Davis Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference

[ingsve]

There is now video available from David Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference.

Right now there is only the unedited ustream footage available but I think ultimately they will get chopped up and hosted somewhere else.

For now the talk can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14695942

The talk starts at around 11:50 into the video. The slides are hard to see so it's easier to just follow along with the slides on PDF: http://conference.conlang.org/lcc4/speakers/djplcc4.pdf

Later on I'll summarize all the information that is given in the talk.

[Jenny]

For the relay, we got a lot of information and new words as well
(I don't really know what's new and what's not...)

http://dedalvs.com/relay/results/1.html
http://dedalvs.com/relay/results/17.html

[ingsve]

For the relay, we got a lot of information and new words as well
(I don't really know what's new and what's not...)

http://dedalvs.com/relay/results/1.html
http://dedalvs.com/relay/results/17.html

Yep, those will take some time to sift through, especially the second one that doesn't have a vocabulary.

I just went through the talk and there were around 38 new words there depending on how you count.

[KoErin]

I just updated the Vocabulary with the words from the first relay.

He introduces the "ni" (innanimate noun) classification, I put it on the Vocabulary as well.
Words such as dorvi  as ni. and dorv as n. I kept on the Vocabulary., but it may not be necessary.
David translates the word 'fini' as WH-word, but I'm not sure  what this means (what/which/who/whom etc?).

[KoErin]

I tried to guess what is what in the second Dothraki relay from the LCC4. Here are my guesses.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArbW3bU0qmBydHUySTNzM1J1cmVrR3B3c0tNZ3dUdGc&hl=pt_BR&authkey=CJHp3YUF

Some of the words are already in the Vocabulary (I updated just a few moments ago), which I took from the first relay. I tried to keep it as simple and correct as I could, but it would be good to have a revision.

[ingsve]

I just updated the Vocabulary with the words from the first relay.

He introduces the "ni" (innanimate noun) classification, I put it on the Vocabulary as well.
Words such as dorvi  as ni. and dorv as n. I kept on the Vocabulary., but it may not be necessary.
David translates the word 'fini' as WH-word, but I'm not sure  what this means (what/which/who/whom etc?).

Nice, thanks. I was going to go through and update it when I found some time. There are also lots of words from the talk that needs to be updated and a few other words that aren't up yet.

Yes, I'm trying to go through the known nouns and assign either animate or inanimate to them but a lot of it is unknown. Dorv and dorvi are not separate words. Dorvi is the correct nominative form. It just that it had only appeared in declined forms before so we had no way of knowing that there was actaully another vowel there. I'm sure there are other examples as well.

Yes, WH-words is a common phrase for question words.

[Verak]

The verb classes are very interesting. I really like the creativity involved in the interplay of them with the various 'unexpected' case markings. It's quite clever and playful and that's what makes this kind of language so fun.

I also liked his reading of the relay text. The sound of it is great!

I'm not watching the series yet, so that was really my first time to hear any good chunk of the language spoken. It is very Arabic-esque, huh?

[ingsve]

The verb classes are very interesting. I really like the creativity involved in the interplay of them with the various 'unexpected' case markings. It's quite clever and playful and that's what makes this kind of language so fun.

I also liked his reading of the relay text. The sound of it is great!

I'm not watching the series yet, so that was really my first time to hear any good chunk of the language spoken. It is very Arabic-esque, huh?

The way David describes it is that it does sound like arabic to someone who dosen't speak arabic since we are not really that familiar with hearing arabic so when we hear the velar fricative [x ] and the uvular plosive [q] it immediately reminds us of arabic.

Ya, the verb classes are intersting. Though it will probably be really hard to keep track of it and learn it all. There was a quote in an interview with the show creators Benioff and Weiss where they said that "I’ve been told Klingon was hard to learn, so we asked that it be easier to learn than Klingon." This is actually not true. David says that they never asked that. In fact Dothraki is much harder to learn than Klingon. What they are probably referring to is how easy it is to pronounce. It is at least easier to pronounce than Klingon is and that's really what matters for the show anyway since the actors won't be learning the language per se but only learning to pronounce it.

[Verak]

The way David describes it is that it does sound like arabic to someone who dosen't speak arabic since we are not really that familiar with hearing arabic so when we hear the velar fricative [x ] and the uvular plosive [q] it immediately reminds us of arabic.

Ya, the verb classes are intersting. Though it will probably be really hard to keep track of it and learn it all. There was a quote in an interview with the show creators Benioff and Weiss where they said that "I’ve been told Klingon was hard to learn, so we asked that it be easier to learn than Klingon." This is actually not true. David says that they never asked that. In fact Dothraki is much harder to learn than Klingon. What they are probably referring to is how easy it is to pronounce. It is at least easier to pronounce than Klingon is and that's really what matters for the show anyway since the actors won't be learning the language per se but only learning to pronounce it.

I think the doubled consonants also contribute to it sounding Arabic-y. And the rhythm.

