I will second a recommendation I heard on the Conlangery podcast. The book "Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction" by Antonio Loprieno provides a very nice case study in how a polysynthetic language can be developed diachronically (Coptic is arguably a polysynthetic language).
12:21 another note here is that in Mohawk some nouns can't be incorporated, bullhead being a loan word can't be incorporated and instead you have to use the root for fish which can be incorporated. Another example would be if you wanted to say "I like the sugar maple" you'd have to say "kerontanòn:we's ne wáhta" or [1sg.tree.like a particle my prof hasn't fully explained sugar maple tree] where wáhta isn't a noun that can be incorporated so you have to incorporate the root for tree "-ront-" into the verb for like "-nonwe's" to say "I tree-like the sugar maple"
On the topic of French verbs at 29:24, first-person plural conjugation is progressively disappearing in colloquial French in favor of the pronoun “on” which inflects the verb the same way 3S pronouns do, hence “on chante” /ɔ̃ ʃɑ̃t/ instead of “nous chantons” /nu ʃɑ̃tɔ̃/. By the way, “on” used to be the indefinite pronoun, now it also bears the role of the 1P pronoun (again, mostly in colloquial French).
as an interesting thing (though not related nor really similar other than superficially), the indefinite pronoun and first person plural pronoun often end up merging in Pennsylvania Dutch, an Alemannic influenced dialect of High German of mostly Palatine extraction spoken in the US and Canada. In Standard German, 'we' is wir, the German cognate, but in many dialects 'wir' is replaced with 'mir' (due to the plural verb ending combining with the W into an M, akin to English Sandwich becoming Sammich, before being reportioned into verb + mir). The indefinite pronoun is akin to French 'on' related to the word for man, Mann in German and Homme in French, and while the word for man normally is indeed just Mann (though the vowel A before nasals is pronounced backed and variably rounded compared to Standard German), the indefinite pronoun has changed. Specifically due to nasal loss, it's become 'mer' where the is here indicating an unrounded open back vowel as in the English A of 'father.' (this spelling is due to Pa Dutch's non rhoticity, same as in German though pronounced slightly higher and more central, with it being the same pronunciation as Mann minus the N). Mir also often reduces to 'mer' in most spoken contexts, pronounced the same as 'mer' up above. They are still distinguished though by verb conjugation and case, as indefinite 'mer' takes the form of 'eem' (one, dative) in the non common case.
Wow, when Lichen had asked if he should combine both parts 1 & 2 into a single video, I suppose that someone should have asked how long the whole thing was. Fantastic content, as always, Lichen. I'm glad that I didn't have to wait for the entire video, although for the sake of your channel, this could have been posted as a 4-part weekly series.
Question: Will there be an "Analytics for novices" where the focus is on isolating languages with no morphemes and relying on word order, Periphrasis, etc. to convey meaning? Personally I am toying with a language that has this degree of synthesis in addition to having a german phonlology. so it would be helpful as well as interesting to hear you go through all that. Great work, and till next time... ;).
Those affixes are particularly noteworthy. They don't necessarily follow what you might think of as 'logical' categories, or the categories European languages mark grammatically. Instead many of them are what European and other languages would mark by lexical means, i.e. in free morphemes, things like adverbs, prepositional phrases, conjoined verbs. The Koasati examples in particular seem to focus on spatial situations, and other languages on parts of the body or landscape types. These are things that conlangers, or linguistic theorists for that matter, wouldn't think of necessarily. I guess they are tendencies that result from real-world practical needs rather than the imagination in abstract theory or creativity.
10:17 I think you changed oblique with patient because, if she knee-hit me, then: she(agent/subject) --> knee-hit(verb with the object?/oblique?) --> me (object?/patient)
ive been conlanging as a hobby for years and this has opened my eyes to a lot that i missed while making my polysynthetic clong now i gotta go fix everything lol
I misread this as photosynthesis for novices
I will second a recommendation I heard on the Conlangery podcast. The book "Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction" by Antonio Loprieno provides a very nice case study in how a polysynthetic language can be developed diachronically (Coptic is arguably a polysynthetic language).
