Notes on a Friday

[scribblemyname]

Work has been intense, but I’m heading in for a weeklong holiday, so just trying to make it through to tonight.

I’ve been formulating goals for the year, and stuff I want to deal with, but more on that in the days ahead when I’ve thought it through better.

And while I’m thinking of it, because I am.

Conlanging

So I was a flat failure at Lexember, which is new for me, but I’ve decided I’d like to actually see if I can bring Akachenti to a usable/finished ish state, even without building a proto-language because guys, I just want to write fiction, so I’m gonna try to stop worrying about perfection. (More like, unfinished things are starting to feel heavy.)

That said, I’ve started rereading my notes and realized something I should have all along. The unmarked stem is indicative and the marked stem I started with is inchoative. Simple as that.

So if you say abaga:, you’re saying, “I love,” with an indication that this is true in the past and the present. Aka, it’s true, factual, already happened. If you say, abaga:sha, you’re saying, “I love now,” or basically it’s true in the present but not the past.

I’ve looked at all kinds of aspects and tenses to explain why the unmarked is past/present without thinking about basic aspect. It’s indicative. It doesn’t really have tense at all. It can be used for past or present, even if you’re referring to something you did and completed before now, so long as you haven’t undone it since. They have a past discontinuous for that, which is actually just a specific negative or discontinuous prefix, e.g. vibaga:, or “I no longer love”. I’m guessing this originated from some word meaning “to stop or cease.”