De Cuup, where are you?

Dear Robert,

I've been intrigued by your comments on my Koa posts over the years, and even more intrigued by the fact that you were apparently actually reading, and seemingly following and remembering, the content of my exposition at all. Who are you? None of my conlang friends seem to recognize you. Let's have a more substantial bidirectional conversation! My e-mail address is on the About Me page.

-Iúliki

Pronominal predicate correction

After a (decade-)long period of uncertainty, I announced back in 2021 that pronominal predicates -- that is, the form that personal pronouns take for emphasis and when they need to be able to perform all the syntactic roles of full predicates -- would have the following forms:

ni -> nika "I"
se -> seka "you"
ta -> taka "he/she/it"
nu -> nuka "we"
so -> soka "you guys"
tu -> tuka "they"

I've been doing some imaginary conversation practice this past week, and unfortunately I'm now pretty sure that was the wrong decision, for two reasons.

Prior to that 2021 post, we'd always assumed that the emphatic pronouns would simply be doubled versions of the simple ones, e.g. nini, sese, tata, etc. The problem here was that that meant that tata could not reasonably also mean "dad," which left papa in that role...about which I seethed with resentment and hatred. I have no idea why I've felt so strongly about the aesthetics on this one tiny issue, other than that tata is also "dad" in Polish.

I feel like, now that I'm in my 40's, I might finally be old and wise enough to rise above that pettiness. There isn't anything objectively wrong with papa for "dad," and in fact studying Swahili has helped: baba is really a rather nice "dad" word, and is nearly the same as papa.

ANYWAY, the primary issue with nika, seka, taka, &c. as we've had them the last few years is that they feel wrong in speech. Where I've tried to use them they just haven't worked, subjectively, and I've been surprised to find myself using the reduplicated versions instead. I wish I had any actual examples to discuss at this point; unfortunately these practice conversations seem to be the linguistic equivalent of those spontaneous music improvisation sessions with emergent unrecorded marvels that I can never reproduce.

One reason for that sense of wrongness -- maybe -- is that although nika and friends do look like pronominals (toka "that one," poka "everyone," nahuka "none of them"), the derivational process that would lead to them would actually give them a different meaning! To wit...

ti ulu "this fingernail" -> tika "this one"
ni ulu "my fingernail" -> nika "my one, mine" (!!)

Thus it would appear that, if anything, the personal pronominals with -ka formatives ought to be possessive pronouns!

...except that I don't really love possessive pronouns for Koa: they don't quite seem to match the soul of the language. Instead we have constructions with keme "attribute" and oma "one's own, belong to":

ka ulu kémeni "MY fingernail" -> ka kémeni "my one, mine"
ka ulu ómani "my very own fingernail" -> ka ómani "the one that belongs to me"

I will note that I came to a very similar (and well-researched) set of conclusions to literally all of the above about 7 months earlier in 2021 when I first tried to hash out the form of these pronominals in detail. This seems to happen to me; it can be hard to trust past Julie over the fire of the current moment, and sometimes it takes several cycles before things finally stick.

On the other hand, Koa has been starting to allow a much greater range of complexity recently as a sense of register has developed, and it occurs to me that nika et al. could continue to exist but just feel very formal or old-fashioned, rarely used in speech. Like maybe it could show up in legal contracts? On a meta-level this doesn't sound like I'm talking about an IAL at all, but on the other hand who's to say that the typical, purely philosophical historical attempts at IAL design have been right to eschew this kind of pragmatic range? What good is human language without deep poetry?

Given that it's a children's book, then, all this does have some implications for Are You My Mother? I think there are three tokens in that text of emphatic pronouns, which now need to change, e.g.:

Ni-ilo ka imi SESE, ka ame-nene i sano.
1SG-know DEF self 2SG.EMPH DEF bird-baby VB.CL say
I know the equals-YOU one, the baby bird said
"I know who you are, said the baby bird."

Ame sa se, e mama óma-ni sa!
bird FOC 2SG and mama belong.1SG FOC
A bird is what you are, and it's my own mama!
"You are a bird, and you are my mother!"

The degree to which these feel wildly better than what I first posted is some additional evidence that these revised decisions are sound!

I knew this kind of thing would happen as soon as I published that piece. I considered just making edits to the original post as they occurred to me, but it feels dreadful to erase past process like that. Maybe when I'm reasonably sure (ha ha) that there are unlikely to be future changes, I can release a PDF or something.

