The Dailies. September 9, 2019
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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3 thoughts on “The Dailies. September 9, 2019”
I haven’t done much conlanging lately because I made a change to my medications and have had much more migraines than usual which has prevented me from doing anything too cerebral, but while discussing the aspect reform that Sajem Tan had a while ago that removed the aspect that was widely misunderstood as equivalent to momentane, I realized that Firen could actually benefit from a momentane/instantaneous aspect.
A quick refresher on how TAM works in Firen:
A verb, such as zegůpaitadeskrosudu, “I used to know it”, is constructed as proximal past (ze-) + continuous aspect (gů-) + know (pait) + dissatisfactive mood (-(ad)esk) + terminative aspect (-ro) + first person, inclusive agent (-su) + third person abstract object (-du). A more elaborated translation is “There was a point not too long ago when I ceased to know it (and I’m not happy about this fact).” The present and perfective are marked by null morphemes, the indicative mood is marked by the verb ending in –a, and the unnamed default secondary aspect is also a null morpheme. The agent and object suffixes are mandatory, based on the alignment of that particular verb (“to know” being transitive, it has both). Notably, the inceptive and terminative morphemes (I’m not sure whether it’s more like a suffix or an infix so I’m just calling them morphemes) anti-harmonize with the vowel root, which makes them more phonetically prominent.
Currently, there are two secondary aspects (plus the lack of either), inceptive and terminative, but I thought that momentane would fit into that system quite well. So I coined a new morpheme, čo, with that meaning.
Here’s an example of it in use: Čara fan zůhaffačozabo lan vovvu zegůjakkalubo. “Lightning broke the sky [in an instant] while the rain began to fall.”
Oooh! I like this a lot!
So sorry to hear about your migraines, I hope you can get some relief!