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.
Towards a typology of participles (Shagal)
After a quick and very funny joke yesterday, your favourite activity is back on track! This week's paper was submitted by u/Astianthus and provides a typology of participles. This paper is very long, in fact it's a whole academic dissertation! I think the ones that will be most interesting to conlangers are chapters 1-3, but you might as well check out all of them. Participles are forms that are deverbal, meaning they are derived from a verb, and adnominal, meaning they modify a noun. Think of "the broken window": here, "broken" is derived from "to break", a verb, meaning it's deverbal; moreover it's modifying a noun, and is thus an adnominal modifier. There's a lot more to it than that, so read the paper! Now onto the prompts:
- Does your language have participles?
- How are they formed? How are they used? What orientation do your participles exhibit (e.g. agent-oriented, patient-oriented, or an oblique category)
- What is their relation to other deverbal forms, such as converbs or verbal nouns?
- What is their relation to other adnominal modifiers, such as relative clauses or adjectives?
- If you considered diachrony while creating your language, how did participles evolve?
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!