Very lastly, going back to tata vs papa for "dad," I might also note that this issue has spurred the creation of a fleet of other heretofore nonexistent kinship terms as well. This is still solidifying, though, and doesn't really bear on the topic at hand, so I'll save it for another post...

Headless relatives and nominal subjects

This is a brief excursus to note an interesting consequence, and some interesting questions, arising from the way we've just decided to handle nominal subjects in relative clauses, in the context of the way we handle headless relatives specifically. This occurred to me with surprise just now while writing about something else and I didn't want to forget it!

To set this up, let's take a second to remember how predicates used adjectivally work in syntax. At base, the predicate simply follows the head it describes, without specifier:

ka sivu vihe
DEF leaf green
"the green leaves"

These adjectivals can also stand on their own with a specifier to describe an unnamed entity with the given characteristic, thus

ka vihe
DEF green
"the green one(s)"

It does occur to me to wonder in this moment if there's a "Ø" in the nominal slot in that kind of construction -- not the kind of thinking we've typically applied to the syntactic motivation of lexical class in Koa, but it's an interesting question:

?ka Ø vihe
DEF Ø green
"the green Ø"

Anyway, we can also give that adjectival a verbal force by turning it into a relative clause with u, thus

ka sivu u vihe
DEF leaf REL.CL green
"the leaves that are green"

So far so good, and uncontroversial in modern-day Koa. Now, looking at that last example, suppose we adjust the relative clause to have a nominal subject:

ka sivu [ le Kéoni u ako ]
DEF leaf [ NAME John REL.CL pluck ]
"the leaves John picked"

Here the entire clause le Kéoni u ako "that John picked" is functioning as an adjectival modifying the head ka sivu "the leaves." But what happens if, like ka vihe "the green ones" above, we want to delete the head noun? What if we just want to say "the ones John picked"? It would appear, keeping the structures parallel, that we would have to be left with the following!

ka [ le_Kéoni u ako ]
DEF [ John REL.CL pluck ]
"what John picked, the one(s) John picked"

Integrated into a matrix clause, we'd have:

Ai se-si-nae ka [ le_Kéoni u ako ] ?
QU 2SG-ANT-see [ John REL.CL pluck ]
"Have you seen the one(s) John picked?"

Even though this output follows logically, and I don't see anything wrong with the structure itself, it boggles my mind in a rather uncomfortable way. It's possible that I still need some time to get used to these newly-approved clause type markers and the way they show up in syntax; if that were older hat, perhaps the above wouldn't look surprising at all.

As an excursus to the excursus (an exexcursus?) I might mention that another allowable strategy for the relative clause up there would be to remove the clause marker and thereby make it non-finite; I've been saving the full discussion of these structures for some presumably upcoming post on nominalized clauses specifically. But just for completeness, this would be another way to say the same thing:

ka [ le_Kéoni ako ]
DEF [ John pluck ]
"the one(s) John picked"

Back to the plot, however weird it looks, ka le Kéoni u ako does again seem to be completely above board syntactically according to all the rules we've worked out to this point. Pushing into extremely speculative territory, though, I do have a tiny tingle of curiosity about whether -- in addition -- ka could itself show up as a clause type marker instead of u for this particular kind of construction. That would give e.g.

?le_Kéoni ka ako
John ?.CL pick
"what John picked, the one(s) John picked"

...or, in a larger clause,

?Ai se-si-nae [ le_Kéoni ka ako ] ?
QU 2SG-ANT-see [ John ?.CL pluck ]
"Have you seen the one(s) John picked?"

Honestly, I don't know! It's beautiful in the same way as the other dependent clauses, it just never, ever occurred to me that Koa syntax could possibly work this way. Since there's more than one possible specifier for the item(s) picked, though, would this logic take us into complete absurdity?

ti vihe
this green
"this green one"

po vihe
UNIV green
"green ones (in general)"

po_ka vihe
all green
"all the green ones"

Now with the standard headless relativization strategy:

ti [ le_Kéoni u ako ]
this [ John REL.CL pluck ]
"this one John picked"

po [ le_Kéoni u ako ]
UNIV [ John REL.CL pluck ]
"ones John picked (in general)"

po_ka [ le_Kéoni u ako ]
all [ John REL.CL pluck ]
"all the ones John picked, everything John picked"

So far so good...but

?le Kéoni ti ako
"this one John picked"

?le Kéoni po ako
"ones John picked (in general)"

?le Kéoni po ka ako
?po le Kéoni ka ako
"everything John picked"

Uhh...my parser definitely just broke. My instinct is the clauses with ka kind of make sense -- though I would need to do some research to decide what even to call such a clause...just "headless?" -- but that it's madness to allow any and every possible specifier to sub in for a clause type marker. Given, though, that it's a basic Koa principle that where one particle/predicate/structure of a given type can go, any other such particle/predicate/structure can go, we would have to be careful with definitions here. We'd have to say...that ka as a clause type marker is homophonous with ka "the" but is in fact a different marker, in the same way that ko forms abstract nouns but also has a separate identity marking finite clauses used as nominals.