Klingon is not that much more difficult to pronounce although the initial and final glottal stops on ’U’ (the opera) are a bit tricky. I'm sure that in the big picture of things, English is MUCH more difficult to pronounce than Dothraki, but not for me because it's my native language.

I agree that Dothraki is very very difficult to learn (grammatically) and clearly David has made it that way (at least partially) for his own enjoyment.

He's doing it "because he can". It's certainly his prerogative.

It continues to remind me of Classical Latin from a learnability perspective.

[Qvaak]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon? seems like nicely concentrated one sentence grammatical rollercoaster.

We have a subordinate clause slyly introduced with a prefix. And in the clause we have a verb in second person singular future passive. And the verb is targeting two words, one of which has travelled in the front of the verb because of the passive structure and the other one which has a preposition with elided vowel - practically making the preposition into prefix.
Huh?

The difference between fini andkifindirgi as well as difference between kemolat and kemat are good examples of Dothraki's derivational possibilities.

If we should understand the -o-, I have missed the explanation. There are quite few word pairs in dictionary with the same translation but one with -at and the other with -olat. Peterson ast ki: 'In the negative grade, a suffixed -o is added to the verb stem in the past tense,' but this just confuses me.
kemolat -past-> kemo -past negative-> (vos) kemoo
kemat -past-> kem -past negative-> (vos) kemo
No. I don't think so.

While fini seems to be all around wh-word, more exact question words are apparently constructed as compound words. Kifinosi breaks down into by what path and kifindirgi probably into something like by what reasoning.

[Verak]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon? seems like nicely concentrated one sentence grammatical rollercoaster.

Could I request that you GLOSS it? That would be super-helpful to me.

   

[ingsve]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon? seems like nicely concentrated one sentence grammatical rollercoaster.

Could I request that you GLOSS it? That would be super-helpful to me.

   

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon?

Why you want that.you [passive particle] will.marry with.me?

[ingsve]

If we should understand the -o-, I have missed the explanation. There are quite few word pairs in dictionary with the same translation but one with -at and the other with -olat. Peterson ast ki: 'In the negative grade, a suffixed -o is added to the verb stem in the past tense,' but this just confuses me.
kemolat -past-> kemo -past negative-> (vos) kemoo
kemat -past-> kem -past negative-> (vos) kemo
No. I don't think so.

I don't see why that would be wrong. It seems correct.

We have two different verbs. One with the stem kem and the other with the stem kemo. The infinitive verb ending is -(l)at where the /l/ is used when a stem ends in a vowel which is why it's kemolat and not kemoat.

Kemoo is a perfectly grammatical word so I see no problem there and the only tricky part is confusing one kemo with the other but that shouldn't be too hard since one sentence will have a negator and the other won't.

As for the words themselves, they don't translate to exactly the same. Kemat is used for expressing that one part is marrying the other part as in "the groom marries the bride". Kemolat is used for what the third party i.e. the priest is doing. "The priest married the groom to the bride". I guess you could translate it as "The priest officiated the marrige of the groom to the bride." or something like that.

[Verak]

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon?

Why you want that.you [passive particle] will.marry with.me?

Thank you! VERY helpful.

Is kifindirgi always the fixed form for "why"? If so, it's the longest WH-word I've ever seen in any language.

...

As for the words themselves, they don't translate to exactly the same. Kemat is used for expressing that one part is marrying the other part as in "the groom marries the bride". Kemolat is used for what the third party i.e. the priest is doing. "The priest married the groom to the bride". I guess you could translate it as "The priest officiated the marrige of the groom to the bride." or something like that.

Is it possible that ‹ol› commonly or even productively produces something like the causative?

[ingsve]

Is kifindirgi always the fixed form for "why"? If so, it's the longest WH-word I've ever seen in any language.

As far as we know it is. As Qvaak points out it seem to be a compound of ki, fini and dirgi. We don't know yet what dirg- might mean but it appeared in one of the headlines in the slides for Davids talk "Dirge Ha Nakhaan".

As for the words themselves, they don't translate to exactly the same. Kemat is used for expressing that one part is marrying the other part as in "the groom marries the bride". Kemolat is used for what the third party i.e. the priest is doing. "The priest married the groom to the bride". I guess you could translate it as "The priest officiated the marrige of the groom to the bride." or something like that.

Is it possible that ‹ol› commonly or even productively produces something like the causative?

We know that there is no causative case at least and from what we know my guess is that if you wanted to mark the causative in some other way it would be using a verb class instead. We know from the talk that there is a verb class that marks the source of something which would be close to the causative.

Also I read somewhere that David said regarding morphology that not everything has a distinct or clear meaning. The -o- in kemolat certainly comes from somewhere but where it comes from might have some unknown historical origin as well. There is another verb where the -o- appears as well that I remember. We have samven that means numerous and that turns into the verb samvenolat which mean "to surpass".