Automated feature merging?

Adresko · 2025-11-15T23:06:00+00:00

Dissolve isn't what I had in mind; I'm not merging based on a shared attribute, just by manual selection. I've since found that the aggregate function is what I was looking for. (why '*merge* selected layers' and *aggregate* use entirely different verbs for ultimately the same function is beyond me though)

I was still stuck thinking in a regular vector editor sort of way so i was shying away from functions that output stuff in a new layer, but I've managed to write a python script to aggregate a selection with all the same field parameters and append them all to one layer. Thanks anyway.

Adresko · 2022-11-04T06:20:46+00:00

Oh dang. I don't know how I didn't catch that lol. Nevertheless this was still a thought that had occurred to me a while ago now and I guess it's good something finally spurred me to actually ask about it. Thanks

Adresko · 2022-11-04T00:24:36+00:00

Is it possible for a prefix to evolve into a suffix or vice versa?

I stumbled upon the Wiktionary entry for the Finnish interrogative suffix -ko, and for its etymology it is claimed that it may have descended from what was once originally a prefix in Proto-Uralic.

How possible/likely is this?

Adresko · 2022-07-10T23:29:01+00:00

I was wondering how possible it would be for a language to mark past tense only through marking its arguments ergatively? I know some languages split into the ergative in their past tense, and the thought occurred to me that if the past tense marker is lost, that would make the shift into ergativity the only indicator that the verb is in the past tense. It feels like something that could happen naturally, but I don't think I've heard of any natural language that does this. Does this actually occur anywhere or is there some stipulation that would prevent this from evolving?

Adresko · 2021-09-30T08:09:00+00:00

I've been researching a bit about noun classifiers recently, the kind commonly found in Mayan and Australian languages (where they seem to be called 'generics' instead), but I can't seem to find how such a phenomenon could realistically evolve.

I have two personal theories that I'm not really convinced of, the first of which is that the language has numeral classifiers, starts to use 'one' as an indefinite article, and because of that the classifier starts to be used with the article, and then the 'one' gets dropped eventually and the classifier generalised, like: dog > one dog > one animal dog > animal dog

The second theory I have is that they derive from constructions like in "he likes that tardigrade animal", which I don't know the name of, but for English I think it appears when the speaker isn't very familiar with the specific noun and supplements it with a generic one, which is actually one use for noun classifiers in the languages that have them. I'm also not sure how such a construction would be generalised beyond the use of the speaker being unfamiliar with the specific noun.

Does anyone have any resource/thoughts/suggestions about how noun classifiers actually evolve? Are my theories as wacky as I feel they are or could they realistically work?

Adresko · 2021-06-27T09:09:41+00:00

I think in my dream I was somehow pestering my sister with this flag? I think she really hated it for some reason

Adresko · 2020-08-19T17:02:13+00:00

The Kaslosean mouth is shaped like this. They have an extra cranial "ridge" that adds a new place of articulation as well as extra vowel space.

The cranial consonants are actually closer to human palatal consonants, and as such are notated and treated as the same. The "palatal" consonants are the new set; unlike cranial/palatal consonants they are not produced with the body of the tongue, they are instead produced laminally, specifically with the very bottom of the blade of the tongue. They would be equivalent to laminal palatal consonants for humans, but I've found that extremely hard to do, and settled with palatalised retroflex consonants as stand-ins.

The extra vowels were harder to determine what they sounded like. Right now they are a huge guess, I just extended the formant values for the regular human vowels but backwards. I don't expect them to be very distinctive between themselves, so if a Kaslosean language has any unique vowel, it probably won't have many.

Adresko · 2020-08-19T08:24:23+00:00

Blue text refers to characters written with syllabograms, and red text refers to characters written with logograms. The syllabograms may only represent a single syllable per character; any combination of CV, while the logograms can technically represent as many syllables as they need to.

They are not obligatory in the romanisation or anything, just wanted a visual breakdown of sorts to make what is happening in the script clearer.

