The Bixwá Verb: Part the Third

If the multiple layers of affixing on the verb stem aren't enough, there are also three slots for preverbs in Bixwá. The idea for these comes from the Algic/Algonquian languages. In those the preverbs are actually affixes, too, but in Bixwá these are separate words. I did this for two reasons. First, Bixwá has more phonetic flexibility at the end of a word than it does at internal syllable codas. Second, I didn't want to deal with noun incorporation — inanimate direct objects come between a verb and its preverbs, while inanimates do not.

Tense and Mood

The leftmost preverbs have to deal with tense, sequencing and mood. The tense preverbs aren't much used, though the future, ivi is most likely to be seen of the bunch. Much more frequent is wil, which indicates sequencing, "and then, and next" and the like. Two of the preverbs are involved in conditional sentences, which I will save for a different post.

Adverbial One

After the tense and mood preverbs come a set of preverbs with various adverbial senses. One I pilfered from, I think, Wiyot, is diwáa on arrival:

be	né-l	wil	diwáa	ho-xod
3SG	1SG-DAT	next	on.arrival	PFV-speak
Then when he arrived he spoke to me.

Another good one of this set is haaz, which indicates senses like in vain, it isn't so, it didn't really happen. In the perfective, it indicates a thwarted expectation:

haaz	ho-síis
in.vain	PFV-rain
It was supposed to rain (but didn't).

One of this set, sa' has branched out into interesting territory. It's base meaning is of proximal deixis, in time, place or discourse, here, thus, there. It has developed to also assert narrative integrity, asserting that the statement fits into the conversation. This is useful for propping up unexpected information.

be	wil	sa'	áka-n	ka'a-ho-dal
3SG	then	thus	book-ACC	by.hand-PFV-toss
Then she threw the book (really!).

Note in the example above the location of the direct object, ákan. If she had tossed something animate, it would occur before wil.

Adverbial Two

This is a more motley set of adverbial senses, and I anticipate more appearing over time. Many of these describe path and location: cháa for horizontal motion, kwee apart, separating, zót away, but more exotic senses appear as well, such as e'ar leaving a detectable trace or path.

jó-né	bé	zha'o	ho'-áán
PL-1	back	unwillingly	PFV-go
We returned against our will.

One of my current favorites is chaash, which says that an action took place out in precipitation,

ko	ivi	chaash	mi-'o'éé
2SG	FUT	in.weather	IPFV-labor
You will be working in the rain/snow.

The exact nature of the weather will depend of course on the season. I have also been giving metaphorical extensions to some of the simpler senses. For example, ta'ii means to completion, fully, to exhaustion, but has been extended to be practically a marker of attitude, conveying weariness.

Bixwá by Foot

Right now both Bixwá and Tsrai are in a phase of moderate vocabulary growth. I'll ponder a few days, the bang out a few dozen words in a short time. Apart from creating a number system (which I always dread), creating vocabulary is always the most trying task of language creation for me.

As part of my campaign to avoid orthogonality, I have been making an effort to use analogy more. This has lead in interesting directions with the instrumental prefix zu-, which has the base meaning of by foot, with the foot. For example, tik means fall (over), and zu-tik means to knock over by foot (remember, using the instrumental prefixes always results in a transitive verb).

I decided that zu- could also be used to indicate mob violence of some sort, by way of the idea of trampling or stampeding over people. For example, from dó'a rule, custom, tradition, we get zu-dó'a impose a political or social regime on people. From there I went to zu-bayí subjugate, oppress from bayí endure, tolerate.

A few days ago zu- completed its march into the political realm when it encountered gísa be silent. With help from the detransitive suffix -óó I got zu-gísa'óó self-censor.

A Gallimaufry

Na'vi

I've managed to get myself on a panel for a local con this fall to chat about the science of Avatar. In theory, I'm there to talk about language. We'll see how many people in the audience are interested in that.

