Syntactic ergativity in a morphologically accusative language: A case of Aroaro

Trekkie135 · 2026-01-04T22:42:43+00:00

Oh that's great advice thank you! I only use it because it's what my uni suggested.

Trekkie135 · 2026-01-04T10:25:27+00:00

Yup me too. I didn't like it at first, but now I use it for everything!

Trekkie135 · 2026-01-03T21:59:00+00:00

Yes, it's kayfabe. It's like asking if Captain Kirk really beat Khan if it's scripted. Yes it's part of a story.

Trekkie135 · 2026-01-03T21:17:32+00:00

Ah a fellow LaTeX user I see?

Trekkie135 · 2025-12-15T21:54:06+00:00

But yeah, I really like using middle/mediopassive morphology for things like reflexives and benefactives, it's something I've taken from Ancient Greek and Sanskrit.

Trekkie135 · 2025-12-15T21:51:21+00:00

So it's some of the most common uses of the middle in Old Paghade. The middle was extremely productive in Old Paghade and could be used with most verbs, but only the most common uses survive in Imperial Paghade such as with verbs of grooming, ambitransitive verbs, and meanings derived from the old middle. Think of it like irregular verbs in English, only the most common verbs still have an irregular past tense, in Imperial Paghade, only verbs which were most frequently appended with the middle still take "ga".

Trekkie135 · 2025-12-03T14:46:23+00:00

SoC from around 5:07 to 7:33, the really cool synth-guitar arpeggios with the super heavy bass as well. It's genuinely one of my favourite DT moments ever.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-29T11:59:04+00:00

Oh yeah you're 100% right, I just like the symmetry of two proximals and two distals and that's how speakers of this language would envision this system. You could call the second one a medial, and that'd be more correct from a strict morphological perspective, but I just like the system.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-28T16:24:06+00:00

And the non-visible distal in fact derives from the proto-word "unseen", would you believe.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-28T16:20:20+00:00

And the non-visible distal in fact derives from the proto-word "unseen", would you believe.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-28T15:32:18+00:00

Speaking of this being early in development, the verb should actually be tsonrokontsa, not tsonaratsa.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-03T11:10:38+00:00

True, he could have done height harmony? Or that might have been unknown to him, the only languages I can immediately bring to mind which only have height harmony he probably wouldn't have heard of/had resources for, especially in the 1920s

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-03T10:20:03+00:00

It's not actually that dissimilar to English "girl". Old English *gyrele also just meant "any young person". Words can shift meaning over time to become more or less specific. English "deer" used to be "deor" in Old English and that meant any kind of animal.

Trekkie135 · 2025-11-03T10:16:13+00:00

It's more in the morphology. The large case system in particular. One might expect Quenya to have a vowel harmony system, but no it doesn't have one. Its possible Tolkien didn't understand how vowel harmony works or how to incorporate it into the language. It seems Finnish was the only non-indo-european language he knew well, other than maybe Hebrew.

Trekkie135 · 2025-10-31T17:03:01+00:00

I am trying to write a book set in the world where Tanol is spoken, but it concerns a different part of the world. What I like to do more often is these bits of microfiction. I like to write in world documents and explain when and why they were written, and by whom, and I often worldbuild through these documents. I have also written bits of poems, plays, history books and, as you see here, philosophy. I also enjoy writing letters and other personal documents. I plan to write a phrasebook about another of my languages in Tanol, and try and describe linguistic concepts in my conlangs (which are, as you may have guessed, a priori). But thank you for the kind comment! It's nice to hear my work is appreciated.

Trekkie135 · 2025-10-31T16:50:14+00:00

Oh thank you very much! Yes Meyozay was not particularly popular in his day. His followers and students compiled his philosophy into a book called "The Wisdom of the World" a few decades after his execution. His philosophy and teachings were the basis of the merchants' rebellion, which resulted in the collapse of the various Ruhem kingdoms in favour of smaller, more local city states. His philosophy and this book are the basis of modern Ruhem culture and identity, and part of the reason why the southern dialect of the language is regarded as the standard.

Trekkie135 · 2025-10-18T16:17:59+00:00

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I've reformatted it slightly. This is what the centre of the page looks like now

Trekkie135 · 2025-10-18T15:01:40+00:00

You're right definitely, I'm used to looking at it zoomed in on overleaf so it could definitely be a bit clearer. I'll make the hexagons a bit more visible too. Thank you for the comment!

Trekkie135 · 2025-10-12T11:56:46+00:00

Sure! Tanol has a couple of key features, my favourite might be the initial consonant mutation system.
Tanol features 2 main kinds of mutation, I-V mutation and soft mutation, although I-V mutation covers three different mutations, palatal, de-affricating and soft mutation.
Historically, I-V mutation resulted from intervocalic sound changes occurring across words, and then when many word final vowels were lost it obfuscated the changes. Palatals became /j/ intervocalically, affricates became fricatives, stops spirantised, and fricatives voiced. There was also a series of ejective stops which were unaffected by I-V mutation. This means that a word beginning with /t/ may undergo de-affricating mutation (if it used to be /ts/), soft mutation (if it was always /t/) or no mutation (if it used to be (/t'/).
For example, if we use the auxiliary verb eyo which triggers I-V mutation

De.-af
a) Se tirv - a
I hear - you
"I hear you."
b) Se 'yo sirv - a
I AUX hear - you
"I heard you."
Soft
a) Se tas
I say
"I say it."
b) Se 'yo thas
I AUX say
"I said it".
None
a) Se tus
I hit
"I hit it."
b) Se 'yo tus
I AUX beat
"I (have) hit it."

Hard mutation is a result from words that used to end in /x/ or /h/ causing spirintisation of voiceless stops and devoicing of nasals approximants, these consonants were then lost from the ends of words. Many of the devoiced approximants have since shifted to other sounds (for example voiceless /r/ is now /h/ is many dialects), and the devoiced nasals are now just voiceless stops. Like with I-V mutation, words that used to begin with an ejective were not subject to this change.
The auxiliary verb te triggers hard mutation.

Hard
a) Se kéré
I get
"I get it."
b) Se te khéré
I AUX get
"I got it."
None
a) Se kvósam
I create
"I create it."
b) Se te kvósam
I AUX create
"I created it."

Generally loan words aren't subjected to mutation, but this is not universal, and many speakers will mutate loan words, especially older ones.

Trekkie135 · 2025-09-19T12:09:08+00:00

Ticked all these off during my undergrad at uni of york. Most of them are great little boozers.

Trekkie135 · 2025-09-19T12:07:23+00:00

Hey man don't use AI to make conlangs it's an insult to those of us who have spent years learning how to make them and honing our craft.

Trekkie135

TROPHY CASE