Conlangery 25 Grammatical Voice

Conlangery 25 Grammatical Voice

Published: 2011-11-21

Featured conlang: Tseeyo

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Transcript

Speaker 1
Don't cover love you're here conlang the longing or lunker for me and not.
Speaker 2
To Prague librarian by asking about the languages and the people I'm bored. And with me is my female co-host and my. Exceptional co-host William a.. And with us we have a special guest today.
Speaker 3
Hi how are you. Yeah. Yeah. And. You go by new knowledge on the forum. Yeah. Yeah. On the DVD Yeah.
Speaker 4
Yes. And so it's my birthday today by the way that they they are many happy returns. Yes. And it will be several weeks before this comes out. But I will still accept birthday presents.
Speaker 5
How old are you. Yes 24. Are
Speaker 6
you spring chicken.
Speaker 7
The youngest one here.
Speaker 4
Really. How old are you. Should I ask you your age. I
Speaker 8
just turned 20 30 in September. Really. OK OK. But you're just regular host. Yeah.
Speaker 4
So say when people look at me they think I'm 16 and then I really enjoy it just to pile on with the the time sensitive references that will be completely screwed up. I'm also doing Napp hard Pomo. So there's the good National Novel Writing Month. And there's also a net. November is also National Hot cash posting month and so I'm doing a podcast called guy and his stuff radio.
Speaker 5
Every day for news night it's literally just five minutes of me talking about whatever is on my mind. So it's not really anything dramatic I could do that then do it. I would get the best hate mail.
Speaker 9
I was planning on doing it. But November I'm just going to be way too busy this month to even manage it. Yeah I might do it in December though.
Speaker 8
We'll see.
Speaker 4
OK well maybe I'll link to that mission. Are you doing anything special there. Not necessarily because whenever I do the non knocker crame or whatever it is the novel writing thing.
Speaker 10
I start with everything and I start.
Speaker 11
And then I get halfway through and then I get bored and then I just sit there in a state of lethargic lethargy and just never seem to finish anything. So no no no not at all. Yeah. I had an idea to actually do a national cultlike creation month but.
Speaker 4
You have to have a goal for every day. These sorts of things. So you know whether it's one post a day or for national month that so many words a day. I think that do you think you would have to do is like a month for creating your lexicon and do like a hundred words a day for 30 days.
Speaker 9
I think there's a pretty good example of this on the CBB. There was a guy Gary whatever his name is I don't remember Shannon I think he did the 30 day conlang chiton I think which I think was kind of the equivalent but I don't know how far I want to go with a rich did this. He
Speaker 12
created a language called Lohrey Yes. In one month although he was the guy who put in the entire Navajo aspect system and then realized he didn't know what to do with it when he was done. So
Speaker 4
yeah there's there's letters all sorts of little challenges to deal with. But anyway that's not our topic as much as we'd like to talk about doing conlang creation month maybe next year we'll try to organize it. But our topic today is grammatical voice basically a lot of people will have this tendency to a lot of con Langer's especially beginning conlang years will have this 10 suden Plosser with voice and we have an e-mail about this fairly recently where a guy just felt like voice was loose useless so passive. He hated the idea that passive and this episode were going to disabuse anybody who who hates passive of that notion that passive is useless. But anyway that's even more than just active versus passive voice. It's a lot of different things.
Speaker 5
You know a little bit it's a little bit complicated because some of the things that get called the voices I consider sort of transitivity argument increasing operations so transitivity and voice mix in funky and complicated ways as well. So
Speaker 12
there's a whole raft of theoretical issues. I'm just going to dance slightly over today so if you become interested in something you should dig into it deeper yourself because I'm not just wave my hands a few times.
Speaker 4
Well why don't you get us started. Because you have all your big notes. Yes.
Speaker 12
OK so voice is just the term we use to describe how the verb relates to its arguments. So I run versus I see the dog and you can use the active voice to describe that relationship for the sentences that I gave and then the different voices that we have passive anti passive inverse all of that fun middles are ways to change the relationship between the verb arguments.
Speaker 5
So it's really useful in these discussions to talk about roles again. So you talk about the agent of a verb the patient of a verb. And I also like to talk about the focus of a verb and that's confusing right because focus means one thing in discourse. But in this sort of verb argument stuff focus means well it's kind of patient like so if I say I kick the door then the door is the patient. It
Speaker 12
is actually on the receiving end of some action. If I say I see the door I'm not changing the door in any way it's not receiving any action or not shooting rays out of my eyes or anything. So I always found this confusing when I was in school they would say the direct object is the thing that is changed by the verb. Well if I look at a door it's not changed. So in more formal terms we can talk about the focus of the verb. You know that that piece of information you need to complete the said. So I see what do you see.
