Topics in Koa meta-analysis

Back in 2023 I realized with excitement that I was in the position to calculate some statistics on the origin of the Koa lexicon. Since then some additional forensic techniques have developed, and I can now lay out a significantly clearer and more detailed picture, including previously unexamined data around patterns and subjects of inspiration and productivity. I have to say I'm endlessly fascinated by this kind of intense meta navel gazing, and the kind of autobiographical insight it can provide (assuming I can figure out how to interpret the data).

In the domain of etymology, first of all, I now have data on all but 50 of my 1066 roots, and year-of-creation data for all but one of them. Below are the percentages of my predicate roots by source; origins with fewer than 10 tokens apiece (5% of the total) have been grouped into "Other," representing a wide range of both natural (Basque, Latin, Malay, Nahuatl, Quechua, Swahili, Turkish and many others) and artificial languages (Doraja, Esperanto, Quenya, Seadi, etc.):

Some notes on the categories...

Random words (30%) were created with the help of my vocab tracker and random-word selector, which ensures no unintended homophony among roots, and provides random suggestions for needed words weighted by the preferability of their structure. I should clarify that I never make these choices without considerable thought and review: my program makes a suggestion, but the aesthetics have to feel right before I'll accept it.

Created words (7%), on the other hand, were inspired by the Muse in some way, and created specifically for their intended use. These include mina "woman" and kane "man," lai "come back," tasi "repeat," tai "be, exist," mua "die," itu "use," kuhu "owl," etc.

Internal coinages (7%) were formed via clusters of existing vocabulary, mainly (but not exclusively) particles:

to "that [adjectival]" + a "[indefinite]" > toa "that [pronominal]"
me "with" + no "without" > meno "regardless, anyway"
ke "which" + ne "in, on, at" > kene "location"
ai "[question marker]" + saa "receive, be allowed" > aisa "pardon, excuse me, may I"

Slavic words (2%) comprise loans from Polish, Russian, Bosnian and Macedonian. There were actually enough Polish words to constitute a category in their own right, but I didn't want the remaining Slavic loans to be hidden in "Other"...

Polynesian words (11%) include Hawaiian, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan and Maori. I think I originally expected this category to be much larger given Koa's nearly Polynesian phonology, but it's turned out that Finnish words tend to be more amenable to the constraints of Koa root structure.

Finnish loans (26%) are the largest non-random category, providing more than a quarter of Koa's core vocabulary. When looking to assign a new root, I almost always check Finnish first -- if it has a suitable word, or one I can easily modify to be suitable, it's generally my first choice. I'm positive that this is a reflection of my own aesthetic biases, but it certainly also helps that the phoneme inventory and syllabic constraints of Finnish are not much more complicated than Koa's, while providing more variety and salience than Polynesian for this purpose.

Family & Friends (1%), lastly, include coinages for Koa by other people in my life! Two former partners are represented here (anu "water" from Amelia, culi "move" and many others from Olga), friends (soto "meditate" from Jonathan), and of course my daughter (lapa "safe"). I actually really love these little lasting artifacts of my loved ones; I wish I'd sought more of these over the years! I've been considering giving other friends and family members the phonology and commissioning creations for words that have been problematic heretofore (like "rice," "springtime," "spoon" and "unenvious").

In addition to the origins of Koa words, it's also interesting to look at the timing of their creation, which has been anything but linear.

There were two significant spikes, centered on 2011 and 2023, one with a lead-in from the previous year, the other with a coda into the following. In all, these two spikes and their entourage are responsible for 876 roots, 82% of the total. It appears that word-creation is something of a separate "project" for me: to be taken on when necessary, but otherwise proceeding only at a trickle. Let's see what happens if we compare the rate of word creation with blog post creation...

Blog posts -- which tend to occur alongside significant structural or theoretical work on the language -- have spikes too, though apparently following a different drummer than word creation. For one thing, interestingly, spikes tend to skip years: unlike with words, there are no two consecutive years with blog posts being written at a higher than average rate. Also, though there may not be enough data to justify attributing causation, it would appear that structural work may drive word creation: in both cases of a significant word-creation spike, a period of structural work preceded it, sometimes for several years.

Thinking about this subjectively, I suppose it ought not to be surprising. Assigning words is probably my least favorite area of conlanging: (1) the stakes feel high, as these choices end up determining much of the aesthetic character of the language: where I make choices I dislike, these can affect my interest in the whole language; and (2) it's almost entirely a subjective/creative/artistic process, something that I can do but which is much more difficult for me to access than, say, problem-solving. (This is one reason I enjoy the company of ADHD folks, for whom eliciting that kind of creative vision tends, seemingly, to be rather effortless.)

