Dependent clauses re-re-reenvisioned

Whenever I hear myself using the phrases "dependent clause" and "final decision" in the same sentence, it really ought to set alarm bells ringing. The last such occasion was about two years ago, in which I said the following:

• Clauses used as predicates are syntactically and morphologically identical to independent clauses
• Clauses used as adjectives are preceded by ve when the head is not the subject of the dependent clause, optionally otherwise
• Clauses used as nouns are preceded by either ko or ve

Over the past several months I've been entertaining a different idea. It initially seemed like a wild flight of fancy, but I've stuck with it and it's been surprising me by feeling more and more legitimate, or maybe even unavoidable. I'm still skeptical, so don't hold me to any of this, but I want to give it a genuine chance.

In this new dependent clause universe, the rules above can still be considered correct regarding clauses with ve. Here the dependent clause is being set off by a subordinating conjunction, and as such remains finite and modular with syntax identical to its use as a main clause. I think I've realized, though, that ko isn't just in free alternation with ve for structures like these as I initially proposed. It seems obvious now -- given the fact that ko is in fact a specifier -- that its function here is that of a nominalizer.

I see the source of my confusion: with clauses with a pronominal subject, subordination with ko and ve does accidentally look the same...

ni-kulu ko-ta-koke poli
1SG-hear NOM-3SG-tall very
"I hear he's very tall"

ni-kulu ve ta-koke poli
1SG-hear CJ 3SG-tall very
"I hear he's very tall"

The apparent parallelism was more striking before I started grouping particles in writing, i.e. previously

ni kulu ko ta koke poli
ni kulu ve ta koke poli

...but however they're spelled, in speech the structures still sound identical. The wild difference appears when the clause has a nominal subject: in this situation, rather than occupying the same clause-initial position as ve, ko replaces the preverbal i that marks finite verbs. I actually identified this possibility in the post referenced above, and initially ten years earlier, but couldn't make sense yet of why this would actually be reasonable beyond an aesthetic inclination for its elegance.

There's a straight line to this new structure from a clause like this:

A. ana ko-ni-lahe
give NOM-1SG-leave
"let me go"

We might translate this literally into English as "allow my going," or "allow that I might go." Another equally valid way of phrasing this in Koa, though, would be

B. ána-ni ko-lahe
give-1SG NOM-leave
"let me go"

Here the literal translation would be more like "allow me [the act of] leaving," just like ánani kovapa "give me liberty." If we replace ni "me" in structure B above with a noun, we end up with this:

ana le Keoni ko-lahe
give NAME John NOM-leave
"let John go"

For contrast, here's the same meaning with ve and a finite clause. Notice that the finite verb marker i is restored in the position previously occupied by ko:

ana ve le Keoni i lahe
give CJ NAME John FIN leave
"let John go"

So it's clear that something pretty different is happening syntactically in subordinate clauses depending on which of these strategies we use. As a further example of how nominalization works, here's the above nikulu kotakoke poli "I hear he's very tall" with a nominal subject in the dependent clause:

ni-kulu le Keoni ko-koke poli
1SG-hear NAME John NOM-tall very
"I hear John is very tall"

For those following the plot exceptionally closely, this does have implications for the vaunted tetai ko structure we've tried so hard to preserve through all these years. Again with a nominal subject, we have two possibilities:

te-tai ve le Keoni i cu-lai he-tana
ABIL-be CJ NAME John FIN IRR-return TIME-today
"John may be coming back today"

te-tai le Keoni ko-cu-lai he-tana
ABIL-be NAME John NOM-IRR-return TIME-today
"John may be coming back today"

I find myself narrowing my eyes as I read this back to myself...I'll sit with it for a while. This is a pretty big change, so I know it make take some time to get used to. I am cheered, I will just say, by some parallels between this new structure with ko and complement clauses in Latin (not to mention English phrasings like "I know him to be trustworthy"):

audiō Ioannem longissimum esse (Latin)
hear-1SG John-ACC tall-SUPER-ACC be.INF
"I hear that John is very tall," lit. "I hear John to be very tall"

The Salishan languages have similar structures as well:

d-s-x̆aƛ' kwi s-tə̀xʷ-s tsulč (Lushootseed)
1SG.POSS-NOM-desire ART NOM-buy-3.POSS drum
"I want him to buy a drum"

...cf Koa's

ni-halu ko-ta-kou toe
1SG-want NOM-3SG-buy drum
"I want him to buy a drum"

One last example of a more complex sentence, from actual usage:

Ni-io-te-nae kemo ko-te-tai u-tie neva
1SG-TRANS-ABIL-see manner NOM-ABIL-be DEF.PL-road unstraight
"I can already see how the winding roads...

ne-múnu-nu ko-na-cu-luta a-cólute.
LOC-middle-1PL NOM-NEG-IRR-find INDEF-connection
...between us might not find a connection."

