Let me present to you an Auxlang I have been developing called Balkeon, words from all over the world, flexible word and sentence creation, easy to learn, Esperanto on Steroids

https://github.com/barumau/panlexia/commits/master/data

The number of social media platforms seems to be ballooning. I suppose in the long run there will be one per person (hosted on a chip implanted in the brain). Anyway, Bluesky seems to