In other words, then, what seems to happen is that my main conlanging inspiration is structural or philosophical -- phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, even sociolinguistics -- and I turn to lexis basically to support my ability to continue developing those areas, or when needed in order to produce or translate a certain kind of text. Fascinating! I really had no conscious sense of this.

I did, however, have a sense that there were certain times of year when I tended to be more active in Koa development than others, and finally found a way to explore this. Again taking blog publishing rates as a convenient approximate metric on activity level, we can see that there are interesting patterns associated with months of the year:

In particular, a post is about twice as likely to get written between November and April (69%) than it is between May and October, with February by far the most productive month. On the other end of the spectrum, in almost 26 years there have only been four posts written in the month of August. My immediate assumption was that this differential was likely to be weather-related, so I did some additional research...

Using Weather Underground's history features, I put together a grid showing the average monthly temperature for each month in which posts were published, localized to wherever I happened to be at the time.

This bears out my suspicion in that again a post is about twice as likely to be published when the average temperature is below 60°F, but it's hard to get more than that from these data because the frequency of posts gets entangled with the frequency of the temperature ranges themselves. To counteract this, I redid the chart showing post frequency per temperature as a percentage of a baseline in which temperature did not affect productivity. Here the results are pretty striking:

Below a monthly average temperature of 60°F, posting activity is approximately at or significantly above baseline, reaching a magnificent high of 149% between 50°F and 54°F. On the other hand, as soon as the temperature rises to 60°F the productivity rate compared to baseline begins to fall rapidly, as low as 48% when the average temperature is at or above 70°F.

The interesting conclusion is that I clearly feel more inspired or productive when the weather is cooler: approximately the range of temperatures in which I tend to wear a hat and socks indoors, and keep a space heater running in my room. When the temperature is warmer I tend to spend more time outside doing other activities, for one thing, but I think that beyond that my mindset changes somewhat: it's not the way I spend my time, it's the way I'm inspired to spend my time.

Another thing I thought was interesting is that it seems I'm significantly more likely to feel like working on Koa when the temperature is cool but not too cold. This surprised me: I had assumed there was just a "warm weather" mode and a "cold weather" mode, but it appears that outdoor temperatures below a certain point diminish inspiration or motivation in some way.

In the end I worry whether all this may just represent cheerful but ultimately frivolous data-crunching...but given that I've given so much time, thought and effort to this project over so many years of my life, I find it rather wonderful and meaningful to get to take a look at the character of the work itself. When I feel inspired, that fire tends to seize me and I don't really notice what I'm doing; it turns out that there is some kind of internal form and science, not just to the product but to the inspiration itself. It feels kind of moving, somehow, and makes me want to take more pride, and have more faith, in my particular curious artistic process.

Social Niceties IV: Politeness & Obscenity

At last, the fourth and final installment of this series on social-focused language in Koa: ways of indicating respect or politeness on the one hand, and obscenity or disparagement on the other. The foundation for both types of language is long-standing, and some of the constructions discussed here have existed for a long time, but in many cases there was a lot of development and extrapolation needed.

Here is a start to the subject, with the caveat that real patterns of usage will need to be developed via...well, usage. This is an area for which need has arisen rather less in existing Koa texts, in which I've been primarily (A) journaling, or (B) talking to children!

11. Respect & Politeness

11.1 The honorific -a

The most basic morpheme to add formality, politeness or deference to an utterance is the honorific particle -a (-ha after -a in the stem), which has been mentioned many times previously in this series. By default, the honorific is suffixed to the verbal unit:

kea sa se-hálu-a?
what FOC 2SG-want-HON
"what would you like?"

ai se-me-táli-a?
QU 2SG-COM-offspring-HON
"do you happen to have any children?"

kéle-a sa se-noa?
what-HON FOC 2SG-name
"what might your name be?"

The last two translations are getting a bit heavy-handed in trying to convey a kind of formality that English doesn't really express consistently. Languages with T-V-type distinctions don't quite get at it either: kélea sa senoa? could sometimes translate into Spanish as ¿cómo se llama Usted? but not always. Honorifics can be inserted to denote extra politeness even in contexts where a Spanish speaker would not use Usted except in jest: with a romantic partner, for example.

It's important to keep emphasizing that these translations are attempts to get at the intended meaning, but miss the mark somewhat. In my idiolect, "sir" is quite formal; I would always address my boss with héia "hello" or kea sa semáia "how are you?" where I would never dream of calling him "sir" in English.

