The Dailies. February 15, 2021
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. February 15, 2021”
I wanted to show off Firen to someone by saying something in it, so I decided on “I hope things aren’t treating you too badly”, which turned out to be a surprisingly difficult sentence to translate when I haven’t seriously worked on Firen in months and my notes are remarkably bad at explaining how the voices work. But I eventually managed to do it and I’m proud of my efforts (and also I had to coin a new word to do it.)
Bavve.tam.če, [name].ji. Gů.slonam.su půt ze.ků.stalao.ga.du roṙ nim.tif stůllao.tif.ga.health.be:DEO.P2p name-NPT. CONT.hope:DEO.A1pI DPV PP.HAB.affect:SBJ.A2p.P3pD too bad.D situation†.D.PEG
“Be well, [name]. I hope that you are not too badly affected by the overall situation.”
I actually had to use Google to find my previous explanation on this blog of how the voices work in Firen because I could not decipher my notes. Why did I think
Dative-passive: půt (Verbs of giving [G] (POV = donor) -> verbs of receiving/experiencing [A] (POV = recipient))
(S/A)->?PEG
DAT->(S/A)
overall: (S/A) ?(P) DAT -> (S/A) ?(P) ?PEG
Circumstantial?
was a reasonable explanation of how to use the dative-passive voice? My explanation from a year and a half ago was so much clearer. I don’t know why I didn’t just copy that into my notes.
† Stůllaotif is actually not translatable with a single word, but it means something like “the general state of life” and is reasonably well approximated by the idiomatic use in English of unspecified ‘things’, but ‘situation’ was a clearer approximation for the purposes of glossing this sentence.
Sorry for my late reply!
I am always in awe of the intricacy and level of thought you give to your conlangs, as well as their originality.
I’m not only very rusty when it comes to glossing acronyms, but never got that deeply into them to start with. I found a Wikipedia page to help me, but it doesn’t explain NPT or DPV. In “A1pl”, does A refer to the agent of the sentence?
Is it the “you” of the sentence that’s passivised?
Luskaotasu! Thank you!
All of those are unique abbreviations to Firen. NPT = nonparticipant case (here marking the passivized donor), which replaces the old label ‘pegative’; DPV = dative-passive voice; and A1pI = Agent, 1st person Inclusive, which is the verb agreement marker -si (though presenting here as -su due to harmonization). I should publish a list of my glossing conventions somewhere, although clearly I have more pressing documentation needs to deal with first.
And gůslonamsu půt zekůstalaogadu roṙ nimtif stůllaotifga to you.