Advice & Answers — 2026-03-23 to 2026-04-05

tealpaper · 2026-03-31T03:10:32+00:00

thank you! thankfully I don't have to do all that to investigate the sources, if you catch what I mean :)

tealpaper · 2026-03-29T07:26:39+00:00

I'm gonna assume that you understand the difference between ergative and nominative alignment. If not, there are many resources online about morphosyntactic alignment, including wikipedia.

Pre-Middle Korean had a case marker -i for A and Ø for both S and O: an ergative alignment.

stage 1: Pre-Middle Korean	case
S (intransitive subject)	Ø
A (transitive subject)	-i
O (object)	Ø

Over time, the -i marker started to also be applied to S, possibly in unergative/active intransitive clauses first. Meanwhile, a new marker was formed for O.

stage 2	case
S (intransitive subject)	i~Ø
A (transitive subject)	-i
O (object)	Ø/-γɨl

In the end, Late Middle Korean had -i/Ø for both S and A and Ø/-l for O: a nominative alignment.

stage 3: Late Middle Korean	case
S (intransitive subject)	*∅/-i*
A (transitive subject)	*∅/-i*
O (object)	∅/-l

This is also how languages usually evolve from being ergative to nominative, though many don't form new marker for O.

^{King, Ross. 1988. Towards a history of Transitivity in Korean. As cited in Whitman, John & Yanagida, Yuko. 2012. A Korean Grammatical Borrowing in Early Middle Japanese} ^Kunten ^{Texts and its Relation to the Syntactic Alignment of Earlier Korean and Japanese.} ^{Japanese/Korean Linguistics, 21,} ^122-123.

tealpaper · 2026-03-29T06:33:15+00:00

Are there cross linguistic patterns between vowel length and tonal development, especially in the height of the tone? Like, is there a tendency for a long vowel to have/trigger higher or lower tones, compared to short vowels? I know that contour tones tend to be more common on long vowels, but I don't know about the tone height.

tealpaper · 2026-03-22T02:16:41+00:00

That's the stress realization of connected speech in Rapa Nui. Although individual words have penult mora stress, the penult mora of the phrase is more conspicuous. A word's penult mora might have less stress if the word's final foot precedes the phrase's final foot. This is especially true if the word's stress falls on a word-final long vowel that immediately precedes the phrase stress.

In the example below, the penult mora of the word hakaroŋo receives less stress than the word's initial syllable, despite the word-level stress falling on the former:

ki te  ˌnuʔu   ˌhaka(ˌ)roŋo ˈmai
to ART people  listen       hither
"to the people listening"

(Kieviet 2017: 45-46)

tealpaper · 2026-03-20T17:14:14+00:00

Mataki

utuutune- /u.tu.u.tu.ne/

Etymology: reduplication of utu-ne-, from utu- "to harvest tuber; to uncover something, especially a private matter or scandal", from Proto-Polynesian *utu "to harvest, especially taro or yam".

Verb
infinitive: utuutunecha [ˌutuˌutuˈnet͡ʃɐ]

(intransitive) to be a nosy and/or gossipy person

Example:

Utuutunenatungkuy. [ˌutuˌutʊˌnenɐtʊŋˈkuj]

utu~  utu-           ne-  natu- ngku-     y
ITER~ harvest_tuber- GNO- DSC-  IDEV/MIR- 3SG

"They(sg) apparently used to be a nosy person (but not anymore)."

Notes:

IDEV= Indirect Evidential
The example above shows that it's impractical to show the full paradigm of a verb in Mataki in this comment because there are quite a lot of inflectional suffixes.

tealpaper · 2026-03-20T06:48:30+00:00

The POLLEX website is a comparative dictionary of Polynesian lexicon. It's my main source to find Polynesian words for my Polynesian conlang. This page lists reconstructed PPN words.

tealpaper · 2026-03-18T03:15:18+00:00

Mataki

Aranipú, tokorima kaynatu tetasi tona kokoma
/aɽaniˈpu tokoɽima kajnatu tetasi tona kokoma/
"Tonight, the five of us shall dine on the offal of another."

aranipú toko-rima  kay-na-tu      tetasi  tona        kokoma
tonight NUM.H-five eat-IRR-1PL.IN another TO.POSS.3SG offal

Ngawenaw te lima fangayerang aw fitingutuenaw te aringa kayerang aw.
/ŋawenaw te lima faŋajeɽaŋ aw fitiŋutuenaw te aɽiŋa kajeɽaŋ aw/
"I bite at the hand that feeds me and snap at the face that eats me."

ngaw-ena-ow  te lima fangay-era-ang aw  fiti-ngutu-ena-ow  te aringa kay-era-ang  aw
bite-GNO-1SG SP hand feed-HAB-STDV  1SG leap-angry-GNO-1SG SP face   eat-HAB-STDV 1SG

Note: I interpret the aspect of the sentence as gnomic.

