Narayanan,

At Rowan University, we often use the play on the homophonous "RU" and "Are you," so you might see something like "RU ready for graduation?" "Arju" is the IPA equivalent.

I started with a phonology about 90% completed and a basic VOS syntactic structure that relies heavily on both grammatical and lexical aspect that is explicit. Therefore, I think I have treated both syntax and semantics with enthusiasm. I then turned it over to others, most current students, to continue the development from that point. We only have 280 preliminary lexical items, so we need 9,000-10,000 more. There are many other areas that have not been addressed yet.

Where might we find this language? 

Dear Glenn

I have no experience to answer your question. I would like to know to which  you have given importance, Semantics or Syntax? How have you approached it.

In short more about Arju. Why that name? Any relation with Silver?

Narayanan

 Martha,

The language is in its infancy, so I have just organized our disorganized notes into several better organized documents for phonology, syntax and morphology, etc. When it gets in a more established form, I can post it.

Narayanan,

At Rowan University, we often use the play on the homophonous "RU" and "Are you," so you might see something like "RU ready for graduation?" "Arju" is the IPA equivalent.

I started with a phonology about 90% completed and a basic VOS syntactic structure that relies heavily on both grammatical and lexical aspect that is explicit. Therefore, I think I have treated both syntax and semantics with enthusiasm. I then turned it over to others, most current students, to continue the development from that point. We only have 280 preliminary lexical items, so we need 9,000-10,000 more. There are many other areas that have not been addressed yet.

Thanks Glenn.  I'm really interested in the concept and the realities of this project.  Is it going to be something that is accessible via internet? 

Dear Glenn

I have one suggestion: When 'designing' new lexical items can you make sure that the same quasi-morpheme, and thus the morpheme, carries the same meaning any where it occurs in a word? The process may be difficult initially, but in the long run it will be useful and make it easier. Natural Languages do not have this though I think Malayalam, my language, may be an exception. I am not sure whether Conlangs follow this.

Narayanan

Narayanan,

The mission of this particular project was to construct a possible natural language, so it would reflect some language or language group in each of its areas. However, it is not based on any particular language or language family as some conlangs are.

Normally, a certain morpheme will only have one place in a word relative to other parts, so the problem you cite, the best I understand it, should not arise.

Glenn,

I have been working recently with the Native American Shawnee language and had to acquire the open-source program "Toolbox." It is a program used by UBS, SIL, and others to construct dictionaries, lexicons, interlinearizations, etc. In the manual used to acquaint new users with the program, the administrators of the program have used such a language for an example. It is no full-blown language, as far as I know, but it is an application of the use of such a language. You may obtain a copy of the manual and the program, if you desire, at http://www-01.sil.org/computing/toolbox/. You might also inquire of them further experience that they may have had regarding the use of conlangs. I hope this information is helpful.

Thanks, John. I will investigate this source.

Dear Glen

I think I put it wrongly!

I meant that a morpheme/quasimorpheme should have the same meaning whichever word it occurs in. A quasimorpheme may be present in different words, but it should carry the same meaning in all these words.

Narayanan

Narayanan,

I think I may have missed the import of your request.

The short answer is that at this very early point of development, we have incorporated a quasi-morpheme in our question words. The labial affricate /pf/ has been selected to represent the equivalent of /wh/ in English, /n/ in Basque/, /k/ (spelled 'qu' or 'c') in Spanish, etc. Although the question formation system is based on Quechua, the quaisimorphism is based on Spanish, a language with a strong phonetic /k-/ beginning for question words, but with the notable exception of 'donde' meaning 'where?' So Arju has an exception as well with one totally unrelated question word.

That was the good news. The bad news is that we have not consciously constructed other quaisimorphemic conventions, which would seem to be appropriate in our quest to make a natural-like language. More good news: only 280 words into our lexicon, there is plenty of room to accomplish this.

This creates another opportunity for teaching, however. By consciously infusing some quasi-morphemes into the language, we bring to light this aspect of the human capacity for language. Since Arju has a tendency toward compounding, this related cognitive activity can be weighed against quasimorphism in a language.

Great idea!

Thank you, Glenn. I think it is important, and yet neglected, just as semantics is grossly neglected. English does have many quasimorphemes the meaning and relevance and why and how they came into has been forgotten. One example is the gl- in glance, glitter, glass, glow, where it some how seems to confer a meaning related to light/vision.

Yes, there is still time, and your students, with fresh unsullied minds will definitely be able to help!

Narayanan

Aha.  I was wondering what a quasi-morpheme was.  They also used to say bl- was particularly common in words meaning sounds.  Like blare, blast, but it doesn't seem so productive as gl-.  There's also sn- as something to do with the nose (a metathesis) , snort, snot, snout, snoot, sniffle, etc.  which is fairly productive.  Problem is with all the gl- words that aren't associated with light, such as glom (to grab, from Irish glam), glob, glut, etc.;   bloom, blossom, etc,;  snare, snake,  I don't know what the current understanding is of these.  But it surely is a fascinating game to play on a rainy afternoon. 

It is not the case that every time we see sn- that we will have a reference to 'nose': snorkle and snuff=yes, snap and snow=no. Indeed, as a speaker of English, I don't anticipate the connection, but only find it in analysis. So having such a group might be thought by some to be just random luck, by others a carry-over from a historical connection, and by others a quasimorpheme of the target language.

