To Morpheme Or Not To Morpheme?

Today I've listened to a great episode of Conlangery (http://conlangery.com/), the podcast about conlangs for conlangers by conlangers. The show, incredible as ever, made me think a lot about the idea of morphemes (and what's better than a show that also makes you think?). The whole deal about morphemes started out as a note in passing at the end of episode #68 (also recommended) with no other comment than David hating them as a linguistic tool. The ideas where hugely developed in this last episode, for which I'm very grateful.

I think it is true that many think of languages and words as a string of morphemes, while this notion is being challenged lately, it did have a very strong hold upon many linguists' minds. If you think about it, the further back you go, the more people relied on morphemes. A good example could be some old English dictionaries with etymology such as the one I have. Another example would be Esperanto itself, where this is a huge problem: morphemes are everything. This is one of the biggest downsides for me. Think about the "suffixes" which can equally be treated as whole words or units of meaning, it seems Zamenhof really believed in the theory of morphemes. You have for example:

malamiko "enemy" (mal- + amiko).

Note the prefix mal- which marks the opposite of something, the antonym if you will. It can be used as a word in itself, remember that it is considered still a prefix;

malo "opposite".

Other examples include:

junulo "youngster, young person" (juno + ulo, or more "natively" jun'ul'o)
but:
ulo "person" or;

vortaro "a group of words, dictionary" (vorto + aro, or vort'ar'o, with suffix 'ar' meaning "a group of, a collection of")
but:
aro "a group".

This is done in Esperanto intensively. In the same line I find in one of my dictionaries analyzing words things like a noun-forming suffix for proto-Aryan (sic) -ti, and thus giving English tru-th, divided into the morpheme of "true" and the morpheme of "noun", and other examples are presented in Latin do-ti, dowry, men-ti, mind, mor-ti, death.


The Atlantean Affair


I still remember it being mentioned that in the script the "Latin" phrase used by the protagonist (Milo Thatch) was written and analyzed as:

Dic-es lingu-as Rom-ae (sic)

To mean "you speak the language of Rome?" Jokes about how incorrect the phrasing is aside, it is plain that they mark the "morphemes" to relate them to the morphemes of Atlantean, as exemplified in the same text:

Kag wegen-os prid-uses es-e-nen.

Which is, by the way, reworked into "Latin":

It-a, su-m ami-ce via-tor. (sic)

In this last one you can even detect a very big mistake. The idea was to translate "Yes, I am a friendly traveler", but the problem is that in that sentence "friendly" is an adjective, it modifies "traveler", it looks like an adverb, but it isn't. So it actually says, "Yes, I'm a traveler in a friendly way", I don't know, maybe he means he never mistreats his back-pack. 

So, as you can see, so dependent were they on morphemes that they thought they could just replace the -ly morpheme for adverbs (which in English can also be used in adjectives) with the Latin morpheme -e for adverbs. And therein also rests my idea about why morphemes are not the refined tool we are lead to believe and why David Peterson is totally right, here we see that the "adverb morpheme" in fact does not act as an "adverb morpheme" but as an "adjective morpheme". There's no 1 to 1 morpheme to meaning, there's no 1 to 1 perfectly determined category for each morpheme, and even when you can work them into morphemes they will back-slap you right to your face...

Morphemes, they never fail to disappoint. 

How Wide Should Your Suffixes Be?

Few doubt that suffixes or prefixes, affixes in general, are a useful tool in a conlanger toolbox, but how precise should they be? In this respect I tend to think: the broader the meaning the better. To me it's actually a lot of fun to be able to have an arrange of suffixes with broad meanings and play around with the possibilities that can be unlocked with them.