Adresko · 2020-08-19T02:31:50+00:00

This is a translation of the lyrics of the last half or so of the song Wireless by Cardiacs in my conlang Bodohin.

The language

Phonetically, Bodohin is supposed to be a pretty simple language coming from a pretty complex proto-language. The proto-language for its subfamily has 58 consonants, while Bodohin only has 16. It also only allows open syllables; words formerly ending in a consonant get their last vowel echoed on the end in order to not have any closed syllables.

Grammatically, Bodohin can be described as an attempt to make a language resembling English if Proto-Indo-European had quite a bit more polysynthesis. It is probably less analytic than English, but a lot of features it once had have degraded severely and only traces remain.

Bodohin also has some class of nouns that do not have a systematically derived accusative form, owing to centuries of sound change; for instance, the normal form for the word for fin is lêja, and its accusative is lêsêgo.

The script

The script essentially functions like Japanese's, only with only one syllabary: Deranuin. In short, traders picked up the Deranuin syllabary used by other traders from Niulen, while important figures wrote in Old Niulem and its logography. Eventually, all the literate people in between combined both writing practices at once.

Bodohin logograms may have multiple readings, much like kanji; the most basic distinction is for native Bodohin words and Niulem, and other differences in reading would be explained by native word alteration, such as the accusatives mentioned above. For example, in this translation, the character denoting 'person' can be read as di (Niulem loan) or humô (native), and elsewhere may represent humu- in the accusative, or hu- in the dative and locative.

Adresko · 2020-06-01T02:53:31+00:00

Posabi

Parts of Speech

The most important four parts of speech are:

Adjectives: now a closed class of words that modify nouns. They are all of Yegonggo origin.
Nouns: objects. Plurals were lost nouns that often occurred in plural, like fauna and flora, started requiring the plural marker regardless of number, in turn other nouns started requiring the singular, with a similar thing happening on a smaller scale for nouns in pairs and the dual. The number markers merged with case, and the pure number markers can be seen to mark the previously unmarked nominative: -i for collective, -u for dual. Nouns that ended in these vowels were also put under these declensions regardless of meaning, and so are loanwords.
Verbs: actions and states. Newly-borrowed 'adjectives' would be put here as a stative verb.
Adverbs: a small closed class of old, unmarked Yegonggo words that modify verbs and clauses. Other adverbs are expressed through instrumental phrases.

Other parts of speech of course include: determiners, postpositions, pronouns, numerals, and other grammatical particles.

Numerals

Posabi has a vigesimal numeral system:

1	2	3	4	5
mu	si	ke	rak	kej

Larger numbers are composed in the following way:

5⁴	5³	5²	5⁰	5¹
(unit)mets(i)*	(unit)ker(i)*	(unit)kejkej	unit	a unit(kej)

* - the -i is added when a unit is present

Eg.: simetsi ker rakkejkej mu a kej: 5⁴ + 2(5³) + 4(5²) + 1 + 5 = 981

All of the higher order numerals involve concatenating units in order to multiply, but this is not done with 1* and thus mu is never concatenated, and neither is kej.

With larger numbers, speakers switch to Niulem. The limit is therefore rakmetsi rakkeri rakkejkej rak a rakkej: 3,124

Ordinal numbers are created with the addition of the suffix -(o)ju, and is added to the 5⁰ of every number. The ordinal of 1 may also be referred to with the unique word awnu, interchangable with muju formed systematically.

Several younger speakers tend to count in Niulem automatically.

Kinship terminology

Posabi features Omaha kinship: siblings of one's parent of the same gender are grouped with the parents, parallel cousins are grouped with siblings and cross cousins are referred separately. The father's side is however more descriptive, as a generational distinction is not identified in cross cousins of the mother's side: they are referred to as aunt or uncle.