12:21 another note here is that in Mohawk some nouns can't be incorporated, bullhead being a loan word can't be incorporated and instead you have to use the root for fish which can be incorporated.
Another example would be if you wanted to say "I like the sugar maple" you'd have to say "kerontanòn:we's ne wáhta" or [1sg.tree.like a particle my prof hasn't fully explained sugar maple tree] where wáhta isn't a noun that can be incorporated so you have to incorporate the root for tree "-ront-" into the verb for like "-nonwe's" to say "I tree-like the sugar maple"
Thanks.
On the topic of French verbs at 29:24, first-person plural conjugation is progressively disappearing in colloquial French in favor of the pronoun “on” which inflects the verb the same way 3S pronouns do, hence “on chante” /ɔ̃ ʃɑ̃t/ instead of “nous chantons” /nu ʃɑ̃tɔ̃/. By the way, “on” used to be the indefinite pronoun, now it also bears the role of the 1P pronoun (again, mostly in colloquial French).
as an interesting thing (though not related nor really similar other than superficially), the indefinite pronoun and first person plural pronoun often end up merging in Pennsylvania Dutch, an Alemannic influenced dialect of High German of mostly Palatine extraction spoken in the US and Canada.
In Standard German, 'we' is wir, the German cognate, but in many dialects 'wir' is replaced with 'mir' (due to the plural verb ending combining with the W into an M, akin to English Sandwich becoming Sammich, before being reportioned into verb + mir).
The indefinite pronoun is akin to French 'on' related to the word for man, Mann in German and Homme in French, and while the word for man normally is indeed just Mann (though the vowel A before nasals is pronounced backed and variably rounded compared to Standard German), the indefinite pronoun has changed.
Specifically due to nasal loss, it's become 'mer' where the is here indicating an unrounded open back vowel as in the English A of 'father.' (this spelling is due to Pa Dutch's non rhoticity, same as in German though pronounced slightly higher and more central, with it being the same pronunciation as Mann minus the N).
Mir also often reduces to 'mer' in most spoken contexts, pronounced the same as 'mer' up above.
They are still distinguished though by verb conjugation and case, as indefinite 'mer' takes the form of 'eem' (one, dative) in the non common case.
Wow, when Lichen had asked if he should combine both parts 1 & 2 into a single video, I suppose that someone should have asked how long the whole thing was. Fantastic content, as always, Lichen. I'm glad that I didn't have to wait for the entire video, although for the sake of your channel, this could have been posted as a 4-part weekly series.
Question: Will there be an "Analytics for novices" where the focus is on isolating languages with no morphemes and relying on word order, Periphrasis, etc. to convey meaning?
Personally I am toying with a language that has this degree of synthesis in addition to having a german phonlology. so it would be helpful as well as interesting to hear you go through all that.
Great work, and till next time... ;).
Every time I hear Lichen’s voice, I think he sounds like Grian (the Minecraft UA-camr)
Not at all, but sure
Those affixes are particularly noteworthy. They don't necessarily follow what you might think of as 'logical' categories, or the categories European languages mark grammatically. Instead many of them are what European and other languages would mark by lexical means, i.e. in free morphemes, things like adverbs, prepositional phrases, conjoined verbs. The Koasati examples in particular seem to focus on spatial situations, and other languages on parts of the body or landscape types. These are things that conlangers, or linguistic theorists for that matter, wouldn't think of necessarily. I guess they are tendencies that result from real-world practical needs rather than the imagination in abstract theory or creativity.
10:17 I think you changed oblique with patient because, if she knee-hit me, then: she(agent/subject) --> knee-hit(verb with the object?/oblique?) --> me (object?/patient)
ive been conlanging as a hobby for years and this has opened my eyes to a lot that i missed while making my polysynthetic clong
now i gotta go fix everything lol