It is possible to amplify the implied politeness by adding -a to more than one constituent, though in all but the most formal of situations this may feel a little over-the-top:

kéle-a sa se-nóa-ha?
what-HON FOC 2SG-name-HON
"what might your name be, sir?" "might I have the honor of your name?"

11.2 Terms of address

For polite address, the most flexible is based on the root cano "honorable, admirable":

cánoa "sir/ma'am/miss"
cano, cánoka/cánoe "gentleman/lady"

The first expression, cánoa, is ungendered: an all-purpose form of direct address for anyone being shown overt respect: approximately English "sir," "ma'am" or "miss." In 3rd-person reference the root may also appear on its own, or with the gendered suffixes -ka or -e if desired: Ai secuteapu ti cáno(ka)? "Could you assist this gentleman?" In these cases the honorific is not usual: *cánokaha.

Where "sir" or "ma'am" is intended to denote serious deference or adherence to a hierarchy -- speaking to a superior officer in the military, for example -- we have an additional option using the root ula, literally "higher in a hierarchy." Again, the form with the honorific affix is used primarily in direct address, the other forms in the 3rd person:

úlaha "sir/ma'am"
úla, úlaka, úlae "superior, superior officer (m/f)"

Note that the opposite of ula, nala "lower in a hierarchy" may be used without disparagement to refer to, for example, one's direct reports: nálaka/nálae. However, note that -- outside of the military -- in direct address this term is likely to be taken as strange or offensive: Mitace, nálaha! "With all due respect, silence, underling!"

Speaking to or of one's boss or leader specifically, etu "main, chief, lead" is available: étua for direct address, etu/étuka/étue in the 3rd person. Etu without an honorific has a jocular sense, much like "boss" may sometimes appear in English.

Lastly, if the referent is a literal member of the nobility in a given society, terms based on the root ialo would be used: iáloa "my lord, my lady, noble born"; iáloka "gentleman, nobleman"; iáloe "lady, noblewoman."

11.3 Phrases of deference

In contexts of great social distance between speaker and addressee, a number of expressions use the roots vati "require" and kase "command":

sevátia? "What can I do for you?" lit. "You require?", short for Kea sa sevatiá? "What do you require?"

kásea? or sekásea? "What would you like, sir/ma'am?" lit. "(you) command?", short for Kea sa sekásea "What do you command?"

These phrases have much wider usage than the direct English translations might suggest. (Se)kásea? might be used by a server in a nice restaurant to mean "what would you like to order?", or as a formal "pardon me?" in a situation of receiving instructions from a superior.

Also relevant to these types of contexts is heti, literally "immediate," meaning "right away, got it, yessir": a statement of understanding/acceptance of direction.

12. Disparagement & Obscenity

12.1 The pejorative -mu

Parallel with the honorific -a is the pejorative suffix -mu, indicating dislike, irritation, disrespect or general disparagement. When its scope is a whole utterance, like -a it tends to appear on the verb:

kea sa se-éte-mu?
what FOC 2SG-do-PEJ
"What the hell did you do?"

-mu is somewhat freer than -a, however, in that its scope may also apply specifically to the constituent to which it is affixed. In the above, this gives an additional possible reading of "What did you screw up?" Other examples:

nekea sa ka túsi-mu-ni?
where FOC DEF book-PEJ-1SG
"Where's my damn book?"

ka áuto-ni i súlu-mu
DEF car-1SG MAIN.CL collapse-PEJ
"my car fucking broke down"

ka áuto-mu-ni i sulu
DEF car-PEJ-1SG MAIN.CL collapse
"my lousy car broke down"

Note that the sense of ka áutoni i súlumu, with the pejorative suffix on the verb, is general upset about the situation; in ka áutomuni i sulu, on the other hand, the suffix on "car" identifies it as the specific object of disparagement.

Question words like kea "what," keka "who" and nekea "where" may themselves also take -mu for a sense of "what/who/where the hell":

kéa-mu sa se-ma-éte?
what-PEJ FOC 2SG-IMPF-do
"What the hell are you doing?"

12.2 Obscene words

Cursing and obscene invective are, alas, not yet particularly well developed in Koa, and are still rather tame. In approximate order of intensity, the ones I've identified so far are:

havu "nasty, dishonorable, shameful" -- the opposite of cano. In my idiolect, this might correspond in strength to words like "lousy," "bastard," "asshole," etc.
ceu "despised, damned"
peke "goddamn, fucking, piece-of-shit"

The above are all adjectival in core sense, but are commonly used as interjections as well:

havu "hell, bastard, asshole"
ceu "damn"
peke "fuck, shit"

Combinations with question words are also possible:

kea/keka ceu..., ke ceu... "what/who the hell..."
nekea peke... "where the fuck..."