Speaker 5
I see the door. Voila. So the voice describes the relationship between the verb and the arguments. Why
Speaker 13
do we have different voices.
Speaker 5
Two main reasons discourse we want to keep the most important thing at the center of attention and switching to different voices lets us do that. Second there might be grammar requirements for example in languages of Australia all sorts of grammar can only happen to nouns that are in the absolute form not the ergative for intervening things like relative clauses things like.
Speaker 13
The man walked into the barn and saw the woman has to have some trickiness because that sort of keeping the subject the same from claws declines has to be absolute if in some of these languages.
Speaker 12
So he saw the woman has to be switched around from the normal voice because the grammar requires a switch and can be really need to work.
Speaker 5
Well you know all sorts of aboriginals do it fine. Yeah.
Speaker 11
And so you get you a red light for us. No and that's it. English speakers to be a bit thick here.
Speaker 12
Yet English and a lot of the Indo-European languages are really Lucy goosey about things like this. Almost any case role can be had of a relative clause in English or Latin or Greek or any of those. So we're used to a lot of flexibility there but lots of languages are more uptight about this.
Speaker 14
Yeah we can even put the object of a preposition right at the as the relative clause and that's that that.
Speaker 5
Yeah that's way out there on the hierarchy of possibilities.
Speaker 4
We've talked about some different ways you can use it.
Speaker 15
But and different ways that different reasons you might require a passive voice where you know mentioning that you want to move certain information to the front. You want to move. We want to move information around to make it a legal relative clause.
Speaker 4
What about but what about the different kinds of voice. So in English we have active and passive voice.
Speaker 12
And I think probably most Indo-European languages have that here I would argue that ancient Greek did not in fact actually have a passive really because they had other ways to do all of the things they needed to do. So ancient Greek is weird and we can get to that later when we talk about the middle voice which is sort of interesting. OK. So let's save that for later. But yeah most European languages. I think it's safe to say have a passive.
Speaker 4
And I've seen it in other and non-European languages too.
Speaker 16
Sure. But there's other voices like Auntie passus which is. Kind of the opposite of passive. Right.
Speaker 12
That's what it means. So
Speaker 17
in the in the passive we demote the agent of the verb exactly right in the anti passive we demote the direct object. So and here's an interesting and important thing. In
Speaker 5
English we can have a passive and still mention the agent of the verb and we use an oblique. We
Speaker 12
use the proposition by I was hit by a car in lots of languages if you use the passive you are forbidden from naming the agent. You can only use the passive when you're not going to be talking about the agent at all. So a lot of the semitic language has worked that way. Same with the anti passive. Some languages you. You remove the object. Poof it's gone forever. And in others you can have an oblique and what that means is you've sort of defocused the direct object to your ear less it's you need it there to complete the sense but you're not talking about specific things. So. So. So I'm thinking in Nez Perce. So these nice happy in language is has an anti-pattern. So you can either say I you know when collecting I don't know clams and it can mean specific clams you know if you know they've probably got dozens of names for clams right.
Speaker 12
Collecting clams or you can use the anti passive which has I was collecting some clams. Right. So there are a small number of languages that use the anti passive whenever the direct object is plural. Whenever it gets it's of you know indefinite. So there's lots of kinds of trickery that can happen in an anti passive sort of defocusing it makes sense.
Speaker 4
To see how an you passive would work specifically in an organ of language as sort of the mirror image of the past. And I think I remember at one point though William you said that the anti passive can occur and nominative accusative.
Speaker 12
Yeah. There's this pervasive idea that the passive is something that almost always or exclusively occurs in ergative languages that turns out not to be true. There are plenty of nominative accusative languages with A.E. passives.
Speaker 4
Hmm. So how how can that. How does that exactly work.
Speaker 5
I don't see it's the same sort of thing for any reason you might need to defocus the direct object.
Speaker 12
And if you don't care about the amount it's indefinite it's plural. You may have funky requirements on your relative clause heads right. It doesn't have to be an absolute live ergative description right it could be not accusative. The same problem arises.
Speaker 8
I see Bianca do you have any opinion on this. It's. Pretty opinion at this point or any question.
