Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Damn your eyes! (Not really) Imperative imprecatives, and curses as commands (Aikhenvald)
This week's paper is about a special type of command, viz. imperative imprecatives. This type of imperative is used to curse the listener or a non-SAP person, like for example in English 'Go to hell!', 'Bugger off!' or the one in the title of this paper, 'Damn your eyes!'. There are several strategies to express such constructions presented in the article; in this TyPoW I will divide the prompts into two parts: first there are some general prompts on how imperatives work in your conlang, and afterwards you get to discuss how imprecatives and curses function! Now onto said prompts:
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How do imperatives work in your language?
- How are optatives, hortatives and other types of imperatives distinguished in your conlang (if at all)?
- Are there any restrictions or exceptions on how imperatives may be constructed?
- Are there any unusual distinctions regarding your language's imperatives? (E.g. a temporal distinction ("Do so now!" vs. "Do so later!") or a spatial distinction ("Do now!" vs. "Do later!"))
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How do you curse in your language?
- What different ways are there to express curses in your conlang? Are there any differences depending on whom is being cursed?
- If you considered diachronics while creating your languages, are there any semantic changes/drifts that affected curses or imprecatives?
- How are imperative imprecatives and curses as commands formed in your conlang?
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!