Let's see how this goes! It's a bit of a brazen move in a long history of syntactical conservatism, but I'm excited about it.

Color terms

Despite boundless enthusiasm for color as a topic in itself, I've dragged my feet on this for a long time, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. The progression of color term assignment in Koa has been interesting, reminiscent of Berlin and Kay's study: initially red and blue, then later green, then later yellow, then much later orange and purple.

It has been a very difficult decision which color terms to classify as basic, and I've been extremely cautious to move forward because of a sharp awareness that my English-based instincts were certain to influence my judgment. In the end, realizing that to some extent any choice will have arbitrary components, I decided on a base favoring symmetry on the color wheel from the standpoint of a classical RYB paint-based model. A couple hopefully justifiable additions at the end round things out. Here's the system as it currently stands.

kona "black"
liko "white"

puna "red"
kinu "orange"
mele "yellow"
vihe "green"
sini "blue"
lie "purple"

teta "brown"
lusu "gray"

I dithered on orange and purple for ages -- ten years longer than the others -- and still feel uncomfortable with them knowing just how many languages they're not basic in. Nonetheless I really can't see a way forward without them, so I'll deal with it!

For the rest, despite technically being a kind of dark orange I considered brown to be reasonable given its cross-linguistic distribution, and gray for its usefulness in describing other intermediate colors. In a way I wish that the system looked less like English, but on the other hand at least I didn't include pink, and as a language for the modern world I feel like it'll be capable of handling color theory without a lot of excesses.

Blends between primary and secondary colors are formed as compounds. Theoretically the head might be the base color, with the modifying predicate indicating a small amount of an additional color:

mélevihe "yellow-green" (a hue of green with a little yellow added)
víhemele "green-yellow" (a hue of yellow with a little green added)

In practice, though, it may be more reasonable to conceive of a single tertiary color between each primary and secondary, permitting either root ordering but preferring primary-secondary, thus

púnakinu "vermillion"
mélekinu "amber/marigold"
mélevihe "chartreuse"
sínivihe "teal/aqua"
sínilie "violet"
púnalie "magenta"

A wild impulse is urging me to create single roots for these, which would allow delicious quaternary color compounds like scarlet (red-vermillion) and indigo (blue-violet). I'll hold off for the moment (sigh) but this whole area is difficult because of how accustomed I've become to beautiful single-word descriptions of so very many colors these days. How will we express sage? Olive? Taupe? Most likely it'll be necessary to come up with more or less standardized forms based on mia "color" and a noun: mialumo "sand," maybe? And additions of nominal descriptors to the colors themselves: híkivihe "grass green."

Moving on to modifications of a starting hue, we can express saturation and tint/tone/shade as follows:

válosini "bright blue (high saturation of blue)"
kícasini "light blue (low saturation of blue, or blue mixed with white)"
pímesini "dark blue (blue mixed with black)"
lúsusini "gray blue (blue mixed with gray)"

There's also a possibility of compounds with lahu "murky, obscure, overcast" to denote, probably, combinations with brown (or with an opposing primary color, if you prefer).

Lastly, a small amount of pigmentation added to something else can be expressed with -si meaning "-ish":

púnasi "reddish"

There's clearly a lot more to come in this area, as usual no doubt to be determined (or at least necessitated) by actual usage. Hopefully this will at least be a solid starting point.

Obligation and necessity

Koa has developed quite a bit of nuance this year in its ability to express shadings of force acting on the will. Much of this started coming together just a few months ago as I suddenly became aware of just how much linguistic machinery we have at our disposal in natural languages for making fine distinctions in this area, and for veiling (or not) the context of force or control behind a communication. Unsurprisingly given the brain of its creator, Koa is rather more transparent than English in its basic structures.