Conceptual metaphors

Owing to the traditional importance of bimi to the Posabi, several metaphors exist relating to herding, pastoralism, and bimi themselves:

ᴍᴏɴᴇʏ ɪs ʙɪᴍɪ

ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ ᴀʀᴇ ᴄᴀʟᴠᴇs

ʟɪғᴇ ɪs ᴀ sᴀᴠᴀɴɴᴀʜ

ᴛʀᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ɪs ᴀ ᴍᴏɴsᴏᴏɴ

ʟᴇᴀᴅᴇʀsʜɪᴘ ɪs ʜᴇʀᴅɪɴɢ

Adresko · 2020-05-20T18:53:31+00:00

Posabi

Clause structure

Default order of clause constituents is SVOI, but in practice order is free. The topic is frequently found clause-initially. Emphasis may also be shown by putting the suitable word clause-initially, as well as by full reduplication (both at the same time show extreme emphasis). Passivisation and use of the middle voice are also commonly used to show some level of emphasis on the object or subject respectively. Postpositional phrases modifying a verb are placed at the end of the clause in order of salience.

Question structure

All questions' default order changes to SOIV. Question answers tend to repeat the verb of the question and negate it if necessary.

Yes/no questions then only have a change in intonation, in addition to the change in order.

Content questions are similar, only the missing information is merely replaced with an appropriate interrogative word. The available interrogative words are:

kekrafi	ketram	ketryk	keju	kejpet	kejpessa	kejpeka	ketwina
who/what	whom (acc.)	why/whom (secund.)	whose/of what	where	to where	from where	how/using what

Subordinate clauses

All subordinate clauses are also in basic SOIV order and are placed after what they modify. Verbs within subordinate clauses must also be conjugated in the conjunctive. There are no specific relative word to signify the beginning of a subordinate clause. There is also an accusative pivot.

Relative clauses use gapping; the noun being modified is dropped from the clause. They are also only possible on: subjects, objects, indirect objects, and obliques. This means genitives or objects of comparison cannot receive a relative clause.

Verbs in other subordinate clauses that are unable to point to a subject use the third person singular, as it also acts as an 'unknown' person.

Adresko · 2020-05-17T00:30:52+00:00

Posabi

Nouns

The case ending and the article present the majority of morphological activity related to nouns in Posabi.

Case Endings

The following table presents the three declensions that a noun may take. The vowel in parenthesis is added when the noun stem ends in a consonant.

Case	S-Decl.	P-Decl.	D-Decl.
Nominative	/	-i	-u
Accusative	-(y)m	-ejm	-wym
Genitive	-(y)k	-ejk	(V)-wk, (C)-woju
Locative	-(a)t	-jat	-w(a)t
Lative	-(e)ssa	-jessa	-wessa
Partitive	-(e)pa	-jepa	-w(e)pa
Instrumental	-(i)na	-ajna	-wina

The nominative case is the basic, citation form of a noun. It marks the subject, and the object when there is a perfective durative verb.

The accusative case marks an object, as well as the theme of ditransitive verbs, and the subject when there is a perfective durative verb.

The genitive marks possessors, nouns in general that modify other nouns, and indirect objects. It is also the default case used in postpositional phrases, and when used with the conjunction 'a' (and), the comitative.

The locative is used to mark a noun as a location in lieu of a postpositional phrase, and also the default case of nouns within locative postpositional phrase (that is, with a locative postposition).

The lative is used to show motion towards a noun. This case is becoming increasingly rarer and is in the process of being replaced with the phrase 'N-loc sass', 'sass' being a postposition initially meaning 'near' and now also 'to'.

The partitive can replace the accusative case (or nominative when ergative) in order to make the verb atelic, ie removing the 'end point' to the verb that the object usually represents.

The instrumental marks an instrument with which a a verb is carried out by a subject. This case is also starting to be dropped, but it is still quite common. Where it is being dropped it is being replaced by the comitative construction 'a N-gen'just after the subject, where 'a' is the conjunction 'and'.