One example I am specially fond of is Esperanto's -aro and -ujo suffixes. The first one roughly means "a group, heap, collection, set, herd" and is mainly used of groups of things that form a sort of collection, such as words in a dictionary, or the human-kind in general, while the other has an approximate meaning of "jug, box, container, vessel" and it's used mainly to mean countries (containing people), or more even interestingly trees from their natural fruits. So, for example, you have vortaro to mean "dictionary, a collection of all the words", homaro "humanity as a whole", and on the other side you have Hispanujo "Spain, the country", and pomujo "an apple-tree". This brings many possibilities worth exploring. You could talk of your library as either libraro or even librujo, but they would have subtle differences.

In the case of libraro it means the collection of books that constitutes your library, i.e. your books as a whole. The second case implies the container wherein those books are set, i.e. your shelves as a whole, the whole furniture. Therefore you would have a knowledge of your libraro, but you would want to move your librujo around your bedroom. This is interesting because with only one little suffix you get two different words connected while, at the same time, subtly different in their sense.

In my languages I have tried to keep this in mind and use it, specially in Unnai. In that language I have some suffixes that have very open and broad meanings that depending on the noun or adjective they are attached shift and mean new things. There are, of course, other interesting suffixes in Esperanto, one I particular like is -ingo, a suffix Esperanto uses too mundanely and logically but that I think used in other languages or conlangs has many possibilities. It basically means "an object in which the noun to which it's attached is introduced". Let's see a practical example: fingro "finger", gives fingringo "thimble". As for ideas for conlangs one could stretch it a lot more, it could just mean "something in which other something is introduced", you could have soul + this suffix meaning "body", a poetic version, of course, or how about feelings + suffix meaning "heart"? Well as you see it has a vast number of possible ways to go.

So, to sum up, keep your suffixes open and wide you never know when you could need a stretch in meaning.

The Mayan Interference

I remember having read once that an early Mayan language investigator was surprised to realize that this language was actually about 90% greek in essence of words, grammar, etc. I really don't know how this came to happen, but the idea caught on really fast. It is something that would have been pretty spooky had it been real, of course, but actually it's a very weird notion. In fact, I even found some people claiming a mayan etymology for the word 'philosophy', φιλοσοφία.

PIL, to open one's eyes, be attentive, to contemplate. O, an intensifier particle. SOU, to shuffle, to untangle. IA, a hard or difficult thing.

So, voilà, we have that, according to this "faketymology" φιλοσοφία means something like 'to untangle something difficult in order to assert it strongly by contemplating it' (sic). What a wonderful fantasy has been concocted.

Back to the Real World

Not only should we forget that a Grimm's Law should occur to make pil into phil, but also we are lacking a ph in 'pil-o-sou-ia'. Not only that, but the intensifier is given a whole morphosemantic concept as "to assert strongly"! No, this is not how an intensifier particle works, and even if we were to blindly accept all this... SOU doesn't mean 'untangle' but 'to tangle, to tie a knot' just the opposite. All in all, a complete mess of a fantasy.

And this is even disregarding the fact that in greek 'philos' is a word and 'phil' is not. Also note that Mayan never used this word, and is not a valid word in any Mayan dictionary, also I think it breaks several Mayan rules.

But how? How can a language so dissimilar as Mayan be equated to Greek? This is actually a very interesting question, is it a misreading of Mayan dictionaries and Greek ones? Or is it a purposefully evil attempt at creating fake etymologies and fantasies to sicken real linguists and discredit Mayan studies?

When this doesn't work some equate it to other languages. I've read Mayan is a 70% Mesopotamian (sic), which makes no sense, since there were more than one language in use in the Mesopotamia at any time. Even that it is 70% Aramaic, which really startles me since Mayan prefers bi-consonantal roots and Semitic languages favor tri-consonantal ones, even when, by way of suffixes, Mayan can seem to have tri-consonantal roots, like for example hanal, akbal, both use the suffix -(V)l, but roots are han and kab respectively.

The most incredible? Someone wrote Yucatec Mayans and Japanese people can speak "fluently with no need of an interpreter". Really? Let's put this statement to the test, shall we? Let's write some common phrases in both languages to see how much they can understand each other;

Japanese: あなたの名前は何？

Anata no namae wa nani? Your name is what?