Starting out with morphological strategies (if indeed Koa has inflectional morphology, on which utterly undecided question see here), we can get at an initial simple range of semantics using modal particles, with evidentials and viridicals adding subtlety:

nitelahe "I can go"
nilulahe "I want to go"

nikilahe "I have to go, I must go"

nivukilahe "I guess I should go"
nilikilahe "Seems like I should probably go"

nipukilahe "Apparently I've gotta go (based on what I hear/perceive)"

Note that ki is neutral as to the source of the necessity: nikilahe implies nothing about whether I have to go for internal or external reasons, or what those reasons might be -- see below for greater specificity here.

The particle vi, formally an imperative or optative marker, can have volitive force particularly in the 1st person. Here it's largely synonymous with the hortative ea: ea lahe "let's get going" can be regarded as semantically equivalent to nuvilahe.

nivilahe "I'd better go, I've gotta get going"

Deserving of mention at this point is the particle oe which has existed in something of an alpha version since 2003. Theoretically it might mean "should," as in "I should go, I ought to go," but though I adore that word for that meaning I've never managed to decide definitively whether it in fact really should exist and if so how it would be used. Nioelahe? Oe nilahe? Oe konilahe? Bookmark for sometime in the next decade...

Moving on to more complex structures, we can describe internal volition or need with the referent in question as the subject of a main clause:

nivoi kolahe "I can go, I'm capable of going"
nilahi kolahe "I know how to go'"
nihalu kolahe "I want to go" (equivalent to nilulahe above)
nisaa kolahe "I get to go, I'm allowed to go"
nitau kolahe "I need to go, I have a need to go (internal necessity)"

nivati kolahe "I demand/insist on going (internal requirement)"

To express external will or control, the referent becomes the subject of a nominalized subordinate clause governed by a predicate explaining the relevant semantics:

tau konilahe "I have to go (external necessity), there's a need for me to go"
pono konilahe "I should go, it's fitting/proper that I go"
halu konilahe "there's a desire for me to go (external volition)"

vati konilahe "I'm required to go (external requirement)"

noi konilahe "I've been asked to go, I have to go (external request)"

milo konilahe "I have to go (according to the rules/law)"
kase konilahe "I'm ordered to go"
pako konilahe "I'm forced/compelled to go"
i ana konilahe "I'm allowed to go, they're letting me go"

...and one with negative force:

levi konilahe "I'm not to go, I'm forbidden to go"

A few notes here:

* In this syntactic context, as is usual with predicates with presentative force, all the above forms can optionally be preceded by i -- i tau konilahe, etc. With ana it's required, as ana konilahe alone sounds like "let me go!"
* The expressions with tau and pono above are pretty common, neutral ways to translate "have to" and "should" respectively when the deontic source is external. The others are less frequent and/or have more marked or complex semantics.

* Evidentials and viridicals can of course combine with these structures as well for additional nuance: puvati konilahe "I'm required to go, so I'm informed," and so on.

These presentative forms downplay the actual agents of control: we may be talking about actual, specific people, or institutions, or just cultural forces. If we want to bring the presence of those agents further onto the stage, we can use hi- with the predicates that have transitive verbal valence (i.e. not pono, milo or levi):

hivati konilahe "'someone' is insisting that I go...(as in, we all know that 'someone' is my wife)"

Finally, just to spell this out, with a non-pronominal subject in those subordinate clauses, we'd have the usual syntax like the following:

pono ko/ve le Keoni i lahe "John should go"

...or maybe pono le Keoni kolahe? It will surprise no one that I've quietly replanted the nominalized clause briar patch in the past several months. A controversial proposal is currently in formulation for an upcoming post...

From the vaults: Quantifiers and specifiers

The following post was originally written on March 13, 2021, but never published because I was so frustrated not to be able to come to grips with the problem that became very manifest as I started trying to produce example sentences. I never deleted the draft, though, because I sort of enjoyed the exasperated sarcasm into which I rapidly deteriorated. Here it is for posterity.

I think I may thankfully have solved this problem eventually, at least in theory. Actual usage recommendations are still developing via...actual usage, and I still sort of cringe everytime I need an existential verb. Truly, resolving this overlap between the existential quantifier and the indefinite article may be Koa's most vexing, longest-standing problem.