Speaker 18
Well this is probably a completely off topic thing. In my play more from an article I started saying that you might have heard something called the choma C H A with this complex and a new and very little John in Wikipedia. Some very little languages used. And it's like an article of stickers or just that it's not good. And Nurse imitation of the thing is used with things such as passive and anti-pattern like if over is the basic exam would be the dog that the man over say the dog would be the age and I think yeah yeah yeah. You and the man would be the patient and say you were saying the man was bit by the dog. You'd have to demote the dog. They put the man wherever you put your article near the dog and you get what I'm saying. So it's just like this instead of having to like feed it in there. Vigeland So our efforts are back.
Speaker 4
OK. So you had sort of a specific way to apply a voice. Sure. Yeah. Maybe we should we should probably talk a little bit about how to construct different voices because it's not necessarily it's not necessarily going to follow the same pattern as English or how probably a lot of your opinions your language is using the auxilary but I want to get into now this is a question that I have had. And William I know that you can answer this because orated Greek what exactly is a middle voice.
Speaker 5
So we'll step away from ancient Greek a little bit. Well we'll just start with the simplest case.
Speaker 12
The middle is when the agent and the patient are the same. Most of the romance or Western European languages use reflexively for a middle love. You know I like French love. You know the water or whatever I wash the car whereas if I'm washing myself it's Dzhemilev OK. It's where the agent and the patient are the same.
Speaker 4
OK. So it literally is the same thing as a reflex.
Speaker 5
Well no I mean yes in the sense that the reflexive sort of syntax is how that is formed in Western Europe which by the way is an extremely strange way to do that but a reflexive I see myself in the mirror is not exactly the same as I wash my hands oh ok I see.
Speaker 4
I know that in Spanish reflexes are the the reflexive syntax that I guess is traditionally sometimes called most passive or actually considered a separate passive. Other than the other which uses it as an option auxilary what I know is that no. Now my going crazy you know that actually gets complicated.
Speaker 19
Istar So when there's actually a a distinction in Spanish that doesn't occur in English when you change the state of something you can use Estada to mean that. But a passive is is is form using said.
Speaker 5
So the English has that exactly what I say definitely is that you're talking about an active versus what you're talking about a dynamic versus a state of passive. Right.
Speaker 19
Yeah I guess you can say that that's the difference.
Speaker 5
I was saying my God I was hit by a car versus I got hit by a car.
Speaker 19
Oh yeah. Yeah it's kind of the same you could say.
Speaker 20
Basically so in Spanish like if I say I am a if I say no it is sad now that I think about it I had to translate something or else I get confused.
Speaker 14
If I if I'm using sort of the changes that the example that they gave me was that door was closed a La Porte stabber Sarala because it's a change of state.
Speaker 4
But in other cases you'd use stairs so I put the Sarratt up or you see a lot we would need all those thousand years away from all the United States were was founded right. Got funded. Yeah yeah yeah. And so that's less considered a change of state as more sort of and more just straight up passive or. So yes I think I think what confused Bjarke is that is not really commonly used that much because they actually use a I think actually now that I think of it the way after you explained it I think what they are used more often is almost a middle based on the reflexive stuff like when you see signs that say Sabliere Espanol that is.
Speaker 21
Yes and no. OK continue.
Speaker 4
So I that like some some indefinite person associated with the first place speaks Spanish. But it's I don't know really if it's if you can call it a passive We call it a middle. Right
Speaker 5
. Right. Right. When you have an indefinite. This happens all the time English is a little bit weird about this right you can say this rice cooks well. Yeah that's kind of Middleby. And this is a common sort of grammatical ization of the middle is for it to sort of veer off into this kind of somebody did something we no longer we we really don't care who. And that from there it's an easy step to the passive. And I've seen this in lots of languages all over the planet where yes it's a middle blah blah blah oh by the way it's also used if you have an indefinite subject. Well great.
Speaker 12
That's how I mean that's how some languages do what we consider the passive which is you know I think finished does this right they have a special indef. pron. that just sort of subject and does things to people. So the passive is.
Speaker 22
What the mystery person doing unstuffed people saying we're like that sounds.
Speaker 5
It sounds a little unseemly So the distinction between stative and dynamic passive is interesting because some language like Vietnamese has multiple kinds of passives and their sense is more like a sort of classic or the mainstream sense of the word passive in English. Right you have one pass a bit just as sort of normal something happened to you and we don't care about the agent. And another implies that the experiencer of this incident is you know badly affected by things. But that's a little a little switch. I mean so since we're talking about the middle the reason I said I don't think ancient Greek has a passive is because the thing that gets called the Meteo passive in Greek. Never ever ever means a passive until you give it an oblique agent. OK. The rest of the time and it's the middle and end because ancient Greek doesn't need a passive first. It has Word order to control discourse. Second of all it has no grammatical requirements on case right now. In any case it can do anything in any clause. OK so there's no need for passage.