Mayan (Yucatec): Bix a k’aaba’ ?

What your name?

Hum... I really don't think they would understand what the hell they are talking about. Certainly I wouldn't recommend you to speak Mayan to a Japanese. Let's see the answers to this, maybe they can glean the meaning from the similarity of the words for that;

Japanese: 私の名前はアレクス

Watashi no namae wa Alex. My name is Alex

Mayan (Yucatec): In k’aaba’e’ Alex.

My name (is) Alex.

Hum... again, I don't think they would understand a word. Specially not if one speaks of "namae" and the other of "k'aaba'/k'aaba'e", or, for that case, "watashi" vs. "in", or "anata" vs. "a". So we can say for sure that this is not the case, then how come so many people on the Internet go by this theory? We sure love a good conspiracy or secret knowledge story no matter how wild it is.

The Querétaro Incongruence

The International Day of the Spanish Language was celebrated last June 19th in Madrid, in the Cervantes Institute who promoted it. The celebration gathered more than 500 millions of Spanish-speakers worldwide in each of the institution's headquarters all around the world. The curious thing is that a poll organized by the Cervantes Institute on the Internet showed the word that was voted "the most beautiful of the Spanish language", and this word, as it turns out, is Querétaro.

Aside from it being a name of a state in Mexico, and aside the fantastically crafted meaning given ("island of the blue salamanders"), something caught my attention. The fact is that this word in particular is, obviously not even a Spanish word. It is the name of a state in a Spanish-speaking country, but it is not a Spanish word per se. You cannot speak about a "querétaro". The word is also of unknown or, at least, dubious etymology, but most probably a Purepecha name meaning, some claim, "place with crags" and this is the most probable, considering the topology of the place.

My point is, this is hardly a valid word for the vote. It is not more of a Spanish word as Oklahoma or Wyoming are English words, and I don't expect these wining the award in this language. Even names of spanish cities as Zaragoza or León have more claim to be regarded as a "Spanish word" than Querétaro or, by the same logic, Mexico or Nicaragua. At any rate it is a Purepecha name taken and adapted into the Spanish language, being the probable original name; K'erendarhu.

A very interesting flaw in judgement by the Institutions of the Spanish language.

Selk'nam concordances

A very nice, interesting language the Selk'nam, it also belongs to another indigenous people of Argentina who dwelled in the southernmost tip of the American continent. They have also been called Ona and they were part of the Chon linguistic and ethnic family.

Their language is intriguing in that it has a great number of words with very complex consonant clusters, for example; a word ʂq'òːht'èː means 'to gather', notice the retroflex with the ejective occlusive, also in the word haʔmqn which means 'coast'.

Most important about this language is the grammar, which includes a system of evidentials, namely, a dubitative, a surprisive, and a certitive. This, along with the pronominal prefixes can create quite a mouthful. The language does not take any markings for gender, but the certitive ending varies according to gender or neutrality, for example;

jah t-ahjqe-nn, I see (him), masc.

1st 3rd-to.see-CERT.masc.

jah t-ahjqe-èn, I see (her), fem.

1st 3rd-to.see-CERT.fem.

jah h-ahjq-n, I see it, neut.

1st 3rd-to.see-CERT.neut. 

In fact the same endings are also applied to the tense particles, so if we have xenn 'to come', and nèj 'present particle'.

xe-nn nèj-j čonn, the man comes. 

to.come-CERT.masc. PRS-CERT.masc. man 

But this last mark in the tense particle is not added when the pronoun is left last.

xe-nn nèj jah, I come (male). 

to.come-CERT.m PRS 1st

This suffixes can also be appended to the negative particle and other tense particles as well. Another interesting aspect of the language is the different lemmatas used in word-formation. I will discuss other interesting features of Selk'nam verbs and morphology in new posts.