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Ever since a Ling department party in 2002 I've been nervous about something. I've put it off and assured myself it was okay, I think because my Indo-European intuition was so strong, but today it has officially stopped making sense and by hook or by crook we're going to have to take another inventory of our articles and determine what they actually really mean.

The areas that cause nervousness are basically where quantifiers and specifiers intersect, for example:

* What is the difference between the existential quantifier and the indefinite article -- "a book is on the table" versus "there is a book on the table?"
* What is the difference between the universal quantifier and...well, actual statements of quantity -- "cats are evil" vs "all cats are evil?"

I've tried to tackle this before, first in this specifier flowchart from 2010 and then in this revision in 2012. I'm increasingly feeling that tickle, though, that tells me that I was making some assumptions based on misunderstandings or unwarranted conflation of levels of description. I'm seeing three levels at this point that these questions interact with, and we need to keep them separate: logical quantification, the discourse stage, and other pragmatic concerns.

Some specifiers are straightforward (I hope) and we can probably safely leave them out of this discussion: ka the definite article, signifying that the referent is already on the discourse stage and recognizable to everyone taking part in the discourse; ko abstraction of the predicate; and ti/to deictic markers ("this"/"that") when used to refer to physical proximity. What we're going to have to really rigorously investigate are a, hu, po, and ti/to in discursive rather than physical function.

What is actually the difference between a and hu? Let's explore in different syntactic positions and AFF/INT/NEG.

SUBJECT
hu mala i ne masa "there's a fly on the table, an (unspecific) fly is on the table"
a mala i ne masa "there's a (certain?!) fly on the table" uh what

ai hu mala i ne masa "is there a fly on the table? is an (unspecific) fly on the table?"
ai a mala i ne masa "is there a (certain) fly on the table?" yeah that's nonsense

na hu mala i ne masa, hu mala i na ne masa "there's no fly on the table"
na a mala i ne masa "okay this is stupid"

OBJECT
Where are you going? I need to buy "a" book today. Does that book already exist in the physical universe recognizable to the speaker, as in "a certain?" Traditional Koa would give you:

ni ki ala (po) pama he leo "I want to engage in book-buying today" (this surprised me)
ni ki ala a pama he leo "I want to buy a particular book today"
ni ki ala hu pama he leo "There's a book I want to buy today"

Shouldn't this really just be:

ni ki ala pama he leo "I want to buy a (some nonspecific) book today"
ni ki ala a/hu pama he leo "I want to buy a (specific but not on the discourse stage) book today" or "there's a book I want to buy today" depending on context
ni ki ala ti pama he leo "I want to buy a certain book today that's not on the discourse stage but will potentially be relevant to subsequent discourse FYI"

I don't want to do this anymore, this is idiotic. It's really just a question of which particle we want to keep in the a/hu role and which we want to free up for other meanings.

Experiential structures

Koa has a series of verbs representing sensory, perceptual or otherwise subjective scenarios, for which the "experiencer" theta role is encoded as the subject. Experiencer marking is all over the place cross-linguistically, obviously, but this is the default syntactic strategy for experiencers in Koa on the grounds that most or all other statives share that structure.

In making this decision there was an initial challenge around how to encode the feature of volition: "see" versus "look," "hear" versus "listen," etc. I sorted much of this out in 2016 with the realization that nae as "see" could be rephrased almost synonymously as tenae "can see," whereas the progressive form manae would be understood as "looking":

ni-na-ma-nae ala ni-si-náe-ta i meno
1SG-NEG-PROG-see but 1SG-ANT-see-3SG FIN regardless
"I wasn't looking, but I saw it anyway!"

Another common usage is the passive with mo as in panae mo "look like," literally "be seen as." There are many other parallel structures among these experience verbs, some of which correspond to lexical differences in English where others are harder to translate directly. Since I've never spelled this out fully, here are the roots I've identified so far as belonging to this class and their meanings in all of these structures (omitting those usages which seem anomalous or meaningless):

nae "see"
manae "look at, watch"
vinae! "look!"
konae "vision"
náete "a glance, a look"
panae "appearance, one's 'look'"
panae mo "look like"

kulu "hear"
makulu "listen to"
vikulu! "listen!"
kokulu "hearing"
kúlute "a 'listen'"
pakulu "a sound, a noise"
pakulu mo "sound like"