Tsrai

Tsrai now has nice set of postural verbs. I'm still thinking about the semantics of these, especially in verb chains, but I'm ridiculously pleased to be able to say this,

we	or-ta	blas	rabbë	dzwai
3SG	drink-PST	beer	get.horizontal	happen
He drank so much beer he ended up on the ground.

Inspiration

I recently got myself a copy of The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. What an astonishing diversity of languages this continent used to have. Language inventors will find so much inspiration in this book.

The Bixwá Verb: Part the Second

In the previous post on Bixwá's verb system, I talked about grammatical affixes, aspect and valency. This post will cover affixes that are more lexical, though the direction prefixes are used for some aspectual refinements. The verb so far:

Aspect - STEM - Voice

Instrumental Prefixes

I got the idea for the instrumental prefixes, once again, from Native languages of North America, though not Athabascan for a change. Instrumental prefixes are fairly common in unrelated languages across a wide area, from Haida in British Columbia to the Siouan languages of the plains. The Bixwá set is larger than some, but is by no means the largest.

The instrumental prefix comes to the left of any aspect prefix. The instrumental prefix will be separated from the verb stem by any aspect prefix, and I use a dash in the lexicon as a reminder, ró-má read (from ró- by/with words, language and má see).

In Bixwá the instrumental prefixes can cover a range of meanings, not all of which are really instrumental. For several of them, such as kwí- by thought, by contemplation, by planning, the significance can be pretty metaphorical, as in kwí-'ééz rage from ééz burn.

All verbs with instrumental prefixes are transitive (a habit sometimes seen in natural languages with these). Any noun stem is converted to a verbal meaning when taking one of these prefixes.

A lot of fun lexical derivation can go on with these:

olo-'éke bore someone to tears	olo- by falling, by dropping, éke head
olo-míír to cast a shadow, shade something	olo- by falling, by dropping, míír shadow, shade
nóó-ját write	nóó- by color, by dye, ját sign, mean
ró-nó'ó interrupt someone speaking	ró- by language, speaking, nó'ó to break off
thahe-nó'ó burn, cauterize something off	thahe- by fire, heat, nó'ó to break off
xaa-nó'ó cut off	xaa- by edge, by blade, by arm, nó'ó to break off
bii-vích spit something a distance	bii- by mouth, vích to take flight, to enter the air
thahe-vích to rise into the air from heat	thahe- by fire, heat, vích to take flight, to enter the air

Direction and Mode

To the left of any instrumental prefix come the direction prefixes. Most of the time they are oriented to the speaker, but the focus of orientation can shift in a narrative. Bixwá has the usual set, chu- for away from the speaker and ní- towards the speaker. These give direction to basic verbs of motion, such as áá which without other marking can mean either go or come.

These prefixes interact with the aspect prefixes to give some refinements. With stative verbs (which do the job of adjectives in Bixwá), chu- with the perfective ho- gives the inchoative, né chuhochis I got sick (from chis to be ill, weak). With any verb type, ní- with the conclusive perfective isii forms the experiential perfect,

né	maa	áka	ní-ró-'isii-má
ISG	that	book	away-by.language-CONCL.PF-see
I have read that book

The prefix lii- is a deictic marker that situates the action in some communications technology, usually some online social sphere. It goes into the same slot as the direction prefixes. Rarely it can co-occur with one of them, and will be to the left, but more likely it will drive any direction prefix away.

jóné	ová'	lii-ho-xod
1PL	together	online-PFV-speak
We talked together.

The Verb Template

After all of that, the full template for verb affixes is:

Direction - Instrumental - Aspect - STEM - Voice

Next I'll cover the preverbs, which will always occur before the verb complex I've given above. They're not counted part of the affix chain, since their phonology precludes their use as prefixes.

