Category Archives: Week 3

June 8: Low Valyrian Case Study

Posted on June 8, 2017 | Comments Off on June 8: Low Valyrian Case Study

End of Week 3! Next week we start to fill in the blanks and put everything together.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

Links

Assignments

Reading

Practice

  • Find a natlang on Wikipedia whose basic word order is not SVO or SOV, and post it to our #evolution channel on Slack.

Mastery

  • MA 6: Remember that you only have to fill this in up to 20 points! You can go over, by all means, but you do not have to. Also remember that you’re choosing between a language that takes past/non-past as basic and a language that takes perfect/imperfect as basic. Finally, for the augments, be sure you have a method for when your process doesn’t apply (and it will always fail to apply to something—even if it’s borrowings).

Backburner

  • Now that you have your verbs, try putting together some sample basic sentences (e.g. one intransitive verb with one subject; one transitive verb with a subject and object, etc.).

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June 7: TMA Continued

Posted on June 7, 2017 | Comments Off on June 7: TMA Continued

TMA is one tough cookie.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

Links

Assignments

Reading

Practice

  • Take a look at the following TMA categories, and post a possible lexical source for two of them (or of some TMA category I didn’t list), explaining how it could turn into the category in question (note: You will not have heard of some of these. That’s fine. Poke around; see what you can find out!):
    • Progressive (Incomplete) Aspect
    • Perfective (Completed) Aspect
    • Habitual Aspect
    • Passive
    • Applicative
    • Antipassive
    • Intransitive
    • Causative
    • Hodiernal Tense
    • Immediate Future Tense
    • Past Tense
    • Distant Past Tense
    • Weak Obligation (i.e. Should)
    • Strong Obligation (i.e. Must)
    • Second-Hand Evidential
    • Optative

Mastery

  • (None Today)

Backburner

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June 6: Introduction to TMA

Posted on June 6, 2017 | Comments Off on June 6: Introduction to TMA

Big thank you to John Quijada for coming to present today!

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

Links

Assignments

Reading

  • AoLI Chapter 2, pp. 139-148 (if you didn’t read it yesterday)

Practice

  • Try to apply what you’ve learned about metaphor to grammar or the lexicon. Do one of the following:
    1. Come up with a new metaphor, and give an example of how it might work in some language.
    2. Come up with a novel metaphorical extension to produce a new lexeme from an old one (noun or verb or adjective; doesn’t matter).
    3. Come up with a novel metaphorical extension to produce a new bit of grammar (noun case, verb aspect, comparative form, etc.).

    Note: For each of these options, use English basically as a glossing tool for some hypothetical conlang. So, for example, if you had a metaphor like TIME IS A BASKETBALL GAME, you could say that the word for “overtime” could be used for the afterlife. No need to come up with a form in your conlang; this is just a theoretical exercise.

Mastery

Backburner

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June 5: Introduction to Verbal Morphology

Posted on June 5, 2017 | Comments Off on June 5: Introduction to Verbal Morphology

Today we can began the long day’s journey into verbs. If you want a really solid review of predicates and clause types, check out the the paper by Matthew Dryer below. Otherwise, tomorrow we’re having a guest speaker—Mr. John Quijada, about whom this New Yorker article was written—so please read the preparatory handout he wrote heading into tomorrow’s lecture. Also check out this picture they did of John for that New Yorker article (lol):

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

Links

Assignments

Reading

Practice

  • Go and take a look at John Quijada’s Ithkuil website. Read the Introduction (up through the section entitled “Addressing the Vagueness Inherent in Natural Languages”), then what I want you to do is find your favorite example sentence throughout the site (there are tons), and post the romanized version along with the meaning to the #morphology channel. (Note: Be prepared for a lot of sentences about clowns.)
  • Find an agreement pattern in a natlang grammar—but not just any agreement pattern. Find a subject (or object or direct object) agreement pattern where the same form is used for two or more different person/number combinations. In English, for example, the verb agreement for a first person plural, second person plural, and third person plural subject will always be identical. Find an agreement pattern like that, and post a link to it along with a description of the pattern in question to our #morphology channel.

Mastery

  • (None Today)

Backburner

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Posted in Week 3