Tvtropes Conlang

Oooh, an opportunity to ramble about grammatical alignment! *clears throat* There are three basic ways of treating nouns: nominative-accusative, ergative-absolutive, and active-stative.  ^*

Take for example the three sentences "the man runs," "the man moves the dog," and "the man sees the dog."

• A nominative language like English treats all three instances of "the man" as one case, the nominative case. It also treats both instances of "the dog" as another case, the accusative case.
• An ergative language treats the second and third instances of "the man" as one case  ^*
  ^{because those men are doing something to something else}
  , the ergative case. It also treats all three other nouns as another case, the absolutive case.
• An active language treats the first and second instances of "the man" as one case  ^*
  ^{because those men are doing something actively, as opposed to standing there looking}
  , the active case. It also treats all three other nouns as another case, the stative case.

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

Hmm... That would probably be dependent on our "troper culture", as has been stated in the past. Basically: Do we care more about what's doing or being done on, if the thing is doing something or not, or if it's doing something to something else or not? I honestly don't know, though I can make sense of all three...

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here

Methinks it's the first one: tropes are basically "What's doing".

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

I say ergative.

TVTropes Nuzlocke Thread. - Arceus Help Us All.

That's one vote for ergative, one for nomitive. I kinda want to say nomitive, too, for that reason... After the tropes I've seen, they tend to care more about the "what" before the action itself...

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here

I like active just because it's cool and kind of logical. But I agree with Kuiper's logic for nominative, so that's how I'll vote. By the same logic, it seems the subject (i.e. the noun doing something) ought to come first in the sentence. Is the second priority of the troper mindset what's being done, or what it's being done to?

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

Well... Things like the crowning moments are so prevalent, I figured verb would be next, considering that's the action... Though, maybe the other part would be important by the logic of tropes being about what and who? I dunno.

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here

My admittedly weak reasons for subject-object-verb: (1) it's not English word order, (2) my conlang does it that way and I've found I like it, (3) it does vaguely seem more troperish.

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

... Part of the reason why I wanted to avoid SVO was because it was English's order. XP

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here

S-O-V it is, then.

edited 20th Dec '10 4:50:02 PM by AlirozTheConfused

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

Duly noted in the wiki page. Great job, guys!

Also, someone on the talk page pointed out that our word imbe for "conquer" might be better replaced by (a Tropese-phonology-ized version of) "pwn." Anybody like this idea?

edited 21st Dec '10 5:59:08 AM by LKtheGreat

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

That might work, depending on what our version of pwn is.

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

Pun or pan, depending on how you pronounce it.

edited 21st Dec '10 2:50:50 PM by LKtheGreat

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

Hmm... Definitely not "pun", I think. Maybe do pɯn, however that would be pronounced, just 'cause it looks similar?

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here

It does look cool, I'll give you that! ;-) However, that symbol (ɯ), is just an IPA symbol for a specific sound that Tropese spells as "u." Given that it looks like the English "pun," there ought to be some double meaning to it or something... Any ideas?

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

I've got nothing. Perhaps some kind of slang or innuendo?

TVTropes Nuzlocke Thread. - Arceus Help Us All.

A slangy double-entendre would be good.

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

Heh, whatever. Maybe something will come to us.

Zizoz mentioned making pronouns and promptly vanished from the thread. You come up with anything yet? The untimely demise of Unknown Troper kind of ruined our three-and-three-and-three symmetry of pronouns - anyone have a suggestion for another way to get our lovely Rule of Three pronouns back?

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

Troper/person/thing?

Or... how feasible would it be to distinguish between fiction and real? Although I don't see a third option there.

Yeah... realized I don't have a whole lot of energy to devote to this. Still sort of following along though.

Okay, good to know you're out there! I'm finding that I have much less time than I did when I started this, but conveniently there's become less and less to keep up with.

How about the following scheme:

• troper (default/unmarked for first and second person), not troper (default/unmarked for deity/sentient third person), cannot be a troper (default for other third person)
• singular, plural, uncountable or infinite
• first person, second, third

And the pronouns take the noun classes for deity/sentient/animate/inanimate/abstract.

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

^ Sounds good to me.

Any word on whether zana is our word for plan? Because, if not, it should be.

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

It should, because that was my plan.

TVTropes Nuzlocke Thread. - Arceus Help Us All.

It would have to be zanu according to our noun-class-things  ^*

, but I've added the root to the wiki page.

So we need eight little units to make up our pronouns - (first, second, third persons), (troper, not troper, cannot be troper), and (plural, uncountable/infinite), with singular being unmarked/default. Anyone want to provide them?

"There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language." - Zizoz

I have an idea.

Root word: Skol. (it's similiar to School, Skill, Colledge, and Schoolar) I guess it could mean to learn.

Word: Skolar for a learner/learned person.

Word: Arskol for the seeking of knowledge. (some people pronounce "ask" as "arsk")

Word: Skarol for a manuscript/book/scroll.

Never be without a Hat! Hot means heat. I don't care if your usage dates to 1300, it's my word, not yours. My Pm box is open.

Skol...? Under the current system, a person who learns/a "learner" would be skol... a, right? I actually don't think we have a suffix for "someone who does [verb]" Ar sounds just as good as anything else. Though... skol doesn't quite work as a verb, 'cause all our current verbs end in vowels. And by extension, "ar" can't work, either, because verb-suffixes all start with consonents... I like arskol, though. XD And Skarol sounds nice. Maybe skol can be learning as a concept, and it can be the root for the verb "to learn" which can be sklo- or something?

Hey! Read my fanfic: Here