The Bixwá Verb: Part the First

In general I devote a lot of loving attention to my languages' verb systems. Nezhan, the sketch that led to Bixwá, produced things like this:

né-wíi-x-máá-di

1sg.SUBJ-NO.CONTROL-2sg.OBJ-see-PFV

I happened to catch sight of you.

This was a little too much like Athabascan languages, so I pulled back a bit. I no longer cross-reference the subject and direct object in the verb, but I still manage to pack a lot into the verb. Like Nezhan — and the Athabascan languages — a great deal of the verb's morphology is by prefixing, though Bixwá does mark valency and control changes with suffixes.

The Verb Stem

Most Bixwá root verbs are single syllable roots, though two-syllable roots are also well-represented. There is a small set of common transitive verbs which have two forms, one for animate direct objects, one for inanimate direct objects. For example, má is see for inanimate DOs. For animate DOs, you must use deezh.

né	kora-n	deezh
1SG	dog-ACC	see.AN
I see a dog.

né	áka	má
1SG	book	see.IA
I see a book.

Note that inanimate direct objects often do not take accusative case marking. A sentence like né áka deezh, using an animate verb with an inanimate direct object, would be an outright error, not implying anything.

Transitivity

Bixwá is quite fastidious about verb transitivity, and requires overt marking to covert valency. The detransitive suffix is (')óó. The transitive suffix, which is also the causative, also makes an animacy distinction in the direct object, with -(')azh for inanimates, -(')azhe for animates. These suffixes have the additional effect of converting any noun they are attached to into a verb, as in báá'óó be angry from báá anger.

After much going back and forth, I finally decided to give Bixwá a passive. Unlike the English passive, though, it can only be used when there is no agent at all. If the agent is named, you have to use a focus construction in the active. A stem is made passive with the circumfix di-V-e, though the final -e part has various realizations if the verb ends in a vowel. Again, animacy must be considered: né dideezhe I am seen, not *né dimáa.

Aspect

There are three layers of prefixes for the verb, and that's not including the raft of obligatorily pre-verbal particles. The innermost set, that will always occur immediately before the verb root, marks aspect. There are six aspect prefixes, the imperfective, the perfective, the habitual, the inceptive, the continuative and the punctual (or conclusive) perfective. Note, though, that there are other aspects available (in particular, the inchoative for stative verbs) that involve a mix of aspect prefixes and other verb morphology. I'll cover those in a later section.

a'é	ko	be-n	ho-deezh
Q	2SG	3SG-ACC	PFV-see
Did you see him?

be	lé'é-zatán	éne-xod
3SG	very.much-extremely	HAB-speak
He always talks too much.

Coming Soon

Next time I'll talk about the powerful and very common instrumental prefixes as well as the direction and mode prefixes, before moving on to the complexities of the preverbs in yet another post. In the last post (four in total), I hope to talk about the ways I've used combinations of prefix types and the preverbs for refinements of aspect, syntax and pragmatics (discourse effects).

In the Shadow of Tolkien

When I was about 16 or 17 I happened to run across a copy of The Monstors and the Critics, a collection of essays by J.R.R. Tolkien. Much of it is devoted to English literature, but it also includes the essay The Secret Vice, about constructing languages. So, I got exposed to a manifesto in defense of this hobby at a fairly impressionable age.

A few years ago I noticed that I had somehow not only inherited from Tolkien a justification for the hobby of creating languages, but my languages seemed to reflect a world view¹ to which I myself do not subscribe. In particular, my languages tended to be technophobic, if not actually indulging in the Romantic Weltschmerz that afflicts Tolkien's Elves, and my languages, even ones I never publish, tend to be remarkably chaste and polite. I've been trying to get away from these tendencies, especially the technophobia which was quite entrenched for a long time.

I have not been content to simply add words like "computer" and "cash machine" to my languages, but I've played with various ways of integrating technology, especially communications technologies (i.e., computers), into the language in a more fundamental way. One sketch language from a few years ago, Onju, had six noun classes, one of which was for things humans build and related tools, and one was just for e-things. The class marking was partially lexical, and you could take word for "tree," sor which normally fell into the ër plant class, and drop it into the e-thing class giving orí sor, which refers to any of the branching abstractions computer science people call "trees."