olo "smell"
maolo "sniff, smell (intentionally)"
violo! "smell!"
koolo "smell, smelling"
ólote "a sniff, a smell of something"
paolo "scent, fragrance"
paolo mo "smell like"

kihe "feel (physical, tactile)"
makihe "touch, feel"
vikike! "touch! feel!"
kokihe "touch, sensation"
kíhete "a feel, a touch"
pakihe "feeling, sensation, texture"
pakihe mo "feel like (physically)"

maku "taste"
mamaku "taste, try"
vimaku! "taste! try!"
komaku "(sense of) taste"
mákute "a taste"
pamaku "flavor, taste"
pamaku mo "taste like"

tune "perceive"
matune "focus on"
vitune! "focus! pay attention!"
kotune "perception"
túnete "an occasion of focusing attention/perception on something"
patune "a perception"
patune mo "seem like"

kue "experience"
makue "invite/seek out an experience"
vikue! "(intentionally) experience!"
kokue "experience"
kúete "an experience (the act of experiencing)"
pakue "a feeling, an experience (the thing experienced)"
pakue mo "feel like (experientially)"

huo "notice"
mahuo "take note of, observe, pay attention to"
vihuo! "take note! observe, pay attention!"
kohuo "notice, attention"
húote "an observation (the act of taking note)"
pahuo "a note, an observation (the thing noticed)"

kuvi "imagine"
makuvi "imagine, picture (intentionally)"
vikuvi! "imagine! picture!"
kokuvi "imagination"
kúvite "(an occasion of) imagining, a daydream"
pakuvi "an imagining, fancy, daydream, idea (the thing imagined)"

mai "feel (emotionally, subjectively)"
mamai "hold onto, seek a feeling"
vimai! "try to feel X!"
komai "feeling emotionally"
máite "(an occasion of) feeling something"
pamai "a feeling, an emotion"
pamai mo "feel like (emotionally)"

...and to some extent, though the +volition set of meanings is kind of marginal (I guess maybe specific to lucid dreaming?):

moe "dream"
komoe "dreaming"
móete "an occasion of dreaming"
pamoe "a dream (the thing dreamed)"

There is almost certainly some unavoidable ambiguity around volition in certain syntactic contexts, though I'm pretty sure that semantic or narrative context, TAM marking, and/or definitiness of arguments would resolve it in most cases...and maybe in other cases the distinction isn't really that important.

Compounds and branching direction

This is a translation of yesterday's post, which I'd been meaning to write since last December and it suddenly occurred to me I might actually be able to express in Koa. It was challenging in places and not quite as free-flowing and expressive as it would have been in English, but still it's the first-ever meta-article in Koa which feels like a milestone!

There were lots of vocabulary and usages being invented on the fly, not all of which I'm sure about: nóava "name (tr)," since I don't have a word for "express" or "mention"; pamulíkema "compound," i.e. "put-together-thing"; páama "head" and nálama "dependent," and so on. (Should "head" be étuma or something? Either way étuvike would be "matrix clause" and nálavike "subordinate clause.") I also don't yet have a word for "order," which irritatingly necessitated the circumlocution nácate "arrangement." On the other hand I'm pretty pleased with VM as the acronym for vike méama "noun phrase," to which we could also add VE = vike étema "verb phrase" and VI = vike ílama "modifier phrase." I've been slowly working on other Koa-specific linguistic vocabulary on the side which I'll eventually want to unveil; some examples are étema aivu "passive verb" (e.g. nipaloha), méama lala (oétema) "(deverbal) instance noun" (e.g. súote), and méama litu eli "definite plural noun" (e.g. ukunu).

I might mention that the problem described in this post is getting kind of galling given how many compound nouns have found their way into regular usage, with more appearing all the time. Every single time I say or write ésipai "Monday" I ask myself whether it really ought to be paiesi; my excitement at coining koláimiena "reunification" is tempered by anxiety that komienalai may be a more native structure somehow.

