Temporal conjunctions when I still haven't forgotten again

At some point in the early 2010's, while reading a grammar, I made a discovery that I found fascinating and considered for Koa. I can't remember what language it was, and I'm not sure whether I consciously decided against this construction or just forgot about it for a decade. If I didn't write about it then, I should have; there is a possibility that this post may even be an unintentional duplicate.

What we're talking about here are temporal relationships between clauses -- or perhaps more accurately, relationships of subsequence. Koa now has its own particular way of doing this via the verbs koe "precede" and hala "follow," thus:

koe ka súo-nose
precede the sun.rise
"before sunrise"

hala ka ívo-munu
follow the night-middle
"after midnight"

One could make the mistake of thinking that koe and hala were prepositions of some kind, but their verbal force becomes clear when they govern clausal relationships, in which case they're integrated into syntax as serial verbs:

ni-lopu ka ámu-suo i koe ko se-vene
1SG-finish DEF morning-eat MAIN.CL precede NOM.CL 2SG-awaken
"I finished my breakfast before you woke up"

vi-komo ka ívo-puku i hala ko se-mie-nio
IMP-put.on DEF night-suit MAIN.CL follow NOM.CL 2SG-wash-teeth
"Put on your pajamas after you brush your teeth"

It took me a lot of years to figure this out -- I think in the neighborhood of 2021 -- and I've always been kind of proud of it. I don't intend to make a change, but I wonder if that anonymous language (could it have been Hawai‘ian??) might offer an option for a second strategy for clausal relationships.

This language, as I recall, entirely lacked words for "before" and "after" in this context, relying instead on the conjunction "when." Thus "before X" is "when X hadn't happened yet," and "after X" is "when X had already happened." Translated into Koa, this looks like

ni-lopu ka ámu-suo he ko se-ca-na-vene
1SG-finish DEF morning-eat TEMP NOM.CL 2SG-CONT-NEG-awaken
"I finished my breakfast before you woke up," lit. "I finished my breakfast when you still weren't awake"

vi-komo ka ívo-puku he ko se-io-mie-nio
IMP-put.on DEF night-suit TEMP NOM.CL 2SG-TRANS-wash-teeth
"Put on your pajamas after you brush your teeth," lit. "Put on your pajamas when you've already brushed your teeth"

...or should the "before" structure be with naio "not-already" = "not yet," rather than cana "still not"?

ni-lopu ka ámu-suo he ko se-na-io-vene
1SG-finish DEF morning-eat TEMP NOM.CL 2SG-CONT-NEG-awaken
"I finished my breakfast before you woke up," lit. "I finished my breakfast when you still weren't awake"

Either way, I certainly see no reason not to import this structure as an option -- there is such a beautiful, logical simplicity to it that feels like it suits Koa's style, as well as brilliantly following the charter in avoiding IE calques.

It occurs to me that there would also be a longer form, if more wordiness is desirable, using kei "extent." Usually we see this in e.g.

he-kei ko se-nuku
TEMP-extent NOM.CL 2SG-sleep
"while you were sleeping"

Thus in addition to "when X hadn't happened yet," we could have "while X hadn't happened yet":

ni-lopu ka ámu-suo he-kei ko se-ca-na-vene
1SG-finish DEF morning-eat TEMP-extent NOM.CL 2SG-CONT-NEG-awaken
"I finished my breakfast before you woke up," lit. "I finished my breakfast while you still weren't awake"

vi-komo ka ívo-puku he-kei ko se-io-mie-nio
IMP-put.on DEF night-suit TEMP-extent NOM.CL 2SG-TRANS-wash-teeth
"Put on your pajamas after you brush your teeth," lit. "Put on your pajamas while you've already brushed your teeth"

I'm relieved to have finally remembered this, whatever muse it was who recalled it to me last night -- while I was trying to figure out these constructions a few years ago I recalled that there was something I'd once come across that I'd liked, but had no idea what it was.

Incidentally, I snuck in "MAIN.CL" and "NOM.CL" as the glosses of i and ko above, which are anticipating a pretty major topic in subordinate clauses (yes, yet again: buckle up) that I've been sitting on for the last several months. Still waiting for the muses to help me with that one...

