The Dailies. August 24
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you’ve already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?
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One thought on “The Dailies. August 24”
Been pondering pluralization of adjectives today. Mainly whether they should take a plural marking when coupled with plural nouns. There’s a few options and I think these are the simplest:
– No plural marking on adjectives
– Just the plain plural -ju on all adjectives modifying plural nouns
– The adjectives taking whichever plural ending the noun is using.
Slightly more weirdly, there’s also the option (which I’ve been toying w for a while) of letting the plural marker be used on adjectives but not following the modified noun, rather letting the plural marker indicate the degree to which the noun has that quality in some sense. Slightly weird and convoluted, but I sorta like it in spite of that. As an alternative though, I’ve been pondering whether maybe there was once such a system, but it has changed over time so that adjectives aren’t really pluralized now but some pluralized forms have become lexicalized and taken on specific meanings. Some examples to illustrated:
I was trying to translated the phrase “hooded eyes” or maybe “deep eyes” because “hooded” is such a specific word. And since eyes are plural it became relevant for me to think of whether adjectives pluralize.
Now if we did it with a plain plural (or a plural following the noun, which has the plain plural in this case), we’d have: Nofoju jiaju for “deep eyes”. But I have tentatively put the translation of “hooded eyes” as Nofoji jiaju with the adjective meaning “deep” with the plural indicating something being more than expected. So I’m thinking “deep” as in “deep set” when used of eyes etc was derived from “deep” by means of this plural marking that is now lexicalized. But I don’t know if that makes any sense as a derivation source.
Also, I was trying to translate “completely white” and had the idea to, along the lines of the above, render it as linji (white + the “many” plural), as a lexicalization to mean “completely white, pure white”. I actually like this one better than nofoji because I don’t know if I think hooded eyes being “very deep” makes semantic sense but somehow completely white being “many white” makes sense to me.
Guh, this msg has not been very coherent but hopefully some of you will get what I mean and have some input about whether this business of some lexicalized adjectives with plural endings and meanings different than the original adjective makes sense.