12.3 Phrases of disparagement

The obscenities discussed in the previous section may be directed at another party either via the imperative particle vi, or in apposition with se "you":

vihavu, havu se "you bastard/asshole"
viceu, ceu se "damn you"
vipeke, peke se "fuck you"

The imperative forms may be strengthened with a following ablative directional marker o, roughly analogous to "off" in some English expressions:

viceu o "go to hell"
vipeke o "fuck off"

Note that o is stressed in such uses, and may be so spelled: vipeke ó, etc.

Other expressions of disapprobation, all of which become stronger/more vulgar with -mu:

mitace(mu) (o) "shut (the hell) up"
(vi)lahe(mu) o "go (the fuck) away"
láhe(mu)ni o "leave me (the fuck) alone"

Of course, obscenity in Koa is still in its infancy, and a skillful speaker will no doubt find many additional creative ways of expressing these kinds of emotions!

This concludes our catalog of the language currently at Koa's disposal for social, discourse and emotive purposes...but again, this is an open-ended and constantly evolving domain in any language, and will continue to develop as opportunities for use emerge. If I can recruit even one additional speaker someday, I'm sure the richness of the language in these areas will swell very quickly.

Polynesian in the pronouns

I just had a crazy, but maybe kind of good, idea? I was rereading this post from 2010, in which I said:

20) And speaking of pronouns, I have a provisional decision. For a little while there I was doing singular/plural for all persons (ni/nu, se/so, ta/tu), but I don't think that's the way to go. Instead, I've kept nu for "we," possibly exclusive, on the grounds that it really does mean something different than "I," along with seni/senu for dual/plural inclusive. Also possible are ponu "we, all of us (exclusive)," poseni "y'all and me" and posenu "y'all and us." This then becomes the strategy for the other persons: "y'all" is pose, and "they" is pota.

 

What's uncertain is whether I really want to maintain an inclusive/exclusive distinction (my gut says probably not in an IAL, though seni is still a useful thing to have), and also what happens when these longer forms are used with verbs: i or no i?

 

Also, if there's seni, why not tani? A matter for further thought. Maybe I'm not as sure about the above after all.

Obviously many things changed (or failed to change) in the following 15 years. I retained nu "we," so "y'all" and tu "they" in use as the plural pronouns despite what I wrote above; seni "you and I," ponu "all of us," poso "all of you" and potu "all of them" have remained in the lexicon, but to my knowledge have never actually been used.

It just occurred to me...now that my tether to IALdom has begun somewhat to fray, what would it look like if all possible combinations of pronouns could be used as long forms? This would yield amazing, Polynesian-level specificity, or beyond:

1st Person Inclusive
seni "you and I"
senu "you and we"
soni "y'all and I"
sonu "y'all and we"

1st Person Exclusive
tani "he/she and I (but not you)"
tanu "he/she and we (but not you)"
tuni "they and I (but not you)"
tunu "they and we (but not you)"

2nd Person
tase "he/she and you"
taso "he/she and y'all"
tuse "they and you"
tuso "they and y'all"

That's a lot of roots to use up for such an experimental purpose, not even getting into the fact that some of them already have meanings. But...according to the accentuation rules I've since established, clusters of particles are typically accented on the final member whereas predicates have penultimate stress: thus soní "y'all and I" could exist unambiguously alongside soni "vein."

We could even combine the extended 1st- and 2nd-person forms into some wildly specific clusters:

1st Person Universal
tasení "he/she, you and I"
tasenú "he/she, you and we"
tasoní "he/she, y'all and I"
tasonú "he/she, y'all and we"
tusení "they, you and I"
tusenú "they, you and we"
tusoní "they, y'all and I"
tusonú "they, y'all and we"

How, though, would any of these forms actually be used? How do they fit into syntax? Let's see...

1) I think it's clear that they would need to fit into the category of pronominals we recently discovered that we have: that is to say, they would not take specifiers.