A new old lexical class

This uncomfortable awareness has been taking shape for some time, so let's spell it out: despite our catechism of only two parts of speech in Koa, it turns out that there's unquestionably a subclass of nominals (or nominal phrases) which behave differently than ordinary nominals in that they do not require a specifier in order to be integrated into syntax. Furthermore, this has clearly been the case since the beginning, but had somehow passed unnoticed! The categories are:

Emphatic Personal Pronouns: nika, seka, taka, nuka, soka, tuka
Correlative Pronouns: tia, toa, tika, toka, hua, huka, nahua, nahuka, naha, naa, naka, coa, coka, poa, poka
Numeral Quantifiers: énapi, lúapi, tátupi; kume néipi, lúakupi, sata límaku hítupi, etm.
General Quantifiers: váhapi, ánopi, náipi, áivapi, pólipi; vísipi, kókopi, póapi, ná(h)api, énepi, áukupi

Speaking generally, then, what we're talking about are "pronominals" -- nominal phrases that are composed of a demonstrative/quantifier followed by a specifier -- or "quantifiers" containing a word of quantity followed by pi (spacing conventions still TBD).

Note: Many pronominal or quantifier phrases may be preceded by specifiers or quantifier, if required by the sense. Thus:

nihalu lúapi vii "I want two mangoes"
nihalu ka lúapi vii "I want the two mangoes"
(Therefore: ka lúapi "both of them")

taaima ka tusi nika "he likes my book" (i.e. not someone else's)

taaima ka nika "he likes mine"

However, when numerals are used as adjectives, i.e. postposed, the NP to which the pertain must take an article like any other NP:

nihalu po vii lua "I want two mangoes"
nihalu ka vii lua "I want the two mangoes"

Again, most of this is old, old news in terms of structures and usages: they just hadn't been identified as different from other NP's before. I don't think there are many implications of this realization other than that our eventual reference grammar will need another separate chapter, but I'm glad to have a more accurate description of these phenomena. I'm curious whether there may be other accidental classes skulking around out there...

Spaces revisited

Last year's exploration of word break conventions brought up some tantalizing questions about Koa's typology. As I've been sitting with those questions, some have remained unresolved -- I still have nothing interesting to say positively about Koa's typological categorization, for instance -- but a couple things have clarified.

First, despite its surprisingly intricate ordering rules, I don't think there's any motivation to think of Koa as agglutinative, or of sequences of particles and predicates at the same syntactic node as necessarily being single "words." Given (A) that pauses between particles modifying a given head are allowed, and (B) that many or even most such particles also exist as "words" independent of that syntax, characterizing them as affixes would require some awkward and unparsimonious assertions.

Taking ni "I/me/my," for example, we can find this in verb-initial position (ninae "I see"), verb-final position (tanáeni "she sees me"), noun-initial position (nimama "my mother"), noun-final position (táloni "my house"), with adjunct particles (laní or la ni "to me"), and independently when focalized/fronted (ni sa éteta "It was I who did it"). I'm not sure how productive it would be to classify the chunk of phonetic material [ni] as constituting different words or affixes in these six syntactic positions; it seems better to say that the particle ni may appear in all these positions, with particular effects.

Secondly, I think I took the joining of particles with their heads past the point of both need and aesthetics. Many resulting words are needlessly long; but perhaps more importantly, I just don't like certain combinations. Articles, for example, have never stopped looking dumb to me when mooshed onto their nouns.

Here, then, are the rearticulated and somewhat moderated principles of word break conventions as I'm currently thinking of them.

1. Specifiers (ka, a, ko, ke, hu, po, ti, to) are written separately from their heads. 

2. Preposed particles whose scope is an unarticled predicate, and postposed particles under all circumstances, are written together with that predicate regardless of how complex it is. This may require the use of additional accentuation where pronouns and directionals are suffixed to the root.

lakoto = "homewards"

ninasitemuláheta = "I couldn't make him leave"
nisánota la ko mutulu ka kúmumani  = "I said it to make my teacher angry"

3. Independent complexes of particles which do not include pronouns are written together (nahua "nothing," puiá "that's what they say!").

4. Predicate clusters -- compounds and incorporated objects -- are written together, but plain adjectival phrases are not joined to their head nouns

ko koutusi = "bookbuying"

ka lopuviko = "the weekend," but

ka pasano vime = "the last statement"

5. Conventions for particle complexes including pronouns (la + ni "to me," nahu + nu "none of us") are still under consideration.