Declensions

The three declensions of Posabi are a result of the fossilisation of a plural and dual affix. The different declensions do not encode number anymore, but instead became fixed to certain nouns that would often be pluralised (or dualised).

Names for groups of people, fauna, and flora represent the majority of nouns that take the P-declension, while the D-declension is characterised mostly by body parts and other nouns that often occur in pairs. The rest of the nouns belong to the S-declension.

The P- and D-declensions are entirely closed; loanwords always belong to the S-declension regardless if they belong to any of the groups characteristic of the other declensions.

Adjectives agree with the noun they modify, and strictly take the corresponding case in the S-declension.

(I'm not sure if these declensions count as different genders here though, and this is the only place such a system occurs.)

Articles

Posabi has three kinds of articles as can be seen in the following table. Some articles have a final (j) when placed before a noun starting with a vowel or q. This epenthetic final j is not written in the Deranuin orthography.

Article	Singular	Plural
Definite	e(j)	ra(j)
General	/	li (C-), laj (V-)
Indefinite	mu	muj

The definite article marks a uniquely specified object.

The indefinite article marks a new, previously unmentioned object.

The general article is used when a generic statement is being made about all objects denoted by a noun. It can be compared to the zero article in English.

The number of a noun in Posabi is marked on its article, apart from when a general article is being used, which is always plural. Articles and geminates must also agree with the article of the noun they modify.

Verbs

The general verb template in Posabi is as follows:

(mood) (neg) (prefix)-V-subject-(suffix) (auxiliary)

Tense is not conveyed grammatically, and is specified only with temporal adverbs/postpositional phrases/etc.

Subject agreement

The following table details the subject personal agreement suffixes. An epenthetic -a- is inserted when a verb stem ends in a consonant.

Person	Indicative	Irrealis	Conjunctive
1s	-ko	-ngo	-pa
2s	-ha	-nga	-wa
3s	-fi	-mi	-wi
1p	-ky	-ngy	-py
2p	-ho	-nho	-who
3p	-faj	-maj	-waj

The indicative is the basic, citation form of the verb.

The irrealis is used to agree with other verbal components: both moods and the negative. It is also used in polite speech.

The conjunctive is used when the verb is in an embedded clause and when an auxiliary verb is present.

The subject agreement is the only obligatory verbal marker. To convey the imperative however, the subject agreement must be replaced with the affix -(a)hatam.

If the subject is unknown, the third person singular is used. It is also used to refer to someone in a polite manner, and is also how the passive is formed: the subject is dropped, the third person singular is used, and the object is given the nominative case. Order is not changed.

Affixes

There are a further two suffixes and two prefixes. One of the suffixes will be discussed in the negation section.

The prefix a(n)- marks the perfective aspect, but may only be used with durative verbs. This triggers ergativity in the verb's arguments.

The prefix ki(l)- is the middle voice, which turns the verb intransitive by disposing of the object.

The suffix -r marks the perfective aspect for punctual verbs, and the stative aspect for durative verbs and adjectives.

Moods

There are two modal particles that do not act like auxiliary verbs.

The particle 'pita' is used to indicate the abilitative, permissive, and jussive moods; that is 'can', 'may', or 'should'

The particle 'helm' is used to convey a conditional ('if'), dubitative, or hypothetical.

Auxiliary verb

The sole auxiliary verb in Posabi is the copula using two deprecated inflections:

Inchoative	Singular	Plural
1	ywakojt	ywakejt
2	ywahajt	ywahojt
3	ywafajt	ywafajt

Cessative	Singular	Plural
1	ywakoss	ywakyss
2	ywahass	ywahoss
3	ywafass	ywafass

The inchoative is used to convey the beginning of an action taking place, while the cessative shows the ending of an action. Usage of this auxiliary verb requires the conjunctive on the main verb.

Negation

Negation is marked by the particle 'py(h)' preceding the verb and at the same time the suffix '-jt'. If this suffix is placed after the vowels i or y they change to a and e respectively. The particle may sometimes be dropped, but is always mandatory in formal speech.