2) It should be unproblematic for these to show up in topicalized, focalized, and oblique positions. In the case of topicalization, the verb would still carry a pronominal prefix if the formal role of the pronoun in question is subject. These forms cannot, however, appear as pragmatically unmarked subjects:

ta.ní, nu-hui he lúlu.pai
she.and.I 1PL-meet TEMP Thursday
"she and I -- we met on Thursday" (topicalized)

se.ní sa luta ka lina kuo
you.and.I FOC find DEF city lost
"it was us (you and I) who found the lost city" (focalized)

ni.papa vo kau tea la se.ní
my.dad PRES.CL send letter DAT you.and.I
"my dad sent us (you and I) a letter" (oblique)

*ta.ní hui he lúlu.pai
she.and.I meet TEMP Thursday
"we (she and I) met on Thursday (unmarked)

3) What about object position, though? Do we say

ta-si.nae se.ní
3SG-saw you.and.I
"he saw you-and-me"

or

ta-si.náe-nu se.ní
3SG-saw-1PL you.and.I
lit. "he saw us you-and-me"

I believe it would be the former, because Koa doesn't have obligatory pronominal clitics for definite objects in other positions (like Macedonian would do in e.g. ја купив книгата "I bought (it) the book"). I think this spread of usages would thus mirror those of the emphatic pronouns nini, sese, etc., though I haven't spelled them out before. In fact, one could potentially regard these as a more specific, more marked category of emphatic pronoun!

Let's throw the "all" forms of the plural pronouns in there as well:

ponú "all of us"
posó "all of you"
potú "all of them"

I don't see any particular drawbacks to letting these all exist while we explore what they might feel like in actual usage. How neat!

Social Niceties III: Discourse Markers

This is inevitably going to be a very incomplete post. Though I'm excited finally to be collecting and documenting the words and phrases that help manage the flow and structure of discourse, this has got to be one of the most fluid and least prescribed areas of any language; I'm sure I've left out a great amount of what would be considered basic social fluency in a competent speaker of Koa. This is one of the places where Koa development is seriously impaired by its extremely small community of speakers (i.e. only me), and therefore the fact that discoveries via conversation are kind of...imaginary.

Regardless, there's a lot here, and I've done my best to sort everything out into the broad Maschler categories described by the Wikipedia article. Many of these expressions could use a whole post unto themselves to fully explore their use, so this should be regarded mainly as an inventory. Note: some expressions appear in more than one category, where senses overlap.

7. Interpersonal Discourse Markers

First, the so-called affective particles: sounds that communicate the speaker or hearer's emotion in the context of the discourse.

aa understanding (surprise)
ee uncertainty, reluctance, hedging ("ummmm, wellll...")

ei calling attention ("hey! oh! hang on!")

eu disgust ("ew, ick")

ii pain, dislike or nervousness ("ow, yikes, ugh")

oi request for repetition or confirmation ("Huh? What's that?; Isn't that right?")

oo understanding (synthesis)

ui regret, commiseration ("oy, oh man, aww")

uu excitement, pleasure ("oooh, eeeee, yay")

Requests for repetition, confirmation or understanding checks:

tasi(a)?; nóia? tási nóia? "What was that? Come again? Beg pardon?"

ai? tag question
ainá? tag question in positive sentences ("isn't it?" n'est-ce pas?)
aiá "Oh yes? Indeed?" Also: tag question, negative sentences ("is it?")

ai eso/tota? "is that so? really?"

ai mao? "are you sure?"
tule/tei/pea "go on!"

io is one of the most common discourse markers, and extremely difficult to translate. An extension of its translative meaning -- marking that pragmatically relevant change has occurred -- io shows a shift in topic, "now then..."; or agreement, acceptance, comprehension, or mustering of thought or courage, "m'hm, okay, aha, I see, sure, got it, so..."; or readiness or completion "there we go, that's it." It may appear in various lengths, from short, chopped off by a final glottal stop; or drawn out to ioo. Very few conversations of any length will take place without a liberal sprinkling of ios.

In this meaning, io appears in a number of frequent constructions. It conveys greater immediacy, or finality, or emphasizes the transition to this new state from whatever preceded it, compared to the forms without it:

io ika "okay, that's fine"

io koa "okay, great"
io iha "fantastic, awesome, wonderful"

io cuti "lovely"

io kica "clearly; got it"
io sao "that's right; for sure; no kidding"

io pakoma "understood"

The opposite of io, ca "still" indicates pragmatically relevant lack of change, and conveys reassurance, support, conciliation, deescalation, or bashfulness:

ca, caa "aww, mmmmmm; there there; now now; shucks"

Following another expression, io adds sharpness: tule io "come on!" kulu io "listen up!" ika io! "FINE!" By contrast, ca adds softness: tule ca "come along now," ika ca "that's just fine; it's okay, hon," tei ca "go right ahead."

A frequent way of showing engagement with the discourse uses the information status markers ku "old/expected" and ho "new/unexpected" to announce the listener's relationship to the status of the information being conveyed. They both function like English "m'hm," showing up in similar circumstances.

ku, kuu, kukuku "yeah, totally, naturally, of course"

ho, hoo, hohoho "oh my, yes?? oooh! you don't say. no!"

