April 02, 2012

Conlangery #44: Negation

1 hour 17 minutes

First of all, George was on something called FourCast a bit ago. You might enjoy it. Also, CNN is doing a special on Dothraki on April 8. But the meat of this podcast is all about negation: how to deal with scope, negative concord, and a number of other issues in your conlang. Oh, and we also talk about Brithenig.

Top of Show Greeting: Qlfhpfsq

Links and Resources:

Asymmetries in negation (WALS)

Featured Conlang: Brithenig (FrathWiki page, Ill Bethisad Wiki)

Feedback:

Email from Lee:

Hi, Conlangers, domo.

I liked the show. I’m a Lojbanist, and I thought your coverage was

generally accurate and fair. But I’m surprized you didn’t mention Lojban’s

take on the subject of your show: getting rid of adjectives.

Lojbans goes the extra mile and gets rid of adjectives, nouns, and verbs.

Lojban does all of the above with predicate-words, which are all equal.

“Bird”, “Fly”, and “Blue” are all just predicates. “ta cipni” (“that’s a bird”);

“ta vofli” (that thing is flying), “ta blanu” (that thing is blue).

So I could say “le cipni cu vofli” (the bird is flying) or “le volfi cu cipni”

(the flying thing is a bird), or “le blanu cu cipni” (the blue thing is a bird).

Likewise, any predicate can modify any other, so I could say “le blanu

cipni cu vofli” (the blue bird is flying) or “le cipni volfi cu blanu” (the

bird-like flying thing is blue). Of course, Lojban goes to great lengths to

specify the grouping of modifiers so it doesn’t have the

English problem of ambiguity in “big car sale” and such.

There’s certainly a lot else I could say about Lojban, but then that would

be a whole new podcast, so I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks again for the show.

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