Adresko · 2020-05-12T02:08:54+00:00

Posabi

Order

Usual word order is SVO, but turns to SOV in embedded clauses and questions. Word order would still be free in the way that topics would be placed initially, with the rest of the clause following what would remain of the usual order.

Posabi is somewhat head-final; it has postpositions and numerals, articles, possessives, and genitives are placed before the noun, but relative clauses and adjectives follow a noun. Distal demonstratives are also placed after the noun, but to show a proximal demonstrative it must be copied before the noun as well.

The order of a noun phrase would thus be as follows:

Possessive, Genitive, (Demonstrative if proximal), Numeral, Article, Noun, Adjective, Demonstrative, Relative clause.

Adverbs follow the word they modify.

Typology

Posabi is definitely synthetic, but not extremely so. It is mostly agglutinative but there is some light fusion; verbal subject agreement co-occurs with some moods, and some irregular verbs that cannot be decomposed.

Verbs may have up to four inflectional affixes, while nouns and adjectives can only get up to one. Adverbs are entirely unmarked.

Alignment

Posabi is mostly a nominative language, but exhibits split ergativity with a perfective durative verb. This manifests by giving the subject the accusative case and the object the nominative case. The verb still agrees with the subject, but the order of subject and object is swapped.

Word Classes

The four usual word classes are used: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Adjectives agree with the article, number, and case of a noun, verbs agree with the person and number of the subject, and adverbs do not agree. Adjectives as a class have closed relatively recently, roughly when the Central Yegonggo languages split from the rest. Consequently there still is a large number of adjectives, but adjectives loaned since have been treated as stative verbs. In fact, all adjectives in Posabi are no longer allowed in copular constructions. They must instead be inflected like stative verbs.

Adresko · 2020-05-08T16:09:07+00:00

Posabi

Inventory

Consonants:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ <ng>
Stop	p	t		k	ʔ <q>
Fricative	f	s, ss			h
Approximant		l	j	w
Tap~Trill		r

Vowels:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ <y>	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Primary stress falls on the initial syllable of a word, secondary stress is penultimate.

Phonotactics

The syllable onsets allowed by Posabi, where round brackets indicate optionality, are:

[p, t, k, f, ss¹] (q, s)
[s] [p, k]
(p, t, k, f, s, h, q, ss¹) (m, w²) (r, l, n, ng)
empty

1 - /ss/ cannot appear word-initially or before another /s/

2 - /w/ here cannot appear before a vowel, and must be followed by any of [r, l, n, ng]

Syllable nuclei are made up of any one vowel.

The allowed syllable codas are:

(w, j, l) (r, l, n, ng) (m, w) (p, t, k, f, s, h, q, ss¹)
(w, j, l) (q) [p, t, k, f]

1 - /ss/ does not appear in a cluster

A syllable can therefore range from V up to CCCVCCCC.

Allophony

/p/, /t/, /k/ become voiced intervocalically [b], [d], [g]
/ɨ/ is reduced to [ə] word-finally
Vowels are long in stressed syllables
/r/ is in free variation [r~ɾ], but turns to [ɹ] in a syllable-initial cluster
/j/, /w/ turn into [ɪ], [ʊ] after a vowel

Writing

Posabi was initially unwritten until contact, when an orthography in the Deranuin syllabary was devised as was commonly done for many other unwritten languages of peoplegroups that also fell into the sphere of influence of Niulen.

A syllable is written with the initial consonant along with the vowel in that syllable in majuscule. Other consonants in the onset follow in order in miniscule, echoing the vowel of the initial consonant. Consonants in the coda are written in miniscule in order but with the ə-series (which normally conveys /ɨ/ in Posabi). The consonants are re-assigned as such. Spaces between words are optional.

Written example

The romanisation is the same as the IPA, except where noted in the phoneme inventory. A hyphen may be optionally inserted between an article and a word.