The evidentials and viridicals provide additional means for listeners to react to information, this time showing their relationship to the origin or reliability of the information:

pu "so they say, apparently, that's what I heard"
li "must be, stands to reason, you'd figure"
vu "I guess, suppose so, if you say so"

A large number of expressions convey more complex emotional orientation to the discourse, from positive to negative; here is a sampling of the most common:

eso "really! right! yeah! exactly!"

voho "wow!"
lele "oh my, oh my goodness"

nóia "oh my, my goodness" lit. "please"

oo válani "my God"

hoia X "what a X"

leki "not quite; as if!"

iti! "unlikely! as if!"

pono "that's right! as it should be! damn straight!"

su/lue/luvu/lahe "no way/come on now/get out" (shock or mock disbelief)

levi/kupo "uncool! not okay!"
kéamu "WTF"

alo "can't be helped, it is what it is"

memi "oh well" lit. "sigh"

ave "too bad, it's a shame"

As with many other expressions, these often appear with io or ca as described above: ave ca "aww, well, that's the way it goes"; nóia caa "well well, good heavens"; io pono "now that's what I'm talking about!"; luvu io "seriously, stop."

8. Referential Discourse Markers

These expressions connect the discourse in terms of sequence, causality and the like:

laa "so" (therefore, consequently, for that reason)

nii "so" (then, in that case, that being so)

sii "then, next" (subsequently)

loko "because..."

eko "also"
eta "and, but, meanwhile, on the other hand" (balancing, drawing comparison: Slavic a, Latin autem, Greek μεν...δε)

iati "that aside, besides"

ala "but, however"

hotai... "actually"
sili... "at least"

hio/male "on the contrary, just the opposite"

meno "anyway, regardless"

caene "what's more"
cahaa vela "yet again"

e tei motoa, etm. = etomó "and so on, et cetera"

molala "for example"

9. Structural Discourse Markers

Introducing information to the discourse, and indicating its perceived importance to the speaker:

io "so...; now:" (introducing something)
veama "first of all, to start with"
velopu "finally, lastly"
io poa "that's it, that's all"

kulu "look, see here; here, check this out" lit. "hear/listen"

huo "see here; check this out" (emphatic) lit. "notice"

soko "here, consider this, how about this" lit. "take this"

10. Cognitive Discourse Markers

Revealing the speaker's thought process:

ee uncertainty; filler ("um, uh, er")
nou "well, so, hmm..."
ilo/mue "y'know" lit. "know/remember"

moko/sema "like...I mean..."

In the fourth and final installment we'll finish up with a more dedicated discussion of respectful (and disrespectful) address, including a very first treatment of obscenity.

Social Niceties II: Permission & Apologies

This is the second in a series concerning the language of social conventions in Koa, beginning here.

4. Permission

The most basic and common word for "please" is nóia, from the root noi "ask for." In this and many other common expressions, note that no pronoun is present, though 1st singular is assumed. One could also say ninóia, but in that case the sense would be less the conventionalized "please," and more literally "I politely request that." Two other ways of asking for permission:

ai saa? "may I?" (response: saa)
ai ika? "is it okay?"

When speaking of entering another person's space, we have some specific expressions:

ai loa? "may I come in?" lit. "am I welcome?"
loa "yes, welcome, come in"
kono "I invite you, I accept"

The last, kono is rather formal, and could also appear as kónoa: something like "do please come in." Loa can also be used instead of hei as an all-purpose greeting when spoken by a host or occupier of an area to which others are arriving.

Incidentally, after receiving something or being granted permission, useful phrases are

kito(a) "thank you" = lit. "grateful" (pe X "for X")
auli(a) "you're welcome" = "willing, eager"

Moving forward, polite forms will be indicated with (a) or (ha) in parentheses as above; note that with this additional final syllable, such words will require a written accent to keep the stress in the right place: kito but kítoa.

5. Responses to Questions & Requests

Koa has an array of nuanced ways to say "yes" and "no," which are detailed at some length in this post. Here are some other ways to qualify a response beyond ia "yes" and na "no."

ia sai / na hetu "yes absolutely / not at all"
kia / kia na "definitely / definitely not"
tetai / tetai na "maybe / maybe not"
kae / kae na "probably / probably not"
(ni)nailo "I don't know"
(ni)nakoma "I don't understand"

6. Pardon and forgiveness

For situations of slight inconvenience or light contravention of social expectations, the most neutral way of saying "pardon me" is aisa (originally derived, as may be evident, from ai saa? "may I?"). The usual responses would be saa "feel free, go ahead" lit. "receive" or uha/pilo "it's nothing" (see below). Other more specific phrases for seeking pardon:

ana(ha) "pardon me" lit. "give," with the intention to take an action (or an object) intersecting with another person
kulu(a) "pardon me" lit. "listen," with the intention to speak to or interrupt someone

Koa also has some common affective interjections for these situations. Ie "just," usually lengthened to iee or even ieeee, can be used as a less formal alternative to aisa or any of the other lexical options to excuse oneself. Ui "oops" and ii "yikes" are sometimes appropriate, or can be combined with ie for added shadings: uiee "oh no, so sorry (with regret)"; iiee "oh dear, I'm sorry (embarrassment, nervousness)."