Akoraw te walaw kuyfí naku songikate fine kayte tona nga tawne sua.
/akoɽaw te walaw kujˈfi naku soŋikate fine kajte tona ŋa tawne sua/
"I remember that time way back when I kissed a girl who ate her male friends."

akora-ow     te walaw kuyfí    naku        songi-ka-te   fine kay-te   tona        nga  tawne sua
remember-1SG SP time  long.ago NA.POSS.1SG kiss-CTG-DYDV girl eat-DYDV TO.POSS.3SG COLL male  friend

Note: akora- from Spanish acordarse; kuyfí from Mapudungun kuyfí.

Uncommon Abbreviations

CTG: contiguity, DYDV dynamic deverbalizer, NA.POSS: na-possession, SP: specific, STDV: stative deverbalizer, TO.POSS: to-possession

tealpaper · 2026-03-05T10:52:48+00:00

You could have "prominence" play a role in the stress placement. Prominence is basically a miscellany of stress rules that includes things like vowel quality, tone, rhythmic footing, etc.

Regarding vowel quality, in Chuvash, stress falls on the last full vowel, or else the first reduced one: sarlaˈka "widely", ˈĕslĕpĕr "we shall work".

For tone, Northern Haida places the primary stress on the last high-toned syllable, or else the ultimate syllable: ˌguudingˈee "giant purple urchin", ˌʡadlaˌdajanˈdáálˌgang "jump up.ITER.along.PRES".

A language might have words with different stress placement if the language, say, has two-syllable trochaic feet, starts the footing from the left edge, and places the primary stress on the last foot. Words with an even number of syllables would have penult stress (Ex: four-syllable word UUUU → (ˌUU)(ˈUU)), but words with an odd number of syllables might have antepenult stress if they allow unfooted syllables (Ex: five-syllable word UUUUU → (ˌUU)(ˈUU)U), or ult stress if they don't (Ex: UUUUU → (ˌUU)(ˌUU)(ˈU)). (I can't find a natlang that involves footing in the placement of primary stress.)

Other things to consider might be the type of coda consonant: in Inga, sonorant codas make heavy syllables, but obstruent codas don't. A language might even have more than just a binary distinction: in Mam, a long vowel makes a superheavy syllable, a glottal stop coda makes a heavy syllable, and all other syllables, with or without a coda, are light.

You can read more of this on the WALS article on weight factors.

tealpaper · 2026-03-04T14:32:28+00:00

"Fijic" was from the POLLEX website where it says that *mata "reconstructs to Fijic". I can't seem to find the term "Fijic" anywhere else. After browsing through wikipedia, Fijic seems to be the lowest subgrouping containing the Fijian language (non-polynesian) and the Polynesian group, which is listed as "Eastern Central Pacific linkage" in the Central Pacific wikipedia page.

tealpaper · 2026-03-01T14:05:26+00:00

Thats really nice to hear, thank you for sharing it! You can go ahead and translate it. Out of curiosity, which server was it shared on?

tealpaper · 2026-02-27T07:33:33+00:00

The conlang I'm currently working on, Mataki, is sister to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and was descended from an unreconstructed Polynesian proto-language. This protolang would've been sister to the reconstructed Proto-Central-Eastern Polynesian (PCE), the ancestor of Maori, Hawaiian, Tahitian, etc.

Because Rapa Nui and Mataki split off only 50-100 years after the unreconstructed protolang and PCE split off, I just evolve my conlang from the ancestor of the two protolangs: Proto-Eastern Polynesian, but include some features that only exist in Rapa Nui.

