#i am not going to do lexical semantics. im not

[kaftan]

research mentor: And What Might Your Dependent Variable Be For Your Research Project :-)

me: [NOT going to say "well it could have been phonetic/phonological or sociolinguistic differences between different groups of darija speakers but YOUUUU don't like phonology or sociolinguistics for mysterious reasons so i guess not those]

[aeniith]

Playing with sentences/translation in Karkin~

I’m just messing around here: freeform conlanging into the ether because I need a break from work (my work is linguistics too, but I’m not gonna think about that!). I am working on terms for body parts and also words related to the body itself (physical, bodily, incarnate, etc.). I created a bunch of bodily functional words when I decided (a million years ago) that Karkin was an active-stative language (coding for agent vs. patient on verbs and nouns). I then created these funky particles that go before all verbs, sort-of semantically encoding information about them (but they are still lexically determined). I have a few different particles: si (bodily functions, actions of physical/physiological necessity, involuntary actions), ki (actions involving the mind, intellect, emotions, also actions done for pleasure, aesthetics or mental stimulation), pa (actions that are work or labor-related, often chores, necessary things to do that are not directly related to one’s physiology), ho (actions relating to time, very broadly), që (actions of movement through space: walking, jumping, etc.), and ya (a kind of catch-all, miscellanous particles: includes a lot of basic or common verbs too).  Anyway, here’s some random things. Būce-a mi si ñëp-a ear-1sg.poss loc part itch-1sg.pat  ‘My ear itches’ (lit ‘I itch in my ear’)  Ëge, ni’-ë si lypā! oops insect-3sg.pat part swallow.pst.1sg.pat ‘Oops, I swallowed a bug!’ (Note the two instances of a patient here--neither I nor the bug meant for me to swallow it--it just happened!) And a causative:  Qahëcë-’ë nux-ë pa kunī-xwā-pa floor-3sg.pat girl-3sg.pat part scrub-caus.pst-1sg.agn ‘I made the girl scrub the floor’ Vul mi ki hōzngi-ā-pa=lë ën-ë ki mxu-ā moon to part devote-pst-1sg.pat=lnk 3sg-3sg.pat part worship-pst ‘I devoted myself to the moon and worshipped it/them’ 

Negative imperative:

Qstai-ka-she co jūqoñ-ë!  break-imp-neg this machine-3sg.pat ‘Don’t break this machine!’