Today we discussed questions and relative clauses and some other stuff. I assigned a landmark paper by Grice today, and I know it’s a little long, but trust me, you’re going to want to read this eventually in your linguistics career and/or life. It’s foundational. Easily ten times more important than Chomsky’s entire œuvre, and I mean that seriously.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides

Links

• WALS Map (Polar Question Strategies)
• WALS Map (Position of Polar Question Particles)

Assignments

Reading

• H. P. Grice “Logic and Conversation” [PDF]

Practice

• Today you got some new borrowed words! I want you to take them back, apply your sound changes to them (based on when you got the word), and post in #lexicon what they now mean in your language (plus where or who you got them from).

Mastery

• (None Today)

Backburner

• MA7 on word order, valency, relative clauses, and questions (a bit).
• Still looking at MA8.
• Keep looking at your final assignment.

Today we started our journey into syntax with valency. You want to see some applicatives? Check out that paper by Elena Mihas. Wow! Tomorrow a reporter from a German radio station will be in our class. If you’d like to not be in class because of that, please let me know ahead of time, and we’ll figure out an alternative.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides
• Elena Mihas “Grammaticalization of the Generalized Kampan Applicative -ako”

Links

• Something I wrote about Tagalog
• An example of an applicative plus a passive in a relative clause

• WALS Chapter on Relative Clauses
• WALS Chapter on Interrogative Phrases

Practice

• By class time tomorrow, I want you to have a list of at least 10 potentially tradable nouns that are unique to your culture, and then I want you to bring them to class. (You don’t necessarily need to have a physical paper—the list can be virtual—but it might help if you have a physical paper.) Here are some examples of what I mean by tradable nouns:
  • Plants
  • Trees (when they’re small you can put them in a pot!)
  • Precious gems
  • Different types of stone/building material
  • Fish
  • Domesticated mammals
  • Birds (maybe “trade” is a poor word, but those dudes can fly!)
  • Textiles/clothes
  • Food items
  • Fruit
  • Flowers
  • Jewelry/ornaments
  • Weapons
  • Types of vessels
  • Trinkets
  • Other (as long as fits the general description I gave)

  You can post these to the #lexicon channel if you want, but the most important thing is that you bring your words to class (and also be in class if you possibly can). If you know you can’t be in class, then please do post them to #lexicon.

Mastery

• (None Today)

Backburner

• Here’s MA7 early.
• Here’s MA8, on your morphosyntax.
• I would also like to reveal to you your final assignment. Take a look and see what you think.

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

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides
• Tracy’s Presentation
• Neil’s Presentation
• Kimchi’s Presentation

Links

• Smiley Award Writeup for Teonaht
• Low Valyrian Portal at the Dothraki Wiki

Assignments

Reading

• AoLI Chapter 2, pp. 148-150
• Matthew S. Dryer “Clause Types” [PDF]
• Doug Ball “Linear Aspects of Syntax: Ideas for Your Conlang”

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.).

TMA is one tough cookie.

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• Class Slides
• Sodna-lɛni by Sylvia Sotomayor
• Mariya’s Presentation

Links

• Laundry List of Grammatical Aspects (Some Not Aspects)

Assignments

Reading

• “The State of Valyrian” (Dothraki.com)

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

• Still looking at MA 6!

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

Material From Today’s Class

PDFs

• John Quijada’s Presentation on Conceptual Metaphor
• Class Slides

Links

• Ithkuil Home Page
• Skerre Home Page

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

• MA 5: Metaphor and Morphology

Backburner

• Keep looking at MA 6!