Going to have to sit with that.

In the mean time, let's try a more complex sentence and see whether that creates a train wreck with any of these strategies: "I gave you what John said Mary wanted." That has two levels of embedded clauses, one of which is a headless relative and both of which have nominal subjects...

1. ni.ána.se ka [ le_Kéoni u sano [ le_Meli ko halu ] ]
I.gave.you DEF [ John REL.CL say [ Mary NOM.CL want ] ]

2. ?ni.ána.se [ le_Kéoni ka sano [ le_Meli ko halu ] ]
I.gave.you [ John HDLS.CL say [ Mary NOM.CL want ] ]

3. ni.ána.se ka [ le_Kéoni sano ko [ le_Meli halu ] ]
I.gave.you DEF [ John say COMP [ Mary want ] ]

Example 1 uses the standard form with finite dependent clauses; example 2 incorporates the experimental new headless relative clause marker; and example 3, for contrast, shows the alternative strategy in which both subordinate clauses are nominalized (nonfinite).

Between (1) and (3) I feel like I'm getting a difference in register. With finite dependent clauses there's no question that the syntax is much more complex, in perhaps a slightly formal/scientific/legal/nerdy way? The closest similar distinction I can draw off the cuff in English would be between "the things that Mary said that she wanted" and "what Mary said she wanted," but I think in Koa the difference in register is wider. Interesting.

With (2)...I think this structure is still too experimental for me to have intuitive feelings about it. I can get at le Kéoni ka sano as "what John said," but once that clause starts to take its own complement I can't process it at all. This may be a place where we need either more examples in actual use, more crosslinguistic evidence, or both.

What about other kinds of headless relatives, though? What about where John said it? Oh dear. Traditionally I think we would have this, with a ke-compound; unfortunately the article on theta clauses had not one single example clause with a nominal subject, so my choice of ko as the clause type marker here is intuitive rather than examined!

kene le_Kéoni ko sáno-ta
location John NOM.CL say-3SG
"(the place) where John said it

or, non-finite,

kene ko le_Kéoni sáno-ta
location COMP John say-3SG
"(the place) where John said it

Actually I think we're okay. By analogy to the other headless relative types we've just been discussing I was wondering if we might also have e.g. ne ka le Kéoni u sano, but that's something different: it would mean "in the things John said."

To be fully transparent, I have to say I'm wincing a bit at sentences like niánase ka le Kéoni u sano le Meli ko halu; the syntax is complex at a level that younger Koa would have rejected reflexively as clearly, obviously unacceptable to the charter and to the spirit of the language. I feel a bit wistful, or regretful, for our now lost fully modular structures, which would have made this sentence come out simpler and much more recognizable to Koa's original creole muses:

ni.ána.se ka [ le_Kéoni i sano ko [ le_Meli i halu ] ]
I.gave.you DEF [ John FIN say COMP [ Mary FIN want ] ]
"I gave you what John said Mary wanted"

I don't know what to do with how much I like that...and how much more I like it than most of what we've been talking about here today. I wonder how much choice between structural options is reasonable in a language: could all of these options be acceptable depending on style and register? Swahili certainly has multiple allowable strategies for relativization, for example, each kind of singing its own song. This feels like it's verging onto artlang territory just a bit, but maybe that's inescapable as soon as any conlang is subjected to the expressive needs of actual use, whether or not its speakers admit it.

Well, that was much less brief than I expected or intended, and way to make myself question everything yet again. I guess it turns out this was a corner of Koa syntax that still needed some rigorous investigation! ...and as to that final point, some additional soul-searching.

Ai Se Sa Nimama? Interlinear - Part 2

This is the conclusion of the interlinear gloss and commentary for my Koa translation of Are You My Mother. Part 1 is here, and the full text is here.

Ka ame-nene i luvu ve cu-meti.
DEF bird-baby VB.CL cease ADV.CL IRR-think
The baby bird ceased (in order) that he might think
"The baby bird stopped to think."