Looking at that wonderful fat dictionary my grandmother gave to me when I went off to college 48 years ago, it appears that about half of the lexical roots that begin with sn- are nose related! That is convincing; it seems more than random luck. I doubt the other candidate initial sounds compete with that percentage, however. If some series of sounds were almost always carrying the same semantic content, then that is a morpheme. But on the other end of the statistical scale, at what point does it fall off to randomness?

Someone seems to have walked off with both my copies of Whitney's Sanskrit roots, but here is a popular account which says that "nas" is the Indo-European root for "nose".  "sn" is probably a metathesis of "ns".  Latin has "sinus" of course.  There is a nice big Indo-European roots book mentioned.  I did lend it to someone.  There seems to be a sort of law of conservation of books.  You lend one and never get it back.  You borrow one and never give it back.  So your total number of books stays about the same.  A similar law obtains for tupperware, umbrellas (to a lesser extent), and many other things.

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/03/a-nosy-question.html

Dear Martha

In Sanskrit and Malayalam,

Sn-utha means that which has dripped,

sn-ava means dripping,

sn-aana-take a shower,

sn-aapanan means baptism (Yes, Baptism of Christians; this is purely Malayalam)          where you sprinkle water on the baby,

sn-aayuarma means thich, SNOWY patches on the eye. Snow is just dripping white patches visible to the eye!

So, no need to take recluse in nose, which will have sn-a when you have a cold, and which is related to nasya or fluid therapy hrough nose.

Of course, when you establish the meaning or can explain why a quasimorpheme gives a meaning, then one may say that it has become a morpheme, at least a bound morpheme.

When a new language is constructed, use of such quasimorphemes make it elegant and uniques. I think Malayalam is such a language intelligently constructed by Ancients.

Dear Martha and Glen, Please do see my paper (slideshow) on quasimorphemes in my profile

Narayanan

Hi Narayanan,

Your two examples:

sn-aana-take a shower, and

sn-aapanan means baptism

lead me to ask, is -pa- a causative extension?

I'll look at your presentation!  Happy New Year!

In Sanskrit and Malayalam each letter (in both alphabets they are syllables, hence they are called alpha-syllabaries), has a meaning, sometimes more.

pa means protector, hence pitha or father.

He is also the first cause isnt it in all animals and sexually reproducing plants?

Hope this answers your question

Happy and Succesful 2016 and more years to you.

Narayanan

 N,

There it is! You have given a case that indicates that these are arbitrary--not echoic or otherwise connected. It is a long way from snot to baptism. If the sn- words in English have to do with noses and the sn-words in Malayalam have to do with water droplets, then there is no inherent meaning for the sound combination /sn-/. It is arbitrary.

I see your point, Martha. Narayanan, can you give some more examples of related words with -aana and -aapanan?

Nobody can change a language, execept its speakers over time. Furthermore, everyone finds their native language normal, and all have problems with particular syntactic and phonological features in learning new languages. , I'm sorry, but this is not a valid question. It specifically cites ESL teachers. So all responses are really about the failures of those teachers. Nothing in English is inherently more complex and difficult than any other language.  It's always hard for adults to learn another language.

Yes, it seemed so obvious that if sn-aa-na means to take a shower, then

sn-aa-pa-nan could mean to cause to take a shower.  But then I am the causative queen, and always feel happy when I find a language that is highly agglutinative.  But Malayalam is closely related to Tamil (isn't it?), which they tell me is highly agglutinative, so I jumped on that one like a duck onto a June bug, as they say down south.  But it wasn't a June bug or was the wrong June bug. My bad!.

hope, it is still of some interest even after few years :)

recently, i started my very first supervision of master's thesis in general linguistics with a topic of "reversed linguistics", ie. teaching linguistics features through translations of model sentences into a conlang sketch created by the student ad hoc.

and the phenomenon you describe as "quasi-morpheme" was called "phonaestheme" and it was introduced by John Rupert Firth in 1930 in his The Tongues of Men, and Speech.

Jan,

It is absolutely still of interest. Indeed, I will be using a conlang, Arju, as built by several years' worth of students, to present some phonological principles tonight. The thesis you describe carries much interest. Thanks for the post. Feel free to elaborate.

I have met with some success using the conlang in teaching situations, and the idea of actively participating in applying general linguistic principles into a project has generated more interest in the field, according to a colleague who has noticed the intensity of study in specific languages increase. When doing something as simple as adding lexical items, the researcher must consider morphology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, and phonology with each entry. It helps students appreciate the complexity of language.

We now have almost 1000 lexical items, most grammatical items, a counting system (beyond the 1000 words), and a complex phonology that can be executed in full through a computer program. We have written our first poetry in the language.

Glenn

Glenn,

good to see that your project is going on.

in our case, we plan to study the choice of particular realisation of selected linguistic feature in the conlang sketch (related to supposedly important independent variables). imagine you give respondents a general introduction into that feature (in our study of an abstract case) and then you ask them to translate some model sequences into their ad hoc created conlangs. currently, we are working on methodics, so what variable to consider, how to evaluate it in a context of other features (lang typology etc.). we would also like to see, if this might be an effective way to teach linguistics, the understanding of different aspects of language, not only morphosyntatic, but anyone reflected in a creation of quasi-natural language.