malvarma
#conlangs / #conlang - fellow conlang people, i need your opinion. Making a semi-naturalistic language that marks the subject as agent / patient, to express volition. thinking of having two negative markers, one for standard negation, and another for ascriptive / existential / copular / whatever, and was thinking of using the ascriptive negator for finite verbs where the subject is patientive (action is involuntary). Is this naturalistic?
yeah, i've heard of languages that do that
0%
maybe? it feels like it'd be a thing
100%
no that's weird. natlangs don't do that.
0%
Poll ended at .
Mar 1 at 9:49pmWeb
Show threadmalvarmaMar 2

More about my conlang:

https://www.neverheardof.me/mystae/yeh/

Username is town, password is malvarmamalvarmamalvarma

(No this is not info i need to keep secure. I just find that basic http authentication is a good way to keep the bots out, without relying on cloudflare, captchas, or things like that.)

Show threadHead·word /ˈhedˌwɜː(ɹ)d/ n.Mar 3
@malvarma I suppose several different negations can be the result of auxiliary verbs, e.g. English ‘doesn't’, ‘hasn't’, ‘isn't’ etc., which have some correlation with agentivity, passivity and copularity. So I guess it can be naturalistic
Show threadmalvarmaMar 4
@headword thanks for the feedback! I've been looking at different negation strategies in natlangs, and that tracks with what I've seen so far - distinctions that correlate / are adjacent to agentivity, though nothing exactly like what im thinking. I appreciate getting another perspective though - i think i might go forward with this. Thank you!
Show threadCarsten BeckerMar 3
@malvarma It doesn't strike me as particularly unexpected for a natlang to do that. It may help thinking of (a) way(s) how this feature may have become grammaticalized. @headword already gave you a reasonable idea.
Show threadmalvarmaMar 4
@chrpistorius @headword thank you! I'm probably most looking forward to coming up with how this feature developed over time. I always have a lot of fun with that step. Appreciate the feedback!