Speaker 23
So it doesn't happen.
Speaker 4
That's that's very interesting because I've been wondering whether I read in my case an anti passive or any kind of Karole other all alternate voice in Rio. And it turns out it really has the same qualities as a. And it's not good for your ational. And if I can put pretty much anything into a relative clause or into other clauses then there's then there's very little need. Yeah. And one last one.
Speaker 5
Another thing that you had listed here though is an inverse revoice rights which looks back like so and so Inv. is it for a long time people didn't believe there was something called the inversed I thought it was just a weird passive. So one thing we've not talked about is how you indicate something is in the passive versus being in the active. And there are different ways to do this in the European languages you have an entirely different system of conjugation. Yes. Or some sort of help or a verb participle wackiness as you know in in Western Europe. You might if even if you don't conjugate the verb you might have some marker and I'm used to seeing affixes bound morphemes. Change the voice of verbs something prefix or whatever I could just stick an S on the end.
Speaker 14
For example sadly tinies has one that I see that seems very strange to me. So Bay they have the proposition Bay right.
Speaker 4
Which after Bay comes your agent. So we pay Chitwan. I was hit by a car but you can also actually omit the. You can actually omit it. So it was. It will be strong. I was hit. Yes. So I get it. It's kind of weird because it's you could kind of consider it like a Kovar or you could kind of of a preposition where you could drop the object. Right
Speaker 5
. And and once again no notice what's happened is you have shifted the agent the agent you've shifted the thing you care most about to the front of the sentence. Right. So you expect you expect more voice trickery I think. I think I'm safe in saying this you expect more voice tricks like this in a language with a really fixed word order because you have fewer ways to to to control what you care about. There was something about the Chinese example I was going to say oh the Chinese Bay is kind of fun because it can be applied to intransitive verbs or for phrase idioms. Oh yeah. Like you can say I always had tea with her. You were invited to see some bureaucrats in the whole experience was really bad. And more alarmingly you can say that you were suicidal. All right. When you're in jail by the government right. So there's lots of things going on with her.
Speaker 19
Yes. It.
Speaker 5
There's another reason people claimed there was no such thing as an inverse is because some languages just do this with word order and can no voice voice which is indistinguishable without careful looking from a passive.
Speaker 4
So let's go ahead and define what the inverse is what you were Year notes make it look like it's sort of like an agency hyrax.
Speaker 24
No no no no no no no. Well the inverse hierarchy here is I'm saying that hierarchy list is things that might trigger the inverse. So the inverse voice just does what you think it does it turns. I saw the dog into the dog saw I it just reverses the rolls OK except it doesn't do you know and it's not quite the same as a passive because a passive demotes your agent the inverse doesn't demoted in the same way it just moves it around. I
Speaker 6
can't wait. Will it change cases. Yes.
Speaker 25
OK. So let me see if I can figure out. So in the end worse they switch places. Yes.
Speaker 19
That is there any change in naming.
Speaker 5
Again we don't get hung up on the meaning. Why do we do this. Because we either want somebody else to be moved to the front of the sentence or we have some grammatical restrictions that we have to satisfy.
Speaker 24
If you could only have nominatives as the head of a relative clause then you might need an inverse. In either the matrix or the relative clause.
Speaker 26
OK I'm still OK.
Speaker 5
Well then I mean I can hunt down some examples and we can put them up on the blog when we post this because it helps to see some examples but I'm just trying to figure out how this is different from a passive word and different from a passive because you're not removing either the agent or the patient.
Speaker 24
OK. Or simply switch it you're simply switching their case marking and their roll marking in the sentence. And in the canonical passive your agent is shunted away completely in the inverse. It's simply move someplace else. So in English we're used to being able to say by the you know right we can give the agent of a passing sentence but it's sort of nuance. Yes in some weird case or a prepositional phrase or whatever.
Speaker 4
So but. OK so I'm understanding. I think I understand now. So a passive. If you are taking the agent out of the sentence. And if you do find a way to stick it back in it's a very mark structure but an inverse you don't take anything about the sentence you just switch the places of the eight It all looks so right.