Onju was set aside due to some design flaws, but many ideas were recycled into Nezhan. Nezhan dropped the classes, but did include a demonstrative pronoun set just to describe things online, with lhidhaal effectively referring only to an online representation of a human being, what's usually called an avatar. Plenty of natural languages include derivational affixes you can tack onto a verb to mean "go somewhere in order to VERB." In Nezhan, I had that, but also -mál which meant "go somewhere online in order to VERB."

Nezhan was also quickly abandoned, but is the direct ancestor of Bixwá. Bixwá picks up the "go online to X" verb affix (-lobi), but did not import the online deixis markers. Instead, any verb can be situated in an electronic, communications or virtual environment with the verb prefix lii-, which falls into the same slot that verbal direction marking goes.

jó-né	ová'	mi-'omí
PL-1	together	IPFV-hang.out
We were hanging out together.

vs.

jó-né	ová'	lii-mi'-omí
PL-1	together	ONLINE-IPFV-hang.out
We were hanging out together (online).

I've had less obvious success in getting rid of the air of Victorian discretion from my languages. Even the language I've worked on the longest, Vaior, has very little in the way of cursing. I tend to add vocabulary by semantic field (one idea leads to another). Just last week I finally added a little sexual vocabulary to Bixwá, and I actually used the Latin mons veneris in one definition! I don't swear a whole lot in my daily life, but I certainly do from time to time — what Unix sysadmin does not? — and once in a blue moon I can indulge in some pretty serious vulgarity. I like to save it for special occasions, for more impact. I have no philosophical reason to exclude these from my languages.

The biggest difficulty in cursing language is that it's as much a matter of culture as language. Modern English tends to stick with sexual and other biological terms, but in some places blasphemy is still the way to get really angry (I'll always remember a Spanish curse involving the 24 testicles of the Apostles). In this one matter I haven't ever followed Tolkien — I don't create cultures to go with my languages. I've always been more interested in my languages for my own purposes, but sometimes it is easier to get over some language design questions with at least the hint of a culture to go with it. Vaior got a vague cultural dusting to help it along. I suppose Bixwá may too, eventually. I'd rather not resort to English just to curse.


_____
¹I misspelled that word view the first time through.

How to handle Tsrai compounds?

I tend to worry about lexical expansion early in the creation of a language. It's entirely possible for me to have several bits of derivational morphology tested and ready before I've even started seriously with, say, the verb system. I favor rather complex derivational systems (see the madness of Vaior's derivational system), but in Tsrai I'm trying to be more restrained. So, there will be much more compounding using root words and little or no bound morpheme use. I'm currently thinking I'll follow the Vietnamese practice, and write each element of the compound separately.

Since Tsrai so far has been head-initial for noun phrases, it seems best to use head-initial compounds (although the typology on this isn't so clear-cut). The big question now is — how to mark plurals? Since most noun plurals are marked with the suffix -ne, do I tack that onto the compound head, or the full phrase? What if the head noun reduplicates for plurals? Using syur person (pl. sisyur), véu study; inspect:

syur véu student (person-study)
?sisyur véu students?
?syur véune students?

Right now I'm leaning toward sisyur véu, but I'll worry about this for a few more days before deciding. Hopefully it won't take as long as Bixwá's relative clauses took — I worried about that for longer than a month before making a decision.

And I'm not even ready to worry about verb compounds. Do they keep the same headedness pattern? Right now I'm inclined to make N-V compounds follow that order, verb last, dli word, ba see:

?syur véu ba dli a student reads
?syur véu dli ba a student reads

And verb compounds will have the same puzzle for plurals. Again, for now I'm inclined to make the plural and tense marking go into the original V element, wherever it ends up in the compound.