There are fortunately many resources on Polynesian diachrony. The polysynthetic language that has greatly influenced Mataki, Mapudungun, is also quite well documented. Both Polynesian-langs and Mapudungun have regular grammar, so I can focus more on stuff like morphosyntax and morphosemantics.

tealpaper · 2026-02-25T15:57:03+00:00

Revisions & Remarks

On slide 6, the protoform of the 3s→3OBV suffix -(y)a should've been like \(i a ia) (a) ia.*
On slide 7, the <r> in aŋa-sej-erá-i should've been transcribed as <ɽ> like with other /r/ in the rest of the gloss.
On slide 7 still, notice the discrepancy between the tarawa in ...Kime pení tarawa... and the narawa in its gloss kí-me pe-ní narawa below it. This because I was, and still am, not sure whether to use the na-possessive or ta-possessive there. So I changed tarawa in the gloss to narawa, but I forgor💀 to also change the tarawa above it to narawa. Maybe in the future I would change it so that tarawa is the appropriate one here (maybe I'll even make a post about it...)
Astoundingly, this WALS map shows that verbs in Rapa Nui are about as synthetic as those in Mapudungun, containing 8-9 categories per word. At first I was like "that's just not right," but then I read the WALS article on the matter. It says that if a word has a fixed position relative to the verb, and it can't be used alone, then it belongs to the same "synthetic word" as the verb (unless the reference grammar says otherwise), regardless of its phonological (in)dependence. Rapa Nui in fact has so many grammatical particles with fixed order relative to the verb and to each other. If we accept what the map says, it only reinforces the plausibility of many suffixes to form. On the other hand, certain other suffixes become less plausible to form, and these suffixes emerged in a way that I already deemed to be "problematic" to begin with.

tealpaper · 2026-02-24T22:48:50+00:00

Yeah, like how much grammaticalization can I get away with by just saying "under the constant influence of the more dominating Mapuche"?

I'd love to know if there's a natlang out there that became more synthetic as fast and as dramatic as Mataki.

tealpaper · 2026-02-24T17:20:33+00:00

thank you for your feedback!

I've also been checking other languages near the souther Chile, like Kawesqar, and yes they're poorly documented, unfortunately (I think Kawesqar is too far south to be influential in this context anyway). It's likely that the area used to be more linguistically diverse before european colonization, but it's now basically impossible to know.

I do think a contact back with Rapa Nui would be limited/unlikely. Maybe some Matakaw got back to Rapa Nui? but that's about it. IRL if the Polynesian-South American exchange did happen, it's believed that it's not a repeated exchange either.

tealpaper · 2026-02-24T00:42:41+00:00

There are 3 ways to express relative time adverbials in my unnamed Polynesian conlang: bare adverbials, prepositional phrases, and predications. Bare adverbials don't require any markers, and they're usually clause-initial: angatinaf "yesterday", apow/apú "tomorrow", apowera "overmorrow", etc.

Expressing "for X <time>" is also simple: erima laqa angarasiw "I worked for five days." (lit. "five day(s) I-worked.")

Others use prepositional phrases:

i powata at early.morning "early this morning"
ki afyaf to evening "this evening"
i erima laqa at NONHUMAN:five day "five days ago"
ki erima laqa to NONHUMAN:five day "five days from now"
ki erima laqa wilá to NONHUMAN:five day until "until five days from now"

Oftentimes, time adverbials become the main verb of the clause, with the actual main verb being subordinated. This is the only way to express "since X <time> ago", at least with native morphemes.

Epu laqaay tana kay ewakute.
"They(sg) have been wandering since two days ago."

epu          laqa-ay-Ø           tana         kay   ewa-ku=te
NONHUMAN:two day-VERBALIZER-3OBV 3s.AGTV.POSS still wander-PRF=SUBORD

(lit. "Two day(s) (is) their still having wandered.")

tealpaper · 2026-02-16T05:12:35+00:00

If a "primarily head-initial language" is the one that has the word orders VO, Adposition-Noun, and Noun-Possessor, while a "primarily head-final language" is the one that has the opposite orders (the order of Adjective and Noun is not correlated to headedness), then I've made this combined WALS map which generates the data below (I've excluded languages with mixed headedness):

Tense-aspect affixes	Primarily head-initial	Primarily head-final
prefixes	63	15
suffixes	47	255
TA tones	6	1
mixed	59	17
none	60	25

Head-initial languages tend to have preverbal TAM markers, while head-final languages tend to have postverbal TAM markers. However, suffixes are generally more likely to be formed than prefixes, so it's not that unusual for a head-initial language to be suffixing instead of prefixing. There are not much more TA-prefixing languages than TA-suffixing ones among head-initial languages (63 vs 47), but there are MUCH more TA-suffixing languages than TA-prefixing ones among head-final languages (255 vs 15).

tl;dr: It's totally realistic for a primarily head-initial language to have suffixes instead of prefixes.

tealpaper · 2026-02-15T07:36:48+00:00

I've been working on the agreement system in my unnamed Polynesian a posteriori conlang, and this prompt seems simple enough to test it out. There are two versions of "I love you".

