this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Constructed Languages

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What's something interesting about your conlang? (kbin.social)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Pretty much what the title says. What's a feature in your conlang that you find especially cool?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Something neat about my conlang, Hip'alŭk', is how it handles demonstratives (e.g., "this" & "that"). Demonstratives have both a three-way distinction between persons (speaker, addressee, and both) and a three-way distinction between distances (near, slightly far, and far).

This results in 9 different demonstratives (that I haven't nailed down words for yet):

meoproximal DEM.PROX.1 — “this near me”
tuoproximal DEM.PROX.2 — “that near you”
omniproximal DEM.PROX.1+2 — “that near us both”
meomesial DEM.MES.1 — “that slightly far from me”
tuomesial DEM.MES.1 — “that slightly far from you”
omnimesial DEM.MES.1+2 — “that slightly far from us both”
meodistal DEM.DIST.1 — “that far from me”
tuodistal DEM.DIST.2 — “that far from you”
omnidistal DEM.DIST.1+2 — “that far from us both”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. Could you combine them? As in, could you use this system to really simply say like "this far-me near-you book"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Hmm, I imagine you wouldn't need to. For your example, just using the tuoproximal demonstrative (i.e., that near-you book) would imply that the book is far away from the speaker — otherwise, they would've used the omniproximal. I could see two being used for emphasis though.