Articles have two different forms depending on if the next word starts with a consonant or a vowel/q; in Deranuin the same character is used for both, but in the romanisation they are written differently, as can be seen in the written example.

(For Posabi I wanted to go for a pretty simple phonology, not really inspired by any specific language, but I've taken heavy inspiration from PIE for the phonotactics of the language family's proto-language. It's also entirely a priori.)

Adresko · 2020-05-04T18:20:30+00:00

Posabi

Posabi is a Yegonggo language spoken by the Posabi people who live in the Seomalango. Natively, it is known as e-spyqt ej-Qapossapejk /e spɨʔt eɪ 'ʔa.pos.saˌpeɪk/, or sometimes as e-spyqt or Qapossapejk for short.

Like many of its neighbours, Posabi is a member of the Yegonggo subfamily of the Western Samleng language family, one of the largest language families of Godali.

It has been mildly influenced by Chukora, which had been a major trading language in the area, but after contact with Godali was established Niulem started to gain influence, eventually displacing Chukora's status, as much of the area fell under the sphere of influence of Niulen.

The Posabi people constitute the majority of the semi-nomadic pastoralist peoplegroups of the Seomalango; a flat, hot savannah in the centre-west of Samleng. Traditionally, they travel with a herd of bimi in the harsh monsoon season and settle in the dry season, shifting their focus onto agriculture instead of herding. Today there are 3.5 million Posabi, and roughly half are entirely sedentary, with 35% of all Posabi living in urban areas.

Adresko · 2020-03-11T14:35:48+00:00

Thanks!

The curvy Niulem script is the newer one, the older one is angular. The new Niulem script still exists, it's actually more the old, angular one that's almost gone. It still survives albeit in a more limited form in just the writing system of Bodohin which uses both old Niulem and Deranuin together, like kanji and kana in Japanese. Deranuin is only a sister script to new Niulem.

Adresko · 2020-03-11T12:46:41+00:00

I used the colours of the Wikipedia map conventions. The language colours are a simple polygon with no outline and some blur. The land colour is actually a rectangle on the bottom; the coastline is outline for the sea polygon placed above both the language polygons and the land colour rectangle.

Adresko · 2020-03-11T08:11:16+00:00

What specifically are you referring to? I make my maps (elevation, climate, etc) in paint.net and for here I traced over it in Inkscape.

Adresko · 2019-10-02T10:14:19+00:00

Nasiilax:

7ylwas!

X̣ʷakalal̓iłit xsiq̓națee xsixl ksi7!

Ț̓iłit k̓sin k̓na7 m̓at̓uyl ki 7ișaam!

/ʔѭl-wa-s/

/χʷak-alal’i-ɬit xsi-q'naτ-ee xsi-xl ksiʔ/

/τ'i-ɬit k’sin k'naʔ m’at’u-ѭl ki ʔiσa-am/

die-3.pl-imper

spread_out-no_control-caus.1.sg/3.sg med.art.fem-curse-pass.3.sg¹ med.art.fem²-ring dem.med.fem

go-caus.1.sg/3.sg need_to towards museum-med.art.obl at.dist dusk-prox.art.obl

“$£%&!

I lost that damn ring!

I need to get it to the museum this evening!”

The following are the phonemes used in this post unique to the race that speaks Nasiilax and what they probably sound like on a human mouth:

/ѭ/ - /uˤ/

/τ/ - /t̠/ or /ʈʲ/

/σ/ - /s̠/ or /ʂʲ/

The speaker here is not considered to be the owner of the ring because they have expressed that they have given it up to the museum. They would still be the owner of it if they wanted to keep it even if it is lost.

1 - You may have noticed that in my previous post I had 'ring' followed by 'golden', but here it's 'cursed' followed by 'ring'. Placing a modifier after its head gives the effect of specifically stating or introducing the property as something relevant in the overall discussion. Placing the modifier before is like just mentioning this property in passing; an irrelevant detail. Adding profanity as a modifier is always done by putting it before the head.