Speaker 5
So the example I'm you're most likely to see these inverses in languages that have these really tight requirements on what is allowed to be that in a relative clause or you know what argument can you admit from clause to clause to clause and still have it. Say yes this is actually the same subject. Right so there can be some switch some switch reference stuff which we've never really talked about on the show before. It can come into play there. There are other languages that use the inverse for other things such as first or second person pronouns might trigger an inverse. There might be positions in the sentence where a first or second person pronoun cannot go right. It may be that second person pronouns can ever be direct object. OK. So then you would need the inverse to to say that I could I could I could see that happening right. So and this we've seen this a little bit in some of these Algonquin languages where you have the weird inversion happening. It's not exactly the same so I don't want to get too confused about that.
Speaker 4
It's not where you made a special note.
Speaker 5
I can't confuse this with the directed word but it reads the same sort of high level principle of being preoccupied with agency intimacy Who's Who do we talk most about who we care most about who has to be at the center of the conversation first and second person pronouns are much higher on the list than nouns about abstractions.
Speaker 27
Right.
Speaker 5
So person might lead to a inversion definite or indefinite articles or definite or indefinite nouns. You might decide that definite can't be low. And you know you need to shove that forward. You might decide that somebody who is an argument that is highly animate or is a person always has to come into effect and we talked about this a little bit with Navajo a few shows ago where the word order is determined by NMC people must always come before dogs in transitive senses. And some people interpret what's going on in the Navajo verb as an inverse. I
Speaker 4
see. One last thing you had listed here before we move on to the future conlang was you had a plucky listed and I kind of wonder if maybe we should we should just cover applicative was in a different show. It seems like a bigger topic.
Speaker 27
Yes but it's not really it's the same sort of thing. Applicative are there because you want to keep most important things as core parts of your verb's structure. So
Speaker 5
what does an applicative duplicative is when you add a marker on the verb that says this is a verb now has a new argument the most common kind of play in the world is the benefactor of which you do something for someone. I
Speaker 27
you know I fetch water for my mother and you just add this new you add the applicative marker to the verb and now your mom has become a core argument. You're
Speaker 28
doing this for her.
Speaker 27
Another example is I mentioned this before the Blackfoot language is semantically intransitive noun cannot ever be the subject of a transitive verb. You cannot say the knife cut the bread. Instead you have to say someone cut the bread and use an instrumental applicative with a knife.
Speaker 5
OK so again you've come up with another way to keep people poor as the court arguments are OK. So yeah lives are very very complicated because they typically induce all sorts of arguments shuffling which is more complicated and you know maybe we can talk about that in some you know future episode of verb torturing a cause.
Speaker 29
Yeah.
Speaker 12
I can't hear you asking about or saying about the podcast it seems like right now people are interested in click it has also baffled by them I think about the first half of what you said got lost in a bunch of robots.
Speaker 5
OK well I was just saying I don't visit the the forums. You know ZBB CVB very often but I you know check once a week or so just to see if anyone has questions or things for the show. And sometimes I sort of hang out and read other things. It seems like people have become interested in applicative recently but are confused by them now.
Speaker 4
Why don't we.
Speaker 30
We've done voice to death.
Speaker 14
Why don't we talk about our future conlang which is say over some say yes. Hey
Speaker 31
yo yo yo yo.
Speaker 32
I can't find his stuff about how to pronounce his name but say on in every line I'll follow.
Speaker 6
I'll say to say or no I don't. I'm
Speaker 5
guessing it's not T as well.
Speaker 6
It could be the Anglicized spelling. Well no. Anyway I'll say tail her now but this was created by we have this the name of the real name not just white people so created by Covel on the forum.
Speaker 19
And he has a rather annoying Web site as me and we were talking about before the recording.
Speaker 4
So let's kind of get that out of the way.
Speaker 6
But it was brought to our attention because it has it your phone's Yes it does but I can't find the information on that idea.
Speaker 33
If you look at the vocabulary list you will find them OK which is lucky yes. Oh yeah. All right.
Speaker 5
Steven So this guy did. Peace Corps service in the Republic of Guinea and seems to have been very influenced by the local languages and inspired by them in creating this language which it sure looks like he has subsequently abandoned it doesn't seem like this has been updated in a few years.
Speaker 4
It's kind of it's kind of an old site and media fans has you see U.S. of spinning rolling and over and yeah he has his videophones in here they're kind of mixed in some things. But I like the stuff that he has.
Speaker 12
Yes it's a nicely nicely done thing.
Speaker 6
I especially was drawn to his verbs.