When the offense is more serious, the expression is tua(ha) "(I) apologize." Some possible responses are:

(vi)uha "it's okay," lit. "be free of responsibility"
(vi)pilo "no worries, it's nothing" = lit. "hold it as unimportant"
naviholi "don't worry"
cati "I forgive you"

Cati is considerably more formal or serious than the other expressions. Note that the optional vi- in some of these is an imperative marker.

On the other hand, if the desire is to communicate sympathy or commiseration rather than personal contrition, the expression for "I'm sorry" is paho or nipaho, literally "(I) regret that."

(Important note: One should carefully contrast the previous with the imperative (vi)paho "I told you so" lit. "regret!", also used to express Schadenfreude in, for example, Poker: "read 'em and weep." Tone of voice and intonation would clearly be rather different between the sympathetic and shaming/bragging readings of paho!)

It's looking like there will be two more parts to this series, and I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with what to me is the most exciting: words/phrases/noises that indicate engagement in and attitude toward a discourse, and help a conversation to flow.

Social Niceties I: Greetings

Happy spring! A couple days ago I started doing a little work definining words and phrases around apology, and somehow it mushroomed into a much larger-scale project concerning the language and formulas of social interaction in general. There was a whole lot that already existed but had never really been documented, another whole lot for which the structures or vocabulary were ripe for the picking but had not yet been established, and just a bit of creation of long-needed predicates.

Rather than laying this out as one enormous and ungainly post, let's do this as a series, kicking off with greetings. Note: Throughout these articles, translation into corresponding English equivalents is bound to be subjective and imprecise. I'll do my best, keeping in mind that my dialect is middle-class white Pacific Northwest American, spoken by an Xennial.

1. Greetings

The simplest way of greeting upon meeting someone is with forms of the predicate hei, literally "greet," listed in order from most to least formal:

héia "hello sir/ma'am"
hei "hello"
hei hei "hi"
héipa "hi there"

Héia adds the politeness particle -a (-ha after a final -a), which can be postposed to many of the expressions in this series; the effect is to add intentional, conscious formality or politeness to the utterance. English doesn't really grammaticalize this concept: héia still means "hello" or "hi," but in the context of talking to someone to whom one wants (or is expected) to show respect -- one's boss, for instance.

There are also expressions based on time of day. These use either koa "good" or tuni "peaceful":

amu koa, amu tuni "good morning"

pai koa, pai tuni "good day"

nahe koa, nahe tuni "good afternoon"

lila koa, lila tuni "good evening"

As usual, these could also include the polite -a if desired: ámua koa "good morning, respected person."

I feel like usage here is going to be so biased by my core languages that I don't really trust my own judgment. Based probably on English and Polish, I would instinctively suggest the expressions with amu up until noon, then nahe until 5pm or 6pm, then lila until bedtime...or pai while it's light, lila while it's dark.

Another possibility that breaks out of European conventions would be to designate the koa forms for greeting and the tuni forms for leavetaking, and just use the word for the literal time of day:

pai koa "good day (6am - 6pm, or whenever it's light)
ivo koa "night greetings (6pm - 6am, or whenever it's dark)

...or...

amu koa "good morning (6am - noon)
nahe koa "good afternoon (noon - 6pm)
lila koa "good evening (6pm - midnight)
vave koa "good wee hours" (midnight - 6am)

I kind of like that, though I've very much gotten used to saying ivo koa to my daughter as a leavetaking expression before bed. But why shouldn't there be a way to greet someone when it is, objectively, night? My intuitive cultural logic -- that "night" in this context refers only to time actually sleeping, in which case 3am still counts as "evening" -- is bellowing at me right now, so let's let this sit. I do really like the idea that e.g. amu koa and amu tuni could both correspond to English "good morning," but with a distinction between coming and going that most European languages don't care to make.

Not exactly a greeting, but also worthy of mention here is the affective ei! "hey!", used to attract attention.