6. In all other cases, particles are written independently.

So then, the text referenced in the earlier post on word-break conventions would have looked like this with the original rules (only suffixes -- but not possessive pronouns -- and compounds are written together):

Ta lai la ka ásulo ta la ko vúakupu e ko mi vami, sii, ta mene la ko kóuva e tule lai la ni. Ni si vima poli lo ko pato ve hua i cu mi sucu, ala he lopu poka i pea pono e ka lila ni sai i si kali. E ka tana i kali i koe ka sena. Hala kehe nu lu nike la ko mova ka kecu, ka nu lu ete la ko mu pea ka háote nu ne kene koa.

On the other end of the spectrum, with the maximally agglutinative revised 2023 conventions:

Talai lakaásulota lakovúakupu e komivami, sii, tamene lakokóuva e tule lai laní. Nisivima poli lokopato ve hua i cumisucu, ala helopu poka i pea pono e kalílani sai i sikali. E katana i kali i koe kasena. Hala kehe nulunike lakomova kakecu, kanuluete lakomupea kaháotenu nekene koa.

...and for comparison, here it is with the new conventions described above:

Talai la ka ásulota la ko vúakupu e ko mivami, sii, tamene la ko kóuva e tule lai la ni. Nisivima poli lo ko pato ve hua i cumisucu, ala helopu poka i pea pono e ka lílani sai i sikali. E ka tana i kali i koe ka sena. Hala kehe nulunike la ko mova ka kecu, ka nuluete la ko mupea ka háotenu nekene koa.

I have to say I like that a whole lot. It feels like a really nice balance between the traditional look and feel of Koa and the legibility advantages of grouping particles with their predicates.

We do still need to make a decision on point 5 above: between laní/la ni, nahunú/nahu nu and the like. For the moment I'm leaning towards separating the pronouns as I did in the excerpt, but I'll play with them in actual usage and see if that sticks.

Modal derivation

The past year seems to have been devoted to Slavic philology -- Macedonian in particular, and obsessively -- rather than Koa, but in honor of Koa Day I wanted to write a quick post on a topic that's been waiting in the queue for at least a few years. The bones of these particular extremely common derivational structures have been in active use since around 2011, so let's formalize them.

Among Koa's modal particles are these three:

te "able to"
ki "must, need to"
lu "want to"

These most often show up alongside verbal predicates, e.g.

ai se-te-náe-ni?
QU 2SG-ABIL-see-1SG
"can you see me?"

When used with adjectival predicates, though, they derive an interesting range of meaning which lacks systematic representation in English:

miko te-koma
friend ABIL-understand
"an understanding friend, a friend who's able to understand"

te-lehu
ABIL-fly
"able to fly, airworthy"

ki-nuku
DEB-sleep
"sleepy"

lu-láeva
DES-play.music
"an aspiring player"

In combination with the passive particle pa, the abilitative really comes into its own, pretty closely translating the English -able/-ible suffix:

te-pa-nae
ABIL-PASS-see
"visible = able to be seen"

na-te-pa-nae
NEG-ABIL-PASS-see
"invisible = not able to be seen"

te-pa-koma
ABIL-PASS-understand
"intelligible"

na-te-pa-ilo
NEG-ABIL-PASS-know
"ineffable"

With ki-, we can create forms like

ki-pa-ete
DEB-PASS-do
"agenda = (things which) must be done"

na-vi-uni u sihi ki-pa-suo
NEG-IMP-forget DEF.PL vegetable DEB-PASS-eat
"don't forget the vegetables that need to be eaten"

ki-pa-tuho sa le Kátako
DEB-PASS-destroy FOC NAME Carthage
"Carthago delenda est"

It occurred to me in whatever year it was that I first wrote up the notes for this post that in tepa- and kipa- we've captured the semantics of Esperanto -ebl- and -end-, respectively. What about E-o -ind-, though: "worthy of being Xed"?

I'm still not sure about this, but for the moment I'm trying out a bit of a semantic extension of the particle lu in this context, with the idea that it's a pretty short jump from an object "wanting" to have something done to it, to that object deserving having that something done to it. For example:

kava lu-pa-ipo
coffee DES-PASS-drink
"coffee worth drinking, coffee that wants to be drunk"

lu-pa-niko
DES-PASS-marvel
"amazing = wanting to be marveled at"

A bit whimsical at best, or facile at worst, but I feel like it might be worth it to get at a semantic which otherwise would require a bunch of analytical circumlocution -- especially when the literal value of that sequence of particles wouldn't otherwise be particularly useful in any contexts where the head lacks consciousness. On the other hand, there are sentences like this that turn out to be worryingly ambiguous:

ni-lu-pa-loha
1SG-DES-PASS-love
"I'm worthy of love" OR "I want to be loved"

As with so many concepts in Koa, I'll have to sit with this one and potentially see how it works out in actual usage. It also matters that the desiderative/volitive/conative lu and the verb halu "want" are actually not synonymous, which should probably be explored in another future post! Thus

ni-halu ko loha
1SG-want ABS love
"I want to love"

ni-lu-loha
1SG-DES-love
"I'm in the mood for love, I feel like loving, I intend to love"

For now, happy 25th, Koa! Clearly lots more still to come.