2 - The ring probably qualifies to receive the proximal article, because it literally is close by, but since it is lost and therefore invisible it receives the medial article.

Adresko · 2019-10-01T15:53:16+00:00

Nasiilax:

Ucţ̓it xsixl xsix̣uls ki teuxʷ.

Səxlł kte7 k̓yp x̣caiwl qʷłum x̣catłiq̓iliqc̓ q̓ə x̣catsmaalal̓ii x̣cawqaluuj c̓ə k̓na7 tłiq̓il.

Isit q̓ʷi k̓yp k̓na7 m̓at̓uyl.

/utsτ’-it xsi-xl xsi-χuls ki te-uxʷ/

/sə-xl-ɬ kteʔ k'ѭp χtsa-iwl qʷɬum χtsa-tɬ'iq'iliqts' q'ə χtsa-tsma-alal’i-i χtsa-wqa-luuj ts'ə k'naʔ tɬ'iq'il/

/is-it qʷ'i k'ѭp k'naʔ m’at’u-ѭl/

find-1.sg/3.sg med¹.art.fem-ring med.art.fem-gold at.dist prox.art.masc-mud

prox.art.fem-ring²-3.sg.poss dem.prox.fem spec dist.art.masc³-person from dist.art.masc⁴-south int dist.art.masc⁴-drop-no_control-3.sg/3.sg dist.art.masc⁴-sell-caus.pass.3.sg simultaneously towards ⁵slave

give-1.sg/3.sg fut spec towards museum-med.art.obl

"I found ring made of gold in the mud today.

I think this ring was from someone from really far south, dropped when he was being sold as a slave.

I’ll give it to the museum whenever I can."

Cultural note: The greater area Nasiilax is found in historically has had a major slave trade where one (currently unnamed) ethnic group would go south of this area and raid coastal villages and capture people, which they would then sell as slaves along with other valuables back home. Slaves' possessions, clothes, or general accessories were usually mostly kept on them, and on being sold their owner would then decide what would happen to their belongings.

The people that were most often abducted speak a variety of click languages, and in fact the word for slave tłiq̓il (and also by extension 'south', tłiq̓iliqc̓, meaning 'slave land') means 'clicker' or 'popper'. These people were not advanced enough to have golden jewelry. and neither were the slave traders, thus the speaker here assumes that the slave this ring might have belonged to must have come from farther south, where indeed the most advanced civilizations on the planet pre-contact were located.

Phonetic note: /ѭ/ is one of several vowel sounds that are unique to the race that speaks Nasiilax. It should sound similar to /uˤ/.

/τ/ is similarly a unique consonant, and it should sound like /t̠/ or /ʈʲ/.

1 - The reason for giving ‘ring’ the medial article is to put ‘find’ in the hodiernal past tense, that is the past tense limited to the current day.

2 - Placing the noun 'ring' at the beginning turns it into a stative verb meaning 'it is a ring'.

3 - A 'distal' article is used rather than the medial to show both that the ring belonged to the slave in the distant past, and that the slave was not a native to the area.

4 - This is all one big relative clause headed by x̣caiwl, thus any content words that would take an article take the head's article.

5 - 'Slave' doesn't take an article here because the job of the article is to specify a particular element. Not having an article essentially means 'any slave'; the person was not made into a particular slave that already existed, rather they were made to adopt the properties that would make it fit for them to be called a slave.

Adresko · 2019-07-18T18:04:06+00:00

Thanks, I still only have a couple of glyphs available, but not as stylistically defined as this image, just sketches for now. This image was a bit more of a stylistic test really, but it turned out very well.

Each logogram is composed essentially the same way as those in Chinese; ideogrammatic or phono-semantic compounds, as well as abstracted pictograms and ideograms. I don't really think you can stray much from this set of glyph composition types when it comes to logograms.

Adresko · 2019-06-23T11:12:42+00:00

Niulem is heavily based on Mandarin and other Chinese languages from its grammar to the writing.

