Conlang Year: Week 17
Well, this one got a bit derailed! Life happens, but I am getting back on the horse and I will hopefully be able to catch up over the next few weeks before I leave on vacation. Let's dig in!
Day 113 - Plan your strategy for (anti)passivization
Well, I went through this on Day 112 - I plan to conjugate the verb to indicate that it's taken the passive form. I'll have to think about what exactly I want to use to conjugate. It might make sense to reduce xʃan, the verb for "to be." It's added between the existing verb markers and the verb itself.
Day 114 - Create examples of passive (or similar) structures
Heres's a couple of pairs of sentences exploring the distinction between passive and active voice:
PASSIVE - “The person was attacked.”
3.a.pa.ps.STRIKE person.nom - ʒɛx.ʃan.wʌʎ xɪɾ.ɾa
ACTIVE - “They attacked the person.”
3.a.pa.STRIKE they.nom person.acc - ʒɛx.wʌʎ qyβm xɪɾ.ɾaŋ
PASSIVE - “The fruit tree was planted.”
3.i.pa.ps.PLANT fruit tree.nom - ʒɛʎ.ʃan.an.ɪ θaɪ.ɢa
ACTIVE - “She planted the fruit tree.”
3.i.pa.PLANT she.nom fruit tree.acc - ʒɛʎ.an.ɪ qyɸ θaɪ.ɢaŋ
Day 115 - Formalize the passive strategy in your document
I did this one while working on the example sentences for Day 114, so there's no need for additional work.
Day 116 - Brainstorm ideas for valency-increasing strategies
Looking at how other VSO languages handle this, it looks like most of them use prefixes on their verbs to change them into a causative form. Since that's what I've been doing with most things so far, I'll continue with that strategy.
Day 117 - Make a plan for a valency-increasing strategy
I'm going to grammaticalize boŋ, the verb for "to use," as the particle here. I'm taking the grammaticalization back to before the vowel lowered, making the particle form "bu." It will precede the other arguments that are on a verb.
Day 118 - Create at least one valency-increasing strategy
Here's four sample sentences where I've used the causative particle "bu" to describe how on agent caused another to do something:
“He makes them attack the person.”
ca.3.a.pr.STRIKE he.nom they.acc person.dat - bu.ʒɛx.ɪ.wʌʎ qyɸ qyβ.moŋ xɪɾ.ɾaɪm
“The bird made the insect run.”
ca.3.a.pa.RUN bird.nom crawling arthropod.acc - bu.ʒɛx.ðʌx βax.ɾa aɪʃ.zɾaŋ
“I will make you laugh.”
ca.1.a.fu.LAUGH i.nom you.acc - bu.ɛɪx.aɪ.xax ɛɪ ŋaʎ.oŋ
“You made the dog sit.”
ca.2.a.pa.SIT you.nom dog.acc - bu.tax.ɸɪθ ŋaʎ ʃxu.ɾaŋ
Day 119 - Write a section on your valency-increasing strategy
I wrote this section up while working on the example sentences in Day 118.
Well, that wasn't too bad! Even after more than three weeks off, I was still able to read my documentation and remember enough about Thekkish that I could work on this without too much trouble. It's an encouraging sign and I'm looking forward to doing more of this.