Speaker 4
So he has two different he has two different ways of declining where one applies to see if he can. And there's a simple verbs. And then auxilary says that and the exhilarates take a whole lot more marking it seems like than they the the regular prayer. And there's a whole deal of like there's changes to tone in addition to various affixes that are stuck on her aspect and tacts and polarity. I
Speaker 5
found that a little I only know of a small number of languages that use tone switching to make grammatical things and they're not exactly close to where he was with them. They're on the right continent. So he even says he's not sure it's very naturalistic and I certainly have doubts but it's a nice way of approaching the issue.
Speaker 34
Yeah.
Speaker 4
But it is interesting to see that he had to for him to do that and to have these two different times for the full time tense aspect his mood is defined on these who are complex and it's not exactly clear which part is marked by switching. I
Speaker 25
think it just him. There's a whole lot of it's the verb stem the verb stem. Yeah
Speaker 4
. Is altered by it. But there's different changes in town for each one I think.
Speaker 19
Did you guys see anything else that grabbed you.
Speaker 4
Or there's he has I'm rather confused by his noun classes.
Speaker 5
He has them but doesn't tell us what they're for.
Speaker 6
Well he has like for one thing his noun classes seem to be mixed up with number that's OK. So
Speaker 5
he has a standard. How should we say that's a standard feature of Bantu language description is they count the singular and the plural as different instances of a class so Class 3 in class 4 go together. Right. Three is the singular four is the plural. Right. So I've come to think about that. I think even the last episode it said you know bad you know Swahili has eight classes or you know something that however you can't write eight or 16 or whatever.
Speaker 35
So that all other than that it just seems to have a a animate inanimate distinction to me.
Speaker 4
But he mixes up beat up with numbers so that there's a singular and plural Amut singing like an animal plural an inanimate pour. And then he has a special noun class for collective noun for Massenet rather so.
Speaker 6
And they're all marked by a prefix of some kind although this is very standard Bantu kinds of stuff.
Speaker 27
Yeah.
Speaker 7
Yeah I don't really have much to say almes it just reminds me a lot of the language I did and field methods for good reason.
Speaker 8
So was that a bad.
Speaker 12
So it's nice though that the verb I'm looking has grammar summary or grammar notes and all sorts of things happen on the verb that deal with our issue today. So there's an applicative which is highly deranged It has all sorts of changes to the verb stem. And it's sort of a general applicative it can mean all sorts of things not just a benefactor. So he has the example saw meaning to grab something so Sahnoun meaning to grab something for someone.
Speaker 4
OK. Yeah I just saw something though. It's not just that he mixes up the number with his stuff. It seems like you can mix and match the classes for singular and plural.
Speaker 5
So if you look down his table and go to which is where it is on the on the nouns page that you did OK then the nominal morphology morphology.
Speaker 4
So if you pair or and it's large rounded Oval in Emmets if you pair pair o and it's animates piu pair can maul its small round drop scattered spots and animate. So it's kind of a weird seems it seems like he was kind of pull something interesting there.
Speaker 36
Well I don't know.
Speaker 5
Yeah I understand how the pairings work I would love to see more examples of that. Yes. Although sources say the pigs ran away this way and that.
Speaker 6
Unfortunately not.
Speaker 4
No classes no work losses on the on site embarrassedly some losses on the site but no Klaas's on the pages that inexplicably need to be downloaded.
Speaker 5
But I like that it's tonal that makes me happy to lead.
Speaker 31
Do you have any ideas about any anything that jumps out at you. No not really. It
Speaker 37
just seems like a very stern standard to language.
Speaker 38
It works quite well.
Speaker 37
It sounds quite good you know.
Speaker 39
I can't really say a lot about it. It quite standard. I do. I do like the Turnell thing a lot.
Speaker 5
Yeah it looks like he has three tone street tones and something else going on which I can't. Sometimes I'll see Vowell with double hashmarks above it. I have no idea that is in the creaky voice or something. I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 7
So yeah I don't know if they had a falling tone because I know it all depends on how much she took and how much she invented the language. I did. We had generally three talents and then at the end I think part of like the Sandy was like you got a low tone at the end it became like a falling tone.
Speaker 4
That could be could be something so much that they could be up was his creds grip his romanization is basically just yeah.
Speaker 12
Well it's less to me I see it less as as IPA than standard Central African. We need to we need to distinguish blacks from tense middle vowels. Yes. I'm not sure what elbow's but I think I think C is like that like the name I like what he has.
Speaker 22
I thought it was a chip but he has ts describing it as C..
Speaker 40
Hold on. Let me go to the C section. All there is left k of f k and C.