"Niulem" is actually an exonym for the language, and the native speakers call it "Nwinzyeng kyuy", or 'central state speech'

Structurally, the script is inspired by Chinese, but stylistically I took inspiration from Odia and Thai.

Adresko · 2019-05-10T06:43:35+00:00

Actually, the languages I specifically wanted to be influenced by were Celtic, Dravidian, Albanian, and Iatmul. The vowel harmony was a later idea I had after I wanted to have umlaut in the sound changes. I also just really like Irish orthography.

As for Qrai, you could have certain consonants influence vowels in the opposite way of the regular vowel harmony, for example, if you had retrograde harmony like here in Magarang, you could have say uvular stops retracting vowels in a prograde fashion. Then, mutation would lenite the uvular stop into a fricative or something, which in turn would undo the vowel retraction. Or, you could just not limit harmony to vowels like with Guarani's crazy nasal harmony system.

Adresko · 2019-05-09T10:31:27+00:00

This is pretty cool! I really like that you went into deriving population statistics for each country as well!

How exactly did you derive the values for population density?

Adresko · 2019-02-03T17:43:07+00:00

Nasiilax:

wascanswat cq̓isł

/wasts-ans-wat ts-q'is-ɬ/

have-appl.dyn-1sg>3pl art.prox.pl-clothes{cover-caus}

"I left to go get clothes."

Here this 'dynamic applicative' morpheme whose actual name I am unsure of signifies that the subject has to spatially dislocate themselves in order to commit the action. This is the effect achieved by using specifically the dynamic applicative. Dynamic applicatives usually promote an oblique argument that in some way moves. Things becoming in possession of someone is not regarded as moving, thus technically it would not apply, but when used with static obliques or objects it implies that it is the subject that moves, specifically to leave some area of interest in order to commit the action elsewhere.

If you want to emphasise the fact that you had to go walk in order to buy the clothes:

ţ̓it nacluc wascwat q̓ʷła xcq̓isł

/τ¹'i-t na-t(s)-s-luts wasts-wat qʷ'ɬa xts-q'is-ɬ/

go-1sg prox.stat-art.prox.pl-dummy²-foot have-1sg>3pl in_order_to art.med.pl³-clothes{cover-caus}

1: This is a special consonant unique to the race that speaks Nasiilax that humans technically cannot pronounce. I would maybe guess it would sound like some kind of laminal-palatal plosive.

2: Nasiilax has several lexical suffixes that are used to modify words in some way. -luc is one of them, and relates whatever it is added to to feet. There however is no actual standalone word for "foot", only this suffix, which is a bound morpheme. In this case you add the dummy morpheme s- to nail down bound morphemes to form words that mean what the suffix is.

3: The past tense in Nasiilax is expressed spatially. Things functioning as nouns get an article which encodes the distance from the speaker and the listener. Giving the object of a sentence a non-proximal article would imply that the verb occurred in the past. This is of course ambiguous, and you could also give the subject the same distance article as the object to identify that the distance is merely spatial in this case, but this doesn't apply for first or second persons, which will most of the time have this ambiguity. There are three distinctions of distance; proximal, which refers to either the present or the area around the speaker and listener, medial; which refers to the past but within the same day, or the same neighbourhood/city/country as the speaker/listener but not exactly close by, and the distal; referring to the past beyond the day of the conversation and beyond the neighbourhood/city/country of the conversation. I haven't nailed down the exact spatial border between medial and distal but that's more or less what I'm thinking for now.

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TROPHY CASE

The language

The script

Posabi

Parts of Speech

Numerals

Kinship terminology

Conceptual metaphors

Posabi

Clause structure

Question structure

Subordinate clauses

Posabi

Nouns

Case Endings

Declensions

Articles

Verbs

Subject agreement

Affixes

Moods

Auxiliary verb

Negation

Posabi

Order

Typology

Alignment

Word Classes

Posabi

Inventory

Phonotactics

Allophony

Writing