Mónate paináute he Pai le Koa 24si

Héite lami lakaméhepo nuisai le Koa hetia, kapaináute lúaku-néisi kacimi!

Hekei kavoa kesi ticímiki kémeni i palili oasi pameti mono lacimi ela eso. Tamieko kasavu oma, kapatune kaímita oma. Hetikehe kavoa vime ninasicutekuvi kepi kacimi kocusunu, kocupamuta... konicutehienu ve le púhuma eso i hala aaika iuluhu.

Paináute iolo, nii, Koa ni paloha. Kavóase sii i vimuniko taa i vela, e ninateota komiilo kaseculilo.

-Iúliki, Váhumaa, 2023-09-13


Lílite la le Níkili / English Translation:

Warm greetings to the worldwide Koa community on this, the 24th birthday of the language!

During the last year this little language of mine has transformed from a mere considered idea into a real living language. It took on its own style, its own sense of self. At this time last year I couldn't have imagined how much the language would grow and change... that I would be able to call myself a real speaker after such a short time.

Happy birthday, then, my beloved Koa. May your next year be even more astonishing, and I can't wait to discover what you will become.

-Julie, Portland, 9/13/23

Embedded questions

This is a much overdue followup to the seminal piece on embedded questions and theta clauses from a couple years ago. These expansions and adjustments quickly developed in the weeks after.

As a reminder, the standard way to say things like "I don't know what you want" or "I wonder where my clock came from" is apparently via nominalization of the sub-clause, thus

ni-na-ilo ka-se-halu
1SG-NEG-know DEF-2SG-want
"I don't know what you want," lit. "I don't know the thing you want"

toko keo ka-sáti-ni (ko-tule)
wonder origin DEF-clock-1SG (NOM-come)
"I wonder where my clock came from," "I wonder about the origin of my clock('s coming)"

Figuring out these structures was a huge relief from my previous anxiety that I might be thoughtlessly calquing IE strategies, but once I had them in hand I realized right away that that fear wasn't really cross-linguistically motivated. A more familiar variety of finite embedded clauses is well represented in languages from many other families, and as such I really don't see a reason to ban them from Koa:

ni-na-ilo [ kea sa se-halu ]
1SG-NEG-know what FOC 2SG-want
"I don't know what you want," "I don't know what it is you want"

toko [ o-kea sa ka-sáti-ni i tule ]
wonder ABL-what FOC DEF-clock-1SG FIN come
"I wonder where my clock comes from," "I wonder where it is that my clock comes from"

As glossed above, these kinds of forms might see slightly different usage pragmatically, feeling a little wordier, possibly softer, possibly less formal.

Entirely new to this discussion are embedded yes/no questions. Here too a finite structure is possible, using ai "whether, or":

ni-na-ilo ai ta-cu-tasi
1SG-NEG-know whether 3SG-IRR-repeat
"I don't know whether it will happen again"

...and again this option exists against another possibility with a nominalized clause headed by one of the infamous ke-compounds: kema "current, ongoing," kesi "past," kecu "future, what would/will be," kete "possibility," kelu "desire," keki "necessity." Thus

ni-na-ilo kecu ko-ta-tasi
1SG-NEG-know future NOM-3SG-repeat
"I don't know whether it will happen again," lit. "I don't know the future of its happening again"

Similarly, with the other types:

kema kotatasi "whether it is/was happening again"
kesi kotatasi "whether it had happened again"
kete kotatasi "whether it could happen again"
kelu kotatasi "whether there was a desire for it to happen again"
keki kotatasi "whether it has to happen again

Any of these could be rephrased with ai and the particle in question within the clause rather than outside it: kete kotatasi = ai tatetasi "whether it could happen again, whether there's a possibility of it happening again." Here I have the sense -- which as usual will have to be confirmed in time by usage -- that the ai-type clauses may be more comfortable and vernacular, the ke-clauses more literary.

