User talk:Askadia

Welcome
Hi, welcome to Conlang! Thanks for your edit to the Haemiş page.

Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- EmperorZelos (Talk) 2010-08-16T11:16:06

For help please visit Conlang Guide or at my talk page to ask!

You may also visit Contionary for ideas for words

Helping
I am taking a stab adn say you're the one who dropped a message on my page eh?

The Emperor Zelos 07:47, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

I hope you are aware of multiple wrongs in your article when it comes to grammar.

The Emperor Zelos 08:03, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

I'm new to wikis and I do not know yet how to leave messages on discussion pages. Anyway, what kind of mystakes I did?

(P.S. You can delete the article about Haemis, it's the same as Language of the Valley I'm working on right now, but Haemis is about 1 year ago.)

oh really? I got a message from someone with little knowledge about linguistics on my page the other day, it was an IP adress and it had been active on your conlang.

well first of I suggest you use ~ whenever you type a message it will add your signature to the message.

The first one I can say is that Verbal Adjective/Participle you have put Active as a noun meaning the doer of the verb, but participles are adjectives alone and active participle means as in english the -ing form, as when you say "the walking man", its an adjective describing the noun as the performer of the verb

The Emperor Zelos 08:19, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

Good, so my message did arrive! I wasn't sure you got it, cuz when I published, I wasn't able to find it XD.

Yup, verbal abjective and participle aren't really the right categories. I just pasted/copied all that from my MS Word stabs and I'm trying to translate them in a good English from Italian. However in Italian the word "cantante" (singer) is obviously a noun, but comes from "cantare" (to sing) and has the same form of the active participle (active: "cantante" = that singing / passive: "cantato" = that singed). Again, "presidente" (noun, president) comes from "presiedere" (to preside): the active participle of the verb is "presidente" (that is presiding) and the passive participle is "presieduto" (that presided). Linguisticly, i can assume that some languages can form/build their noun agents (English -er form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_noun) and noun patient (English -ed form) from the participles.

As per the verbal abjective, I'm not sure about its english name. In Italian i call them "aggettivo verbale". I'm refering to them as per the Japanese adjective i-ending that acts like verbs. If you know a better name, I'm glad to change it.

Askadia 08:44, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

It did arrive and I suggest you look up on SOV languages and Tripartite as you dont seem to know about those too well. I have made careful choices on all of it and quite frankly in many ways my language is a highly typical SOV Tripartite language

they can form it from the participle or even have the participle form and agent form being one and the same but linguisticly they are quite different.

Name for what exacly?

Lingua Franca
The Emperor Zelos 09:37, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

About Tripatite: the choise mostly depends on what kind of language you want to build. If your intention is to make an uncommon/alien/magical/fantasy language, it's OK. I'm not saying that is wrong. Nothing could be wrong in a fictionally background. But among 5.000 natural languages all over the Word, just 10 or less are full-working tripartite, that's why I just wondered you did that choise.

About my language: since my language treats gerund, gerundive and participle in a different way (such as using aspect instead of mood), I think that calling that grammatical phenomenon as participle doesn't generate misunderstanding.

Askadia 10:34, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

The reason I did that choice? there are a few and Id be happy to tell you I would suggest you do like this, your conlang can refer to it as the same phenomena but when describing in english you write it in exact accordance to how linguistics do to ensure people wont nag about htat and with near 100% certainty not cause confussion
 * 1) I picked it because to me it seemed more reasonble than what we have
 * 2) I liked the fact that its foreign to most people (I htink one of the big languages in the world is Tripartite, hindi if im not mistaken or some version of it I know for sure) and wanted to have it as the dominant lingua franca in my world I am working on just to add some oddity, wierdness yet be within the realm of realism.

The Emperor Zelos 11:53, September 24, 2011 (UTC)

are those answers satesfying to you?

The Emperor Zelos 09:15, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

1° point: it's opinable, but it's your opinion, so ok. Nothing wrong with that.

2° point: uhm ... let's see: Another lingua franca such as Bahasa Indonesia, it is a sort of mix and semplification of the 17.000 tongues spoken in that archipelago (1 language, dialect or local speech in each isle)
 * 1) "foreign-ity", oddity and wierdness: a sense of "alienity" is good, in my little opinion, pushing a conlang into different directions than natural lang. is ok, gives it a sort of "personality".
 * 2) Lingua Franca: that's a little bit harder. As i can see (but I could be wrong), Umbrean treats lots, thousands of linguistic phenomena under grammatical rules. But the role of a Lingua Franca is to be easier. Let's take English for exemple: it's a widely-used lingua franca all over the word, but - as you know - it comes from germanic branch of indo-eupean group. What's surprising in English? No cases, no verb inflections (just -s, -ed or -ing forms), no noun genders (a part from the natural genders). It uses synthactial forms for many things ("i am about to " instead of codifying them into some verbal voice/mood), that's made English easy. With "may" or "can" (and their derivations such as might and could), English gives you an all-in-one instrument to express possibility, probability, request and different grade of politeness ("may i get it?" is more polited than "can i get it?"). Umbrean gramatically codifies each of them and that generates a HUGE amount of rules and forms, plus each Umbrean gender has its own flection.

