Sending a Message

I have an ever-growing backlog of concepts for which I want to create new Kílta words. It gives me all the stress you expect from a todo list. One benefit of the delay, however, is that I regularly think up better derivations, or better nuance, if I have time to let a concept percolate a while before I commit to it.

One concept I've been thinking about is a way to indicate if a state of affairs communicates some other message. For example, if someone stops answering your phone calls, that says something. Often we can rely on Grice and experience to help us figure out when other messages are being communicated by someone's actions, but I wanted a way to be a bit more explicit about it. This sat on my todo list quite a while, and then just yesterday a good way to handle this presented itself: an auxiliary with a converb.

The verb ráno means signal, make a sign, as well as point out.

Eman në tátiën mai ráno.
child TOP dog LAT point-out.PFV
The child pointed at the dog

But yesterday it occurred to me that my send a message sense matches with this nicely. Now, a general converb followed by ráno marks that the state of affairs also communicates some other message.

Ha kë mës mítët ráno.
1SG DAT NEG speak.CVB.PFV signal.PFV
She didn't talk to me (which makes some other point, too)

Often an overt translation of this into English is going to be a bit clunky, but I've got growing pile of those in Kílta, too.

In any case, rather than creating a new clause-final particle or entirely new lexeme, I've just added to Kílta's substantial battery of auxiliary verbs.

Unknown Riches

A few weeks ago I was chatting with some conlangers, and we were talking a bit about some deeper issues in conlanging, especially around personal conlangs. I was extolling the virtues—not entirely coherently— of keeping a diary in your conlang. I said that you don't always know what resources you already have available when you want to create something new, but that inhabiting the language even a little, such as in a diary, will open up possibilities that might not otherwise occur to you.

One of Kílta's riches that occurred to me very recently, based on only a few uses of the diminutive, was that I could use to mark what is effectively first person possession when referring to direct line family relationships (grandparent, parent, sibling, child, grandchild):

Ommira në erniënto.
omm-ira në er-niënt-o
mother-DIM TOP TRANS-leave-PFV
My/our mother left.

With a little more thought I decided this could extend out to non-direct relations (cousins, nieces, etc.), if you grew up seeing them nearly every day.

Finally, I decided that with possession, you could use the diminutive to refer to family members very close friends you spent a lot of time with, especially while growing up.:

Ton vë ommira në erniënto.
2SG ATTR omm-ira në er-niënt-o
mother-DIM TOP TRANS-leave-PFV
Your mother left.

Since Kílta is a personal language, there aren't many opportunities for me to make use of the construction in this second example, because none of my childhood friends are ever going to learn the language. Nonetheless, I sometimes create things for Kílta to establish a general ambience, to suggest the full meaning of a construction, even if marginal functions of a construction aren't going to get much use.

When a conlang needs something new, it's easy to just create something entirely new, and often enough that's necessary. But I always enjoy finding preexisting material ready to be used to create some new construction or nuance.