Obiter: in the original theta clause post, I was omitting the nominalizer ko in the embedded clauses with ke-compounds (i.e. just kete tatasi rather than kete kotatasi). I'm unclear on why I did this, and at this point I think it was either just a mistake...or I was getting a little ahead of myself with an experimental idea that ko might be optional in clauses lacking a nominal subject. In this event, we could also have e.g. niilo selóhani "I know you love me" alongside niilo koselóhani "I know that you love me." I'm not sure yet what the implications of this would be for parseability, so an official verdict is pending more rigorous exploration.

Bride of the nominalized clause

What should happen to a Koa clause with a nominal subject when the clause is nominalized? This has become a bit of an albatross. The last eleven years have seen numerous well-thought-out, well-intentioned, sincere attempts to answer this question; moments of satisfied relief have followed, but a seed of anxiety has always remained that we haven't got it quite right. As, apparently, now.

My last bid for a final answer, in which the nominalizer ko actually replaces the finiteness marker i, is odd to my Indo-European sensibilities but quite elegant. The problem -- if indeed it is a problem -- is that the literal translation of such clauses according to the usual Koa syntactic rules ends up looking anomalous at best and like word salad at worst. For example, a phrase from the previous post:

na-vi-ana po-mítitinu ko-cita
NEG-IMP-give GEN-bedbug NOM-bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

Here the nominalized clause is pomítitinu kocita "for bedbugs to bite," "bedbugs' biting." If I parse that phrase according to ordinary principles, though, it seems to mean something like "bedbugs of biting," parallel to e.g. poétete kocini "acts of kindness." So..."don't allow bedbugs of biting!"

Maybe that's fine, because outside of Loglan and friends the mechanism of language itself was never "supposed" to be logical: merely parseable. Which I think this entirely is, and as I mentioned in the post in which I introduced this, it's not so dissimilar from what Latin does.

I guess the point where I started to fret again was when I realized that another structure -- which I have also proposed for this purpose in the past, though perhaps for not entirely the right reasons -- might address this in an even more parseable form. The core concept here is that any verb phrase can follow a head noun as a modifier, just like any other adjective: thus

mítitinu veta
bedbug giant
"giant bedbugs"

mítitinu ma-cita
bedbug CONT-bite
"biting bedbugs, bedbugs that are biting"

This being so, it would appear that we could create a nominalized clause simply by -- on the surface -- deleteing the finite i entirely, and marking the whole thing with ko at the beginning:

po-mítitinu i cita
GEN-bedbugs FIN bite
"bedbugs bite"

po-mítitinu cita
GEN-bedbugs bite
"biting bedbugs"

ko po-mítitinu cita
NOM GEN-bedbug bite
"bedbugs' biting," "that bedbugs bite," "for bedbugs to bite"

This would give us an alternate, less poetic, more easily parseable injunction,

na-vi-ana ko po-mítitinu cita
NEG-IMP-give NOM GEN-bedbug bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

...which happens to be identical to the most recent proposed syntax other than the position of ko! Thus again

na-vi-ana po-mítitinu ko-cita
NEG-IMP-give GEN-bedbug NOM-bite
"don't let the bedbugs bite," "don't allow the bedbugs biting"

Maybe there's no decision to be made and the two structures could coexist, just like in ditransitive VP's like

ana ka-nosu pe-vii
give DEF-elephant OBL-mango
"give the elephant a mango"

ana po-vii la-ka-nosu
give GEN-mango DAT-DEF-elephant
"give a mango to the elephant"

I'm honestly not sure. I don't see a strong reason to disallow either structure, but the muse is also not sending me a resounding chime of rightness in either case. One thing is certain, which is that I am very, very tired of going around in circles about this year after year, and on that basis I'm inclined to leave both options in circulation and allow usage rather than theory to cast light on the question. I would be relieved for this whole area to stop feeling like a crisis after 11 years of ceaseless gear-grinding.

Of course, this discussion has completely omitted to mention the fact that another structure also exists for this same meaning, a finite one with ve:

na-vi-ana ve po-mítitinu i cita
NEG-IMP-give as/like GEN-bedbug FIN bite"
"don't let the bedbugs bite"

I'd previously confidently affirmed that these ve-structures are identical in meaning to the the nominalized ones with ko, but Nahuatl has been making some gentle suggestions recently that this might not quite be so. That's potentially a really big revelation that's still taking shape; hopefully more on this soon, once I'm confident I understand it myself.