Conlangery Podcast

Conlangery #55: Practicum — Getting Rid of Tense


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We give you a podcast today about how you can do without tense, and what other things in the language can be used to fill in the gaps.  Also, we have special guest Jeffrey Jones on to talk about his conlang.

Top of Show: Sheewan

Links and Resources:

  • Vietnamese tense/aspect marking
  • Telicity (Wikipedia)
  • Featured Conlang: K’tlê

    Feedback:

    Email from JS:

    Conlangery hosts:

    I’m writing to say how much I enjoy your podcast. I only became aware

    of its existence a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been doing what
    I always do when I discover a new podcast that I like: listening to
    the archives from the beginning.

    Just today I happened to listen to episode 23, in which I discovered,

    to my shock and delight, that my OWN conlang Yivrian had been
    featured. I thought you guys said a lot of complimentary things about
    it, and your criticisms were completely valid. In particular, I agree
    with Bianca that the verbal system is a little bit overstuffed, and
    with William that the modal prefixes are annoyingly regular. Both of
    these things are the result of a disease that afflicts people who work
    on the same language for a very long time: different parts of the
    language are designed at different times, often with different
    philosophies and different goals. In this case, the modal prefixes
    date from a period when total regularity was a design goal, while the
    verbal complex dates from the ALL OF THE MORPHEMES stage that followed
    shortly thereafter. It’s a good thing I had never heard of
    evidentiality or animacy hierarchies at the time I initially designed
    the verbs, or I would doubtlessly have found a way to include those as
    well.

    Your podcast has also inspired me to consider other neglected aspects

    of my languages. In particular, I’ve been mulling over the ways that
    Yivrian expresses formality, and reconsidering the entire concept of
    adjectives.

    You discussed my ancient essay “An Artlanger’s Rant” when you covered

    my conlang, and it’s very interesting to see how that post has aged
    ten years on. If you ever were interested as having me on as a guest,
    I’d be happy to discuss it (or anything else conlang-related) with
    you.


    JS Bangs
    http://jsbangs.wordpress.com

    “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” -Philo of Alexandria

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