!BUT! If other languages in your world are more complex, articulated than Umbrean and it's the resulting semplification of them... so, it's ok.

For exemple, in my world, my language is created by Elf. So I thought "How an Elf could perceive the world?". In my opinion and immortal Elf doesn't care about Time. Who cares if an action is done before, yesterday, 1 week ago or 3.000 years ago? The more important thing for and Elf is "is this action complete/done? It has yet to become? Or is it still continuing!?". Then that Elf people didn't develop verbal tences. They simply don't need. Instead, they widely use verbal aspects, more useful for their immortal nature.

Does Umbrean people really and strictly need the richness of the language? Uhm... I don't really know. In the other hand, you are the God in your world and things can be different there! A more scientific culture obviously requires a more detailed language. So, yes, everything is possible.

All this are just my mere opinions and I really like to share opinions with you.

Oh, i forgot to say that you named "gender" (animate, inanimate, mechanic etc...) something that is more similar to "class". The difference between gender and class is so thin that sometimes are missunderstood. But gender often includes masculinity and femininity (plus eventaul neuter = nor masculine or feminine). In othe situations, it's better to talk about "classes" (i.e. look for Bantu in wikipedia). ((( grrrr, i always forget to sign))) Askadia 10:29, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

Askadia 10:16, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

You are slightly wrong, sure a Lingua franca that is constructed is best done to be simpler but a lingua franca doesnt have to be easier, in the old days lingua franca in the academic world was latin, which was far more complex than any other in europe at that time. French was it politicly and so on.

In my world umbrean is the lingua franca for the same reason english is, their expansion of colonies and political interactions have made it so alot know their language even if its equal or worse than other languages and hence it is the lingua franca.

and gender/noun class are interchangable, there is no meaning differens really.

But I do enjoy that you are comming with these things, this discussion is quite more pleasent than the first message I recieved

The Emperor Zelos 12:17, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

Evolution
I'm agree with you, a lingua franca could not be easier or harder than the mother tongue. But that's not explaining why you chose a so high complexity level for your "opera". As I stated before, a living language tends to drop "things" it doesn't need, while other "things" or "way to express things" come out. Umbrean looks like more as our "ancient" languages in the past, often spoken by isolated community, and preserving old mores. If Umbrean is so widely spoken and touches so many different cultures, did it get changed by them?

When I was younger and I studied English for the first times at the elementary school (from 8 to 12 years old), teachers were really intransigent about the use of "I shall do" and "He will do". 10-15 years later that distintion doesn't exist anymore, english-speakers just use "will" for every person.

The Language of the Valley I did so far, unfortunately in my book background it was already a dead tongue. But for the future discending conlang will have many drops & semplications and the rising of the articles (that L.o.t.V. doesn't have).

Askadia 15:23, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

Your premise is flawed to begin with as they "tend to drop stuff they dont need". I suggest you read one of my blogs about language evolution here.

I can already state it as this, if it constantly tend to drop stuff languages (which are thought to be close to 200 thousand years old) would never have reached a state in historic times where we could say "its more complex than now" as we are then talking about 195 thousand year of language evolution prior to written history in which everything unneccisery obviously got tossed out already and everything would be much simpler than english itself today, latins complexity, forget it.

The Emperor Zelos 15:40, September 25, 2011 (UTC)

PS: Blog: http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:EmperorZelos/Language_evolution

A bit of Italian
I read your blog and I'm partially agree.

Before explaining my point, I would like to show you what funny and curious we Italians have: a sort of "did / -ed" evolution occured in Italian too, and also in French (not sure for the other Romance languages, probably Spanish did, but for Rumanian and Portoguese I don't really know).

The same machanic of "I walk did < I walked", involving the past tense, in Italian happened with the future tence, an evolution from early stages of differenciation between vulgar Italian and Latin.

Let's take the verb "amare" (to love) in the simple future tence: "Ho / hai / ha" are still the current forms for the verb "avere" (to have: I have a glass of water = Io ho un bicchiere d'acqua). That evolution and creation of the simple future tence occured approximately in the Middle Ages. I suppose that's happened because people needs a way to express things that have been yet to come and time by time new generations assumed that "amerò" is a future tence (and not an infinitive tence + the present tence of "to have", like their primavel "parents" did).
 * amerò (i will love) = amar ho (to love I have = I have to love)
 * amerai = amar hai (to love you have = you have to love)
 * amerà = amar ha (to love he/she/it has = he/she/it has to love)

While 1.000 years ago, a young Italian language was building a new tence, nowadays many tences and moods are dropped. Subjonctive and Conditional are widely substituted by the Imperfective tence of the Indicative:

Se avessi studiato (cond.), sarei (subj.) dottore = if i would studied, I were doctor (probably I chose the wrong tences in English, feel free to correct me).