2. Phrases of Meeting

Just a few useful social formulae:

kea sa se? "Who are you?"
kele sa senoa? "What's your name?" (Polite: kea sa se nóaha)
X sa ninoa "my name is X"

via/neli/cuti (poli) ko húise "(most) pleased/delighted/lovely to meet you"

kea se semai? "How are you?" = lit. "What is your subjective experience like?"
nimai X "I feel X"
eta se? or eta sese? "and you?"

ke tula sa? "What time is it?" = lit. "What hour is it?"
keka sa ka tula? "What is the time?"
(tula) lima (sa) "(it's) five (o'clock)

3. Farewells

As before, the simplest way to take leave is with the predicate moi "say goodbye," like Spanish despedirse or Polish żegnać:

móia "goodbye, sir/ma'am"
moi "goodbye"
moi moi "bye"
móipa "bye now"

Some other ways of taking leave:

mai koa "be well, take care"
mene tuni "go in peace, peace be with you"
ata ko hinae "see you later, until next time" = lit. "until seeing each other"

As before, with polite -a: máia koa, ménea tuni.

I might have included ivo koa "goodnight" in this section based on past usage, but I'll let the above discussion stand for now. More expressions specific to sleep:

nuku koa "sleep well"
moe meli "sweet dreams" = lit. "dream sweetly"

All for tonight! I'll be back soon with permission and forgiveness.

A bit of science

This is a catch-all post to document properly the STEM-specific vocabulary that has been developing in Koa over the past several years. This hasn't been particularly intentional: like most of the language, the terms in each of these sets just sprang into being as I felt inspired about them for reasons best known to the Muse. (Who is the Muse of conlanging, anyway?

Here note the predicate tae meaning "science, study, domain of knowledge," very productively used to form the names of branches of science and thought:

címitae "language science" = linguistics
nóatae "name science" = onomastics
élatae "life science" = biology
nácatae "arranging science" = "taxonomy"
síhitae "plant science" = botany
kávotae "animal science" = zoology
pílitae "reptile science" = herpetology
lútetae "bone science" = osteology
métitae "thought science" = philosophy (or should we calque this as kávotae "wise science"?)
válatae "god science" = theology
lúkutae "number science" = mathematics
néatae "computer science"

International System of Units

We have some basics here, following the approximate phonetics of standard international usage. In some cases -- consonant clusters in particular -- they've had to be simplified.

For the base units, so far we have meta "meter" for length, and kamu "gram" for mass (I wish there were a clear word for byte!). The decimal multiples of these are formed via prefixes as usual, thus:

10¹²  tela- "tera-"
10⁹  kika- "giga-"
10⁶  meka- "mega-"
10³  kilo- "kilo-"
10²  heto- "hecto-"
10¹  teka- "deca-"

10^-1  tesi- "deci-"
10^-2  seni- "centi-"
10^-3  mili- "milli-"
10^-6  miko- "micro-"
10^-9  nano- "nano-"
10^-12  piko- "pico-"

The prefixes are stressed, yielding e.g. kílokamu "kilogram," sénimeta "centimeter," and so on.

Biology

Taxonomic levels:

élaine "life domain" = kingdom
osa "branch" = phylum
luo "class"
himo "tribe" = order
pele "family"
suku "kindred, stock" = genus
lei "type" = species
nálalei "subtype" = subspecies

I'm pretty happy with these except for luo which is a calque that I'm not sure is motivated by anything in particular. But on the other hand taxonomy itself is arbitrary almost by definition, so I think I feel okay with just letting that one go and turning my attention back to spending another decade wringing my hands over how to mark indefinite NPs.

At this moment I would really like to offer a devastatingly witty little mnemonic to remember these in order, like the English one about King Phillip...but alas, no such wit has yet been forthcoming. I wish E O L H P S L had an "i" in it somewhere so I could form a proper clause! How about: Énapi One Lomo Ha PaSiko Limu "if one sneaky turtle were wrapped in seaweed"..........?

Linguistics

méama "thing-er" = nominal
nóama "namer" = proper noun
étema "doer" = verbal
ílama "be-like-er" = adjectival

címihale "language structure" = grammar
vike "clause"
lelo "sentence"
siki "particle"
mohi "predicate"
mícoma "prefix"
hópama "suffix"

étema sia "active verb"
étema aivu "passive verb"
vike keha "conditional clause"
vike kevo "presentative clause"
vike keu "relative/adjectival clause"

méama tocu "simple nominal"
méama aivu "passive nominal"
méama oisi "abstract nominal"
méama lala "deverbal instantiated nominal"

méama laca "indefinite noun"
méama litu "definite noun"

Clearly lots more to come!