noun Cases for Mountain/Sea and Island

my turn for introductions, huh?

Listing all possible syllables if you have rules for sounds.

Hola everyone

Lyn is finally here!

So that pseudo-polynesian culture's language

Resources: Sounds

My Conlang

Hi there...

Estzhen Igueris intro post

Welcome!

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December 2012

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