Speaker 14
I don't think he has any chronology charts and he explains. Please explain your romanization. Even if they adhere closely to IPA.
Speaker 4
Yeah I've seen other African languages with Epsilon and the open Oh so I didn't know that was why.
Speaker 10
My I hate my really good cause because of the note A lot of fun. Not a lot of money fun phone support for sure and when I try and write something like that it suddenly switches to Times New Roman is just all disgusting really.
Speaker 14
It can be difficult. He also has my right hand man as a character.
Speaker 9
I like I like using my insert such like using Anglo in English the way my handwriting works practically. Yeah that's the way my handwriting goes. I just basically doing mine. It's like good enough.
Speaker 4
No one can honestly would using my English would improve it because precisely the situation that I think is most suited for is a language where you have a distinction between an AS in English has singer and finger so so it looks like he has those horrible articulations that drive me bonkers.
Speaker 5
Does she begin playing K.P. that I have such a hard time with here. You want me.
Speaker 9
Oh yeah I'm a fan of aesthetics of language.
Speaker 5
No I like it fine. I think it's a nice sound but it's hard to pronounce.
Speaker 4
I don't know I didn't try to really pronounce anything. I was looking at grammar stuff.
Speaker 5
No I didn't really think that he has some translations that are nice because he tries to alter the style so apparently sometime in the ZBB they took a passage of the Prince by Machiavelli and had people translate that and he happens. That translation is kind of nifty. I think because he you know makes it sort of idiomatic not you know Renaissance Italian bombast but a different social.
Speaker 41
Yeah and he you can see for example he doesn't actually say the word prince to translate as writer right.
Speaker 4
And the gloss you see like words like elder and father and stuff it matters in. So obviously he's doing a little bit of a cultural credit by which is interesting.
Speaker 42
Yeah no it's nice.
Speaker 5
And the wind and the North Wind and The Sun also has some of the stuff. And and we have stories so we get to use your phones. It makes me happy so they have one word the story is called Mrs. red chicken and the seeds she found which is a translation exercise which is a shame because that's a great story. Google used to have glottal stops and so forth anyway even if that's outdated I think some people might find that inspiring just look at how he translated things and how he used to give difference because here's a guy who's had experience with languages that actually have them. So you can see how those can be used in a in a real and real context.
Speaker 4
Yeah that's a good way to figure out exactly where you would put various ideas.
Speaker 5
So they've got her pounding rice with oh it's the articulation that makes me crazy.
Speaker 14
Boom boom boom boom boom boom and it's OK.
Speaker 5
And I have to work on that one anyway. Well I feel like it. Yeah yeah. What's weird is it seems like he has Yeah he has both by labels you know PNB and the chords circulated K P G B things which is a little bit unusual so he's enriched the sound system a bit. How
Speaker 4
do they usually have a certain lead.
Speaker 5
Typically the letter P represents that K.P. combination because there's no normal p.
Speaker 32
I actually had only had the bilabial trill and not be wanting to know always.
Speaker 43
MC always overemphasise X. It doesn't really sound like that. That's a tough that's a tough sell. Like if you heard it really just think it's a B and it wasn't really actually looked at him might I was saying we're like that's not a normal B.
Speaker 4
Well when you're saying it probably when he's saying it in normal me it's a lot less emphatic. Just like in like Spanish when you do a trill when normal Spanish Spanish speakers do a trill. It's
Speaker 43
not it's very it's not even like that it's like you can do an extended trill in Spanish for emphasis you would never do with the horse like a noid sound. Shred the actual trill.
Speaker 5
OK I'll have to actually look up languages that have this incredibly rare. I think pure of heart is has it not only just pure habit but they don't use it around strangers because they get made fun of.
Speaker 6
Right so if you have an exposure to a common sound in the language for a while because they don't get left out so they have to actually let the people get used to them.
Speaker 5
So I think so anyway in that area the grammar summary for this language he has a long list of grammatical voice changing things that go on. So we pick this language really well and this has actually been two languages are known for this to having a bunch of applicative types so he's got a comedy of competitive rather which indicates you do something with somebody which is kind of funky right. You do something with somebody and you've turned them into a core argument of verb and then lock it in. And then of course he's got this reflexive which is a different kind of.
Speaker 44
So I'm trying of like so applicative turn something that would usually be some sort of oblique case into your arguments right.
Speaker 14
Yes.
Speaker 6
OK.
Speaker 27
Now that's what gets confusing when you allow this to happen to a transitive verb.