But people commonly say: se studiavo, ero dottore. (both imperfective)

So, instead of using so many tences and moods, we reduced them in just present simple (sono), simple past (sono stato) and imperfective (ero). I don't feel to use an old form, yet grammaticaly correct, "ebbi avuto" (a past for "to have"), becouse its old hypothesis grade isn't neccesary anymore. "Avevo" (a past for "to have") is more common and easier. To be honest, I'm even not sure where I have to use "ebbi avuto" to have a right consecutio temporum in Italian. And I'm Italian since 28 years ago!

It's yet too early to state that Imperfective is the right one everywhere (grammaticaly), but many tences and moods are converging into it.

Same for the use of "che" ("that" in the relative sentence). Again, the use of "ci": People talk like that and probably in the next 50-100 years, the future Italian will accept those (now) errors as rules.
 * (Correct) Ho visto la donna con cui parlavi = I saw the woman you was talking with
 * (Incorrect) Ho visto la donna che ci parlavi = the preposition "with" is lost.
 * (Correct) Le ho parlato = I talked with her // Gli ho parlato = I talked with him
 * (Incorrect) Ci ho parlato = I talker with her/him

But they are simplifications. Just one "ci" for many different uses.
 * Ci vado = I go there
 * Ci parlo = I talk to her/him
 * Ci vediamo = We see each other (=> it's a sort of "see ya!")

While this semplication is occuring, I'm noticing the upcoming use of "troppo" (= too much) from the youth jergon (and as you explained in your blog, it has an enphatize role in the sentence).

Oggi è troppo una bella giornata = Litt. Today it's "too much" a good day.

Even if Italian already has an adverb for this use

Oggi è proprio una bella giornata = Today it's really a good day.

So... I think that languages have many many influences: from the common and not-well-educated people, from the foreigners immigrated, from the scientific word and technologies, from youth jergons and from contacts with other languages (i.e. the name Michael is italianizied in Maicol - horrible!) etc. But the main 2 forces that change a language are semplification and innovation.

That's my point of view :P.

PS. "ho", "hai" and "ha" (Italian for "to have") are the same hindi forms for "to be". L.O.L. How wierd languages are? XD Centuries divides Latin>Italian from P.I.E., but "ho/hai/ha" still exist in languages so distant.

Askadia 12:52, September 26, 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect, simplification is only a major trend if you got alot of outside influences or multiple inside influences (like cultures of different languages within a culture/language). otherwise you got the opposite, have you never seen the smaller languages and their immense complexity that put european languages to shame? THey are mostly isolated which is why they retain it. (An interesting trend is that the fewer the speaker the more jaw dropping complicated a language tend to be which I speculate is mostly because the natives arent "conquering" and enforcing their language upon others which would result in the simplification ive stated occures due to it)

Simplification occures whenever you got non-native influences (europe has had this for the last 3-5 thousand years when civilization(s) started occuring and the original PIE speakers started traveling, prior to it they "suffered" the continuious building of ever more complex grammar for the reasons I told about).

if you wish to say its a general trend you cant use any of the european languages really because it is too influenced by outside sources (like I said) and you would need a group of people (like some african tribe perhaps pr whatnot) that has been isolated more or less for ages, show that you got multiple of those languages related and that they are a simplified version of a previous one while htye have had little to no outside interaction. then your case of general trend of simplification would be strongely supported, but european languages are too outside influenced to be able to support your claim and tend to support mine more.

and you also got the issue of this question before I will accept a simplification as a general trend.

Languages have occured for 200 thousand years of history or so, why is that PIE (Proto indo european) could be so complex about 6 thousand years ago when there would have been 194 thousand years or so of simplification occuring prior to it? why is it that it suddenly starts "degenerating" when other cultures and people enters its realm? Why is it that this seems to always be the case with all these languages?

and its spelled "Simplification" no "e" in it, thought id tell you.

But the point I wanted with it is to demonstrate is that a lingua francas complexity is irrelevant, it is political, economical and academic power that decieds wether it becomes the lingua franca and in my world Umbrean is it for those reasons. and as an addition in my world languages have had for a long time tended toward a more isolated nature because traveling between cultures have for a long time been very hard to impossible, its still a challange not easily taken on by normal people so there have been little to no outside influences

The Emperor Zelos 16:23, September 26, 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion (?)
So let me understand: Am I wrong?
 * 1) Isolated community > minor or irrelevant language changes > strongly conservative > growing complexity (?)
 * 2) Interacting community > major influences > higher language changes > weakly conservative > degenerating complexity (?)

Askadia 10:01, September 27, 2011 (UTC)