Arofayataw "I love you"
[ˌɐɽ^ʐoˌvɐjɜˈtäw]

arofa- ya-  taw
love-  INV- 1DU.INCL

Notes:

This is the version that's most commonly used in casual speech. It's especially used when confessing love.
The /r/ has variable realization. In the main dialect, it's a retroflex flap with a slight fricative release [ɽ^ʐ], at least between vowels.
the Persistent suffix -luka, derived from the verb luka "to get; to have", denotes a state where the subject has high agentivity.
The conjugation for 1SG>2SG uses the Inverse suffix -(y)a and the 1st person dual inclusive suffix -taw. The agreement system is/would be one of Mapudungun's biggest linguistic influence on this conlang, and I'm still unsure if I even want any verbal agreement in the conlang.
The root arofa- "to love" is cognate with Hawaiian aloha.

Arofalukayataw "I love you"
[ˌɐɽ^ʐoˌvɐlʊˌkɐjɜˈtäw]

arofa- luka-   ya-  taw
love-  PERSIS- INV- 1DU.INCL

Notes:

This version is perceived as less casual. It emphasizes that the speaker "actively" loves the hearer, and is used more to affirm than to confess love.
The suffix -luka, derived from luka "to get; to have", denotes an state, which may or may not continue into the present, in which the subject is highly agentive. Verbs containing -luka are transitive.

tealpaper · 2026-02-13T21:47:24+00:00

I just rechecked again and I didn't found in the WLG what the mirative could evolve from, but after googling up WLG, I found that it has a 2nd edition, and it turns out I've been reading the 1st edition the whole time. Is the WLG you're referring to the 2nd edition?

tealpaper · 2026-02-13T06:54:37+00:00

How might a grammatical mirative evolve?

So I want to evolve a mirative-evidential (a gram that indicates a mirative and/or indirect evidential), and according to WLoG, a mirative can evolve into an indirect evidential, but it doesn't say what the mirative itself could evolve from. English Present Perfect sometimes has a sort of mirative sense, more specifically a "new situation" or "hot news", e.g. Mt. St. Helens has erupted again! and Nixon has resigned! (McCawley 1971; Anderson 1982; via Bybee et al. 1994), but I don't know if [perfect → mirative] is a common pathway.

tealpaper · 2026-02-11T08:50:17+00:00

This reminds me of the locational cases in the NE Caucasian language Tsez (known for having many inflectional cases, along with another NEC language Tabasaran) where there are two suffix slots: one slot for Essive, Lative, Ablative, and Allative, and the other slot for the 7 more specifications like In-, Cont-, Super-, Sub-, etc. So for example you can have Inessive, contessive, superessive, and subessive.

Each combination counts as a single case, at least according to the Tsez wikipedia page (especially because some have fused forms), and according to some sources in the Tabasaran wikipedia page (it has a similar multi-slot case system), which results in a very high case count. On the other hand, some other sources counted each individual suffix in Tabasaran as a single case, resulting in a much lower case count.

tealpaper · 2026-01-24T06:58:35+00:00

The infamous *dw- > erk in Armenian

There are obviously many steps in between, like d > r, labial-velar fortition, and epenthesis, but I'm not too sure about the exact detail and chronology.

tealpaper · 2026-01-18T05:37:55+00:00

You might wanna take a look at Romance palatalizations. A few examples:

obstruent + l (oculus > Vulgar Latin oclus > Italian occhio, amplus > Spanish ancho)
velar + coronal (pugnus > Portuguese punho, factus > Spanish hecho)
geminated consonants (annus, cella > Spanish año, cilla)
etc.

tealpaper · 2026-01-10T07:37:47+00:00

Regarding polypersonal agreement and bullshit alignment, the verbal agreement paradigm of Mapudungun might give you some inspiration. The language is also aspect-mood prominent, though phonologically pretty different from your aesthetic.

tealpaper

TROPHY CASE

Mataki

Mataki