Directly inspired by Nahuatl, here we have an irrealis adverbial clause ve cumeti "in order that he might think." This is one of two primary ways of showing purpose (more about this in an upcoming post on adverbial clauses); the other would be the nonfinite la ko meti, literally "for thinking."

Ka séne-to e ka móa-he i na-ta-mama.
DEF cat-CHILD and DEF chicken-FEM VB.CL NEG-3SG-mama
The kitten and the hen are not his mama
"The kitten and the hen were not his mother."

In re the little argument I had with myself in Part 1, here's yet more internal evidence that inalienably possessed nouns can be predicates on their own...

Ka kunu e ka léma-e i na-ta-mama.
DEF dog and DEF cow-FEM VB.CL NEG-3SG-mama
The dog and the cow are not his mama
"The dog and the cow were not his mother."

Ni-ku-me-mama, — ka ame-nene i sano,
1SG-OLD-COM-mama DEF bird-baby VB.CL say
I clearly am with mother, the baby bird said
"I have a mother, said the baby bird."

I originally translated this as ni-ia-me-mama with the ia "yes/certainty" viridical showing verum; in this interpretation, the baby bird was pushing back against a universe he felt was suggesting he might not have a mother. I don't think that's positively wrong, but as I thought about it, in this moment I don't think he's focusing on the truth of his statement so much as establishing a base of known information. Ku is much better, a particle which is almost impossible to translate succinctly and fully into English (Polish has a perfect translation, przecież: Matkę przecież mam... "I [obviously] have a mother..."). It indicates that the information being conveyed is old, and is already (or should already be) known. English can kind of get at it with "clearly," "obviously," "of course," or "you know."

Ni-ilo, ia-ki-tai.
1SG-know VERUM-DEB-be
I know, it must be
"I know I do."

...on the other hand, here he definitely is asserting truth (just like I am in this moment), so ia is the most appropriate translation.

Ni-lu-lúta-ta. Ni-cu-lúta-ta. IA-CÚ!
1SG-VOL-find-3SG 1SG-IRR-find-3SG VERUM-IRR
I want/intend to find her. I will/would find her. Will/would!
"I will find her. I will. I WILL!"

I'm attempting here to convey the baby bird's escalating commitment to the task at hand, though using somewhat different words than the English. I continue to be a little uncertain about full extension of contextual meaning available to each of these particles lu "volitive" and cu "irrealis"; I'm hoping that lu can convey intention in the first clause, and then that cu could be a prediction of the future in the others. Now I wonder if all three clauses are really more about determination than fortune telling, though...should I have done lu for all three? Nilulútata. Ialú. IALÚ!

I guess there are two issues here: the accuracy of the translation of the English meaning on the one hand, and the naturalness of the Koa on the other. When I read just the Koa, this feels like a reasonable thing for the bird to say in this moment, in line with the vibe of the English if not exactly the same. For the moment I'll leave things as they are with the lu version as an understudy...and I'd really better think more about distinguishing intentionality versus desire with lu, and futurity versus imagination with cu.

Ie-he-toa ka ame-nene vo nae a mea iso.
JUST-TEMP-that DEF bird-baby PRES.CL see INDEF thing big
Just at that time, behold, the baby bird sees a big thing
"Just then the baby bird saw a big thing."

Should I have thought more about this calque of the English "just then"? It might very well be idiomatic Koa, but it's also not a phrasing I've ever actually used before. On the other hand, the presentative vo is doing great work in this sentence.

SEKA sa ni-mama! — ta-sano.
2SG.EMPH FOC 1SG-mama 3SG say
You are the one who is my mama! he said
"You are my mother! he said."

Noting in passing the first recorded use of the emphatic/predicative version of a personal pronoun. The bird could have said just se sa nimama, but not with the degree of emphasis we see here.

Ka mea iso i sano — HUAUU!
DEF thing big VB.CL say snort
The big thing said SNORT
"The big thing said, 'SNORT!'"

I have no idea how to actually say "snort" in Koa, so I tried to imagine how one might write the sound of a steam shovel in Koa phonology...

Ii, na! — ka ame-nene i sano.
EMOT NEG DEF bird-baby VB.CL say
Yikes, no! the baby bird said
"Oh, no! said the baby bird."