One thing about the head-final ordering is that it can sometimes generate worryingly long words with initial stress, which feels alien to the usual Koa cadence for long words. Nisilumutepanáeta "I wanted to make it visible," on the other hand, has nine syllables but is still natural to pronounce and clear to understand. Left-branching compounds can also end up being tricky to parse when they contain prefixes, suffixes and compound nouns: munálavikema "complementizer," grouped like [[mu[nála[vike]]]ma] "cause-subordinate-clause-thing"; or sometimes seem to need two written accents -- is that even allowed? -- like símipúhute "telephone conversation." Again, I have no answers, only vague anxiety.

A last note: it came out in the course of writing the below that the adverbial "often" translates into Koa as mouse, a discovery which caused me almost to break a rib laughing.

--

For a few months I've been worrying about the fact that we apparently have two different ways of forming compounds in Koa, without any guidance or even discussion about the fact, really. In both methods the words are written together and the dependent bears the stress (I'm creating these grammatical words as I write, so they may not be permanent), but in one strategy the dependent precedes the head (címihale "grammar, e.g. language-structure") and in the other it follows (halecimi "structure-language").

In the beginning I thought that the second type was the only one possible, in accordance with the normal ordering of dependents and heads in Koa. But later on, maybe due to a bunch of time spent with Esperanto (how do we use foreign words, anyway?) my practice changed almost entirely. I might have been thinking that there wouldn't be enough distinction between ordinary adjective phrases and compounds if dependents were to follow in the same way.

After some research -- mainly an article by Laurie Bauer (great thanks to Allison for extremely kindly getting hold of it for me as usual) from a book I unfortunately haven't been able to identify -- I learned:

* Some languages use compounding more than others; some don't use them at all (?!)
* It seems that both structures are found cross-linguistically, even in head-initial languages
* There's a small tendency for compounds to be left-branching even in languages in which NP's are right-branching
* In general the ordering of heads and dependents in compounds is the same as that of possessed and possessor nouns
* Interestingly, in languages in which noun-modifies phrases and compounds use the same ordering, there is often no structural difference between compounds and ordinary NP's!

All this seems to mean...that we're not getting any help with this decision, aggravatingly. This leaves me in some uncomfortable confusion, because it seems like I should decide something and I have no idea which I like more. It could be that both strategies will have their own uses...maybe? Or maybe I just need to make a real decision, unfortunately. Anyway, I wanted to make the problem visible, at least, even if nothing at all is clear at this point!

Pamulíkema e taho koósava

Hekei akuu tele nimaholi pekonupumekemo lua neo lakomumuo popamulíkema cile Koa, nokoohe coa e nokomova coa petá i vela moeso. Ciukemo lua hivakile uupu molike e ponálama i vakana célite (nimateke tiupu címihale henikile, laa tetai kotunacucali), ala cikakemo énasi ponálama i vakoe popáama (címihale) e cikamutu tavahala (halecimi).

Heámate nilule ko kalei lúasi mono i sitai, mavonu kanácate eco popáama e nálama cile Koa. Ala helohi taa, tetai lopólipi aika momaluna mele Esipelánito (ai motoa? Le Esperanto? Le Tóvoma? Mokea sa nuvamova poupu uto?) kakeva i simuta i aci mosai. Nilimameti ko i nacumenéote pepovike ílama eco e pamulíkema haponálama i vahala mosama.

Hala náipi kosue -- moetu apakile cile Laurie Bauer (kito suli lale Áliso pekokíita mocínino laní moeco) otusi ninasitemuimi i papaho -- niopi:

* Hucimi i vaitu popamulíkema i ene pemutu; huka i navaítutu i hetu (?!)
* Patune moko uhale lua i hovapaluta nemunu kacímipo kanui, i vela necimi páaenasi
* I mekeva píkuki ve popamulíkema i vaósava lavase i vela necimi ve povike méama i vaósava laaka
* Molaca kanácate kapáama e kanálama nepamulíkema i sama ve kaoma e kapaoma
* Mukino, necimi ve mekanácate sama pevike ílama e pamulíkema, mouse i hononéote pepamulíkema e VM (=vike méama) eco!

Tipoa i lisema...veninamasaa cóapi ápute metihólote, momuhulu. Toa i iátini nekosopu sune, lokopatune mokopono konicuholo hua e ninailo i hetu kaniaima i taa. Tetai ko ukemo lua i cumeítute oma, neo...aité? Au tetai koietau koniioholo i eso, nipaho. Meno, nisilumutepanae kahákate movaha, i vela ha naka hetu i kica hetitia!