Speaker 12
Your your way is eased if you allow noun incorporation.
Speaker 26
Yes.
Speaker 6
So does anybody else have any final thoughts on this language.
Speaker 24
Maybe he uses things that wraparound noun phrases to be what we would call prepositions. He
Speaker 5
calls them are compositions the kind of the kind of Chinese like where you have the first part indicates motion or lack of motion and then the noun and then the last part indicates you know honor in or above or whatever.
Speaker 4
Oh okay. I was trying to figure out what where were you were going to tinies like map that connects. That's an interesting thing. I don't know if that's actually what I Chrisler position. He
Speaker 5
calls them second positions. Yeah it looks more like a verb phrase is done something funky.
Speaker 26
Yeah.
Speaker 6
Sometime I need to have someone explain to me what an imposition is but that's not in this. But
Speaker 24
you know is when your neighbor asks you to do something you don't want to do.
Speaker 4
Well we'll talk about it when we do. OK.
Speaker 29
But anyway Dag phonetic.
Speaker 6
Yes I'm like well I think that's about all for the show that unless somebody has anything else to say about you know no. All right. So Mr. William yes yes. William.
Speaker 5
Any final words of the man may carry Borst from Minsk two pins but he will limp.
Speaker 43
OK. I want to follow that with you.
Speaker 45
I don't know what were you planning on.
Speaker 23
No wisdom at all.
Speaker 4
Do you have any know. I think I pronounced her name about 30 different times. I don't know.
Speaker 46
Well then I'm going to say eppi conlang thank you for listening to Khan Langtry. You can find all our episodes and show notes as well. Subscribe to our iTunes or RSS feeds through conlang free dot conlang dot org. You can also like our Facebook page or follow at conlang or me on Twitter if you would like to contact us with correction's comments questions or suggestions or even suggest your own conlang is a feature. Please email con Langtry at gmail dot com or call into our new voicemail line 3 0 4 8 7 3 6 2 8 1. We
Speaker 47
also have a handy suggestion form on our site.
Speaker 48
Our theme music was created by Alexander Monday.
Speaker 5
So New York magazine would have these contests and one of the contest was to make up Proverbs from different parts of the world and the one I just gave you was the winning Russian entry. I learned that from Paul Fromer who has a book. They came out with just full of these ridiculous things like one their contests was to come up with greeting cards for unusual events. The best the best one was saw the smoke. Now
Speaker 49
you're pope contrats. I'm good dear.
Speaker 4
OK. I'm getting an odd echo from you.
Speaker 32
Did you like the headphones or something because no it's your sound quality changed.
Speaker 14
Like now I can hear myself getting an echo from you too.
Speaker 50
That's how he gets on his side. Because I couldn't hear myself before she could really speak. So there's no way I could. I clearly heard echoes.
Speaker 51
I'm hearing it too.
Speaker 8
Now we're all getting echoes and echoed on. No.
Speaker 43
You sound like you're back to normal.
Speaker 5
Yeah. OK. All right well George should edit this out. I
Speaker 4
think we can also see if we can we can we can have it now.
Speaker 12
Well OK.
Speaker 43
Let me guess we have a guest today.
Speaker 6
We were supposed to but I don't know.
Speaker 32
He's on he's on on mine. I
Speaker 52
just want to ask is this the right guy. There was another guy who was the guy that was supposed to be guest last night and I a Spanish guy.
Speaker 32
Now this is all the I think is his name all day. I don't know. It's not the Spanish guy.
Speaker 31
You want me to add him to the conference and see who he is.
Speaker 32
He's the one. It's
Speaker 53
not high may last. OK.
Speaker 5
So there's somebody with the log in the investor looking at today's show notes.
Speaker 6
We'll have to see if this is the same guy.
Speaker 32
We could just ask him. Yeah. Yeah just invite him. It will be like hey random person. Hello.
Speaker 54
Hello.
Speaker 55
Hi.
Speaker 14
You even have any idea why you're in a random conference.
Speaker 11
Yeah.
Speaker 49
We were thinking we we we we think we know who you are but we're not sure that keep going on like podcast.
Speaker 56
Yes.
Speaker 1
Yes yeah.
Speaker 6
Are you the one that's on the dock right now.
Speaker 56
Yeah. OK.
Speaker 6
OK. So you should be the right person. You have no idea because like I did not keep records of who was who.
Speaker 11
Yeah it was confusing. Yeah.

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery 25 Grammatical Voice (last edited 2017-09-12 11:57:10 by PeteBleackley)