The Dailies. August 29, 2022
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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5 thoughts on “The Dailies. August 29, 2022”
Third comment about the Naqlikar language – now, on to verbs!
Verbs are conjugated for number but not for person.
I only have two tenses right now, present and simple past/preterite. I’ll just call it “past” here to simplify. Nothing aspectual at the moment.
Let’s start with the verb meaning ‘to see’. It’s a little bit irregular, but not by much.
jôin ‘see(s)’; present tense, singular -n
jindis ‘see’; present tense, plural -ndVs (the vowel isn’t always an /i/)
jindi ‘saw’; past tense, singular -ndV
jôi ‘saw’; past tense, plural -0 [=∅]
The verb for ‘to paint’ is more regular:
dolon ‘paint(s)’; present tense, singular
dolondas present tense, plural
dolonda past tense, singular
dolo past tense, plural
Some more verbs:
fron ‘gives’ (also a bit irregular; frondis is the plural form)
ponón ‘teaches’ (irregular in so far as the stress moves, but in other respects I think it’s regular, at least for present and simple past forms)
gemigan ‘tells’
uhôpan ‘fishes’
ejon he/she[/it?]; 3rdSG. Accusative or direct object=ejde, dative or indirect object ejde-ma; locative ejon-ma
malia (n) ‘book’
momo (adv) ‘yesterday’
qan’ka ‘much’, ‘a lot of’; ‘many’
seru (n) ‘story’
susin (n) [a specific type of fish]
A few sample sentences:
Momo jindi ponónas aqéle. Yesterday the teacher saw the boy.
Momo jindi aqél ponónase. Yesterday the boy saw the teacher.
Sajki uhôpan. The girl is fishing.
Sajki uhôpanda qan’ka hôpemus/hôpe. The girl fished many fishes/much fish.
Mojdagem uhôpa qan’ka susine. The men in the village fished a lot of susin [a specific fish species].
Aqèlem jôi ponónase. The boys saw the teacher.
Aqèlem jindis ponónase. The boys see the teacher.
Humi fune-ma gimigan serune. I’m telling you a story.
In spoken language, this would be most often realised as Humi fune-ma gimigan seru.
Ejon fron sajkinema maliane (written);
Ejon fron sajkima malia (spoken) He/She gives the girl the book.
As seen from the last sample, sometimes in spoken language there is no difference between the dative and the locative case.
Interesting! And lovely! I like that you have the citation form losing a final consonant sometimes. Do you have any verbs that don’t have a final consonant? Is the irregularity of join (with appropriate diacritics) from having suppletion or some other source of two stems? or do they have the same root and it just declines differently based on some rule?
I really like the word aqelem, I just want to say. And it’s funny, I just read today about a bunch of languages that merged the locative into the dative, so that doesn’t surprise me a bit.
This is such a good set of words and sentences!
I’m sorry for my late reply! Thank you so much. I’m glad you like these words and samples!!
Is the irregularity of join (with appropriate diacritics) from having suppletion or some other source of two stems? or do they have the same root and it just declines differently based on some rule?
The irregularity of jôin is simply that the initial ô disappears in the present tense plural and past tense singular: instead of *jôindi, *jôindis, we get yindi, yindis. This doesn’t usually happen when two vowels stand together. The verb muin, ‘works’, is muindi in present tense plural and muindis in past tense singular. (The stress remains on the first syllable.) I’m not sure why the ô falls away in jôin.
Do you have any verbs that don’t have a final consonant?
Currently I only have such verbs! The -n seen in these verbs isn’t part of the stem proper but a marker of the present tense singular. (I’ve still used it as the cited term just because it feels handy; I’m not sure yet if Naqlikar has infinitives proper, and if they do, how those look.) So the form jôi is both the stem of the verb and the form for past tense plural. Same with ûhopa, aka, ponó, and so on.
There may be verbs whose stem end in a consonant, but I don’t know which these are yet.
I love it! Honestly, I sometimes forget that j is officially the consonantal y sound, though it would be super helpful to my own work to remember that. Looking forward to more!
Eh heh heh, I just realized I also forgot in part right here! I wrote “yindi, yindis” where it should be “jindi, jindis”.
Thank you!!!