Hidden away in the "Particles" tab of the Koa lexicon and never before mentioned aloud is a list of emotive noises. I was glad I had something ready to translate that "oh, no!" intentionally! The full list is:

aa understanding, surprise
ee uncertainty; filler (um, uh, er)
ei calling attention
eu disgust
ii pain, dislike or nervousness
oi request for repetition or confirmation
oo understanding, confirmation
ui regret, commiseration
uu excitement, pleasure

Na ni-mama sa se. Huauu mu-pato sa se!
NEG 1SG-mama FOC 2SG Snort CAUS-fear FOC 2SG
It's not my mama that you are. Snort cause-fear is what you are
"You are not my mother. You are a scary Snort!"

Ka Huauu i nose ka ame-nene
DEF Snort VB.CL raise DEF bird-baby
The Snort lifted the baby bird
"The Snort lifted the baby bird"

i la-nomu, la-nomu, la-nomu.
VB.CL DAT-upper DAT-upper DAT-upper
to-upper, to-upper, to-upper
"up, up, up."

Sii hua i osu.
next something VB.CL occur
Next something happened
"Then something happened."

Ka Huauu vo ie-pane ka ame-nene
DEF Snort PRES.CL JUST put DEF bird-baby
Behold, the Snort just put the baby bird
"The Snort put the baby bird"

ie "just" is translating the sense of "right back in the tree" in the next line.

i lai la ka puu.
VB.CL return DAT DEF tree
returns to the tree
"right back in the tree"

Ka ame-nene i ho-ne-koto!
DEF bird-baby VB.CL NEW-LOC-home
The baby bird is wow in home!
"The baby bird was home!"

Ho is exactly the opposite of ku, marking information that's new, previously unknown, or surprising. This could also have been a strategy for two clauses above, as in Ka Huauu vo hoiepane ka amenene. This particle's usage is still in the process of being fully understood so I'm not sure whether two ho's in quick succession like that would be too much stylistically; in case it would be, I thought it should be reserved for the conclusion of that series of dramatic occurrences.

Ie-he-toa ka ame-mama vo lai.
JUST-TEMP-that DEF bird-mama PRES.CL return
Just at that time, behold, the mama bird returned
"Just then the mother bird came back."

Ni-ilo ka imi SEKA, ka ame-nene i sano.
1SG-know DEF self 2SG.EMPH DEF bird-baby VB.CL say
I know the equals-YOU one, the baby bird said
"I know who you are, said the baby bird."

Na séne-to, na móa-he, na kunu sa se.
NEG cat-CHILD NEG chicken-FEM NEG dog FOC 2SG
It's not kitten, not hen, not dog that you are
"You are not a kitten or a hen or a dog."

Na léma-e, na Huauu sa.
NEG cow-FEM NEG Snort FOC
It's not cow, not Snort
"You are not a cow or a snort."

Ame sa se, e mama nika sa!
bird FOC 2SG and mama 1SG.EMPH FOC
A bird is what you are, and it's my mama!
"You are a bird, and you are my mother!"

No further commentary here other than that I particularly like the translation of the last five sentences. On the whole, warts and all, I'm pretty happy with this inaugural translation in general; I feel like a Koa-speaking toddler would find it fun, natural and idiomatic. I suppose now I ought to try another genre...maybe a short news story? That would maintain the presentative nature of the information structure, but flip to the far other side of formality of language: maybe an interesting exercise. I'll think about it.

Finite clause types at last

In the winter of 2012, while on a dog walk in Washington Manor, out of the blue I had an idea about Koa clause marking. This idea felt crazy and revolutionary, but also beautiful, and possibly even ingenious. I dismissed it as too revolutionary and let it go for almost a decade, but never forgot it; and in the past few years of feverish Koa development I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

The idea concerns the i that precedes the VP when it lacks a pronominal subject. Prior to 2012 I assumed the rule was simply that verbs have a pronoun slot that must be filled, so if an overt pronoun is absent, i is required as a placeholder. This is the case (more or less) in Toki Pona, which originally inspired this marker.

The revolutionary idea was that perhaps I had misanalyzed my own syntax. What if, instead of being a  pronoun, i is marking the clause type? And if that's the case, what if the ko I had previously regarded as a specifier that nominalizes clauses, or a complementizer, is actually just marking another type...and the u I thought was a relativizer was marking yet another? And what if there could be other markers too?

Borrowing from the original post in January 2012 in which I introduced and then immediately discarded this idea, this would give us the following marking for finite clauses:

i - verbal
ko - nominal
u - adjectival

...and the following template for the VP:

(SUBJECT) TYPE (PRONOUN) (TAM) VERB (OBJECT)

There's an important bit of subtlety here that I need to make sure to touch on before continuing. When languages nominalize clauses they usually become non-finite, sort of by definition; but as I said above, clauses with these markers are all finite. What one has to remember is that every Koa predicate can be verbal, nominal, or adjectival depending on its syntactic position; in this system, clauses are no exception. These clause type markers identify what the clause is doing in syntax -- i.e. whether the clause is acting like a verbal, nominal, or adjectival predicate -- but the clauses are still finite regardless.