Toba particles

Reading a linguistics magazine of the Argentinian Linguistics Society (RASAL in Spanish) I came across a paper by Cristina Messineo about some very interesting features about the language of the Toba people which I would like to share.

The Toba are an indigenous people in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay in what is known as the Gran Chaco region. In Argentina they live mainly in the provinces of Chaco (not to confuse with the region), Formosa and Santa Fe.

Their language uses a set of particles to denote presence as well as to denote motion or act as classifiers. Most common particles are: da 'extended vertically classifier', ñi 'non-extended tridimensional classifier', yi 'extended horizontally classifier', na 'in motion, proximity', so 'in motion, distant', ca 'imperceptible, absent classifier'. How do we use these particles? An example would be,

qaica ca pan

EXneg CL:aus bread

'There is no bread.'

The first word literally means 'there isn't, doesn't exist' and it is followed by the absence classifier ca. Not only one must negate the verb but also the classifier must agree. On the other hand, we have the positive of this sentence,

huo'o na pan

EX CL:prox bread

'There is bread.'

Here we see the existential verb followed by the proximity classifier, indicating that the bread is there nearby. The classifiers, as seen above, can also indicate the shape of the object or if it either in repose or moving, I find this a very interesting feature of the language. But what would happen if you wanted to ask, unknowingly, if there is bread or not,

huo'o ca pan  ?

EX CL:aus bread

'Is there bread?'

The bread here has no apparent existence to the speaker and therefore the absence classifier is used, note that the existential verb is positive. To this question we might answer qaica ('there is not') if the answer is negative. The absence classifier can even be used with the verb to convey the sense of an irrealis mood, a supposed situation or a theoretical event in the future, as illustrated in the phrase,

cha'aye huo'o ca na'aq

conj. EX CL:aus day

'Because there will be a day...'

This is a very interesting construction that may help stimulate new ideas for language creation.

Introduction à l' inverse

Lately I've been thinking you can make a language from about almost anything. So I was fooling around with my papers and I started to toy around with a kind of slang used in my city. I only know 2 places where this particular kind of slang is used, one is Paris in France, the other Buenos Aires in Argentina. It is the slang that is based in reversing the syllables in a word. I don't know as to how big is the extent of this kind of slang (Verlan) in France, maybe some words, for instance; mef for femme and such. The same phenomenon happens in Buenos Aires spanish known as vesre, you can say jermu for mujer, checo for coche, and so on.

I started an idea to see if I could create something, and what would that be, by using the reversing of syllables, sometimes in a similar fashion as the vesre and sometimes a little different. I started with a word like camino 'way'. I got:

camino

nomica > nomic /no.mi.t͡s/

I decided to give it a kind of Slavic taste and incorporate random features from other languages in words which where impossible to turn around, for instance the articles. I've decided to make 'a' the definite invariable article, so;

a nomic

the way

As regards to pronouns,

mío > omi > omi

tuyo > yotu > odi

omi nomic

my way

I've decided to make them similar to convey the idea of their joined evolution. Some other words had to be modified a little bit more from their standard vesre form, so for instance I've sometimes used some sound shifts from Russian to help me in that or to 'vesre' them in a different fashion than the traditional.

boludo > vr. dolobu > dalub /dʌ.ˈlu.b/ 'a fool'

mujer > vr. jermu > jerm /ˈjeʳ.m/ 'a woman'

corto > vr. tocor > takor /tʌ.ˈkor/ 'short'

A little idea

I've decided to also make a diminutive based on the palatalization of the last sound of the word. A phenomenon I've seen occurring in some baby-talk and some endearing speech;

a nomic, a nomić

a no.mi.t͡s, a no.mi.t͡ʃ

the way, the little way

This diminutive can also be used as a term of endearment or regularly as something small not conveying the idea of a pejorative.

apa > apaś ... ama > amaś
father, daddy ... mother, mom

Well, and this is the preliminary work of Valen.