Clause nominalization, the nonfinite variety, is an entirely different topic...though it does also exist in Koa, and would also be able to used for similar purposes! This is all very easy to confuse, and I think I've been consistently inconsistent or imprecise in my language here in the past: in Koa there's an extremely important distinction between a nominal clause and a nominalized clause. I should possibly ideally find a different term for one of these!

Anyway, those who have been following the plot closely may have noticed that I've been nonchalantly slipping structures like these into example sentences and translations for more than a year. After I discovered last year that Macedonian does "nominal clauses" this way too, e.g.

не сакам [ Јуле да знае ]
NEG want.1SG [ Julie NOM.CL know.3SG ]
"I don't want Julie to know"

...for which the precisely parallel Koa translation would be...

ni-na-halu [ le Iúliki ko ilo ]
1SG-NEG-want [ NAME Julie NOM.CL know ]

...and also discovered that Basque does nominal (and conditional, and adverbial) clauses this way:

[ bere aita Californian dago-ela ] esan_du Mikelek
[ his father California.LOC be.3S-NOM.CL ] say.3SG Michael.ERG
"Michael says his father is in California"

le_Mikele i sano [ taémaka ko ne le_Kalipónia ]
Michael VB.CL say [ his.father NOM.CL LOC California ]

...and that Swahili does relative clauses this way:

kitabu [ a-li-cho-ki-soma mtoto ]
book_β [ 3SG.SUBJ_α-PAST-REL_β-3SG.OBJ_β-read child_α ]
"the book that the child read"

ka tusi [ ka toto u luke ]
DEF book [ DEF child REL.CL read ]

...I was convinced that this isn't a completely outlandish, typologically ridiculous strategy at all. It's certainly not augmenting Koa's IAL-worthiness, but as I keep pointing out, in some cases the art is starting to feel more important than the charter, and these structures feel right for Koa. They're simple and elegant, and Koa syntax as a whole actually makes more internal sense when they're handled this way.

And so, by the power vested in me, I hereby admit these structures into the Koa canon. As ever I have the right to change my mind, but I'm going to give them their fair shot and see how Koa feels in practice when it makes full use of them.

I alluded above to the possibility that there might even be more than the three clause types referenced so far, and indeed many more have surfaced. Here are the categories and subcategories of clause types as identified so far:

i - verbal: neutral unmarked
vo - verbal: presentative
oe - verbal: obligative
ea - verbal: hortative
ko - nominal
u - adjectival
ve - adverbial
ha - conditional

Notes about distribution:

1) Verbs with pronominal subjects have some special properties, which affect the use of these clause markers. i is not used (or is extremely marked, TBD); ko is optional; and u is also optional. The remaining markers are required in all circumstances regardless of clause type.

2) A clause carries one and only one clause marker; BUT

3) Serial verbs to the right of the main verb are marked by i regardless of the clause type of the main verb (see example below).

In any event, this is really just an introduction and opportunity for me to welcome this new(ish) syntax out loud. Many of these types will need a post of their own to demonstrate usage; first up and currently in progress is a discussion of the newly discovered and rather exciting conditional structures, which have been patiently waiting for someone to notice them for 25 years.

Oh, and about those actually legitimately nominalized clauses I mentioned earlier...it turns out I got those right in that same 2012 post as well, actually. They're formed with specifier version of ko, and all clause markers -- as markers of finiteness -- are omitted. One example for now, pending a full treatment in a later post:

le Mia i sano ko [ ka moa Ø ma-lalu i poli ]
NAME Mia VB.CL say NOM [ DEF chicken NONFIN IMPF-sing VB.CL much ]
"Mia said the chickers were singing a lot"

Days of the week

At the same time that I was working on the Koa dictionary and phrasebook that ended up being a Solstice gift for my girls in December 2022, I figured out a little corner of the Koa lexicon that had waited a long time for attention. It subsequently got buried in 2023's avalanche of important progress, so let's finally document this.

The names of days of the week had always felt like one of those areas whose development was bound to be marred by arbitrariness, something I felt powerless to take on in earlier Koa: there really is no reason -- as in derivation from core Koa principles -- that any one system would be superior to any other. Perhaps the most obvious option would be reference the days by number, sort of like in Portuguese, like

énapai "Monday" (one-day)
lúapai "Tuesday" (two-day)
tátupai "Wednesday" (three-day)

...and so on. There are two issues with that approach, though: (1) Which day should be day 1, Monday or Sunday?? I have my own feeling about this (as above), but Portuguese does it the other way. Where Koa usage varied from what felt sensible or natural to a learner, would using numbers actually make it feel less universal? (2) I just don't like the number days aesthetically. Sometimes I just have to grit my teeth and accept decisions that feel right even though they aren't my preference, but in this case I didn't feel that there was a strong reason to do so. Days of the week were one of the first places where the conceptual territories of Koa were being named; if the choices were going to be arbitrary, I wanted them at least to have poetry!

I liked the basis in nature of Sunday (sun) and Monday (moon), but not the rest of the Roman planet-based naming scheme. I looked for other nature words that might work, with the additional design goal of having every weekday name start with a unique letter for ease of abbreviation, and this just sort of tumbled out almost fully-formed:

E - ésipai "Monday" (moon-day)
A - ánupai "Tuesday" (water-day)
M - múnupai "Wednesday" (middle-day)
L - lúlupai "Thursday" (tree-day)
K - kívipai "Friday" (stone-day)
V - válopai "Saturday" (light-day)
S - súapai "Sunday" (sun-day)

(I suppose, thinking about it now, that I could have followed Koa alphabetical order with the assignment...though then I would again have had to grapple with which is the "first" day of the week! And more importantly, the poetry...)

Obviously this is a question of my own aesthetics, but I really, really, really like these. There have rarely been design decisions that have felt so "right" to me so easily.

In syntax, just like any other time words (like tana "today") these need a specifier if talking about them, or a temporal particle he if referencing the temporal position of an event:

po ésipai i hive
GEN Monday VB.CL awful
"Mondays are awful"

ai nu-ma-puhu pe ka lúlupai ai ka kívipai?
QU 1PL-CONT-speak BEN DEF Thursday QU DEF Friday
"Are we talking about Thursday or Friday?"

he ánupai ni-me-lía-pi níke-te
TEMP Tuesday 1SG-COM-too-QUANT meet-INSTANCE
"On Tuesday I have too many meetings"

As with other time words like viko "week," "last" is vime and "next" is sii: ka/he múnupai vime "last Wednesday," ka/he súapai sii "next Sunday."

Before coming up with these day names I had actually suggested names for the months of the year as well, and initially really liked them too...but there was a major problem that will be very obvious:

válokuu "January" (light month)

lúmikuu "February" (snow month)

vúakuu "March" (rain month)

lúlukuu "April" (flower month)

náukuu "May" (birth month)

késakuu "June" (summer month)

kúmakuu "July" (hot month)

kócukuu "August" (fruit month)

mákekuu "September" (harvest month)

hísikuu "October" (mist month)

túlikuu "November" (wind month)

tévikuu "December" (winter month)

I still feel embarrassed that it took a friend (thanks, Kate) to point out that these names are highly specific to the northern hemisphere above a certain latitude...not exactly appropriate for a project with any pretensions to IALdom. Though I've workshopped this a bit I have yet to come up with an alternative system that feels sensible to me: whether using numbers or some kind of nominal compounds, whether semantically meaningful or not. Oh well, one of these years.

Special predicates

This is only an idea, not a certainty, but I've gotten the sense over the past decade of consideration that predicates with initial pronouns may have some special properties that need to be fully described. These predicates fall into two classes unified by the presence of an initial personal pronoun; though formally similar (or even identical), the two types should not be confused.

1) Inalienably possessed nouns: nimama "my mom," semolo "your hand," talae "his voice," etc.

Inalienably possessed nouns are special in that, although semantically the initial pronoun clearly makes them definite, formally they're not used with a particle considered a specifier (e.g. ka, a, ti, po, etc.). This makes them capable of occupying syntactic positions that other definite nouns cannot. For example,

1A. ni-imi se-mama
1SG-self 2SG-mom
"I am your mom"

2A. ni-imi ka cími-ci pe-tia
1SG-self DEF language-ist BEN-this
"I'm the linguist around here"

In the examples above, semama "your mom" is a special predicate and ka címici "the linguist" is an ordinary predicate, but in these structures there is no difference in usage. However, semama is permissible in verbal position where ka címici is not (I know I literally said the exact opposite yesterday about nimama, but things change fast around here). If we remove the dummy predicate imi in 1-2A, the clause with the special predicate remains grammatical (1B) but the one with the ordinary definite predicate does not (2B):

1B. ni-se-mama
1SG-2SG-mom
"I'm your mom"

2B. *ni ka cími-ci pe-tia
1SG DEF language-ist BEN-this
"*I'm the linguist around here"

Similarly, when the pronoun or predicate are focalized, the special predicate is fine (3A, 4A) where the ordinary definite predicate becomes marginal (3B, 4B):

3A. se-mama sa ni
2SG-mom FOC 1SG
"I'm your mom"

3B. ?ka címici sa ni
DEF linguist FOC 1SG
"?I'm the linguist"

4A. ni sa se-mama
1SG FOC 2SG-mom
"I'm your mom"

4B. ?ni sa ka címici
1SG FOC DEF linguist
"?I'm the linguist"

The second special structure is of much greater import, and is therefore also more controversial...

2) Verbs with pronominal subjects: nimama "I'm a mom," selóhani "you love me," tunuku "they're asleep," etc.

Here's the setup. We've known for many years that clauses with a pronominal subject omit the main clause marker i, thus

5. Ø ta-ma-viti po-vihu
MAIN.CL 3SG-CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"she's cooking mushrooms"

6. ni-mama i ma-viti po-vihu
1SG-mom VB.CL CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"my mom is cooking mushrooms"

(Note: Our awareness of the fact that the Ø main clause marker in 5 is actually outside of the verb word is a more complicated story that I'll get into later...)

If 5-6 become dependent clauses, objects of sesano "you said," let's say, the main clause marker i/Ø must change to the dependent clause marker ko. Similarly, if the dependent clause becomes a modifier of another predicate (i.e. a relative clause), the clause marker changes from i/Ø to u.

The difference in usage between the ordinary predicate maviti po vihu "is cooking mushrooms" and the special pronoun-initial predicate tamaviti po vihu "she's cooking mushrooms" is that clauses with pronominal subjects may omit the dependent clause markers ko and u, whereas ordinary clauses may not. This is the same pattern we see with the main clause marker i. Thus

7A. se-sano ko ta-ma-viti po vihu
2SG.say DEP.CL 3SG-CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"you said that she's cooking mushrooms"

7B. se-sano Ø ta-ma-viti po vihu
2SG.say DEP.CL 3SG-CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"you said she's cooking mushrooms"

8A. ka vihu u ta-ma-viti i cuti
DEF mushroom REL.CL 3SG-CONT-cook VB.CL lovely
"the mushrooms that she was cooking were lovely"

8B. ka vihu Ø ta-ma-viti i cuti
DEF mushroom REL.CL 3SG-CONT-cook VB.CL lovely
"the mushrooms she was cooking were lovely"

In 7-8, with special pronoun-initial predicates, the "B" version without a clause marker is a grammatical alternative to the "A" version with the marker. Below in 9-10, however, omitting the clause marker from an ordinary predicate yields an unacceptable result:

9A. se-sano ni-mama ko ma-viti po vihu
2SG-say 1SG-mom DEP.CL CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"you said that my mom is cooking mushrooms"

9B. *se-sano ni-mama Ø ma-viti po vihu
2SG-say 1SG-mom DEP.CL CONT-cook GEN-mushroom
"*you said my mom is cooking mushrooms"

10A. ka vihu ni-mama u ma-viti i cuti
DEF mushroom 1SG-mom REL.CL CONT.cook VB.CL lovely
"the mushrooms that my mom was cooking were lovely"

10B. *ka vihu ni-mama Ø ma-viti i cuti
DEF mushroom 1SG-mom (REL.CL) CONT.cook VB.CL lovely
"*the mushrooms that my mom was cooking were lovely"

Again, I'm still feeling pretty cautious about all of this! I resisted for a long time because I'd never seen a language outside of English and Scandinavian that could do something like this, but recently I discovered with great surprise that Macedonian can as well with object clauses:

се надевам Ø таа ќе дојде
REFL hope.1S (COMP) she FUT come.3S
"I hope she'll come"

At this point I can't think of a strong reason not to allow them. I've been hemming and hawing since the idea first occurred to me in 2012, so we might as well go ahead and codify the phenomenon and try it out in practice. We'll see how it feels in actual usage!

In terms of the difference in feeling between the two alternatives, I'm vacillating between on the one hand imagining it to be perhaps slightly less formal to omit the clause marker (as in English), and on the other hand wondering whether the style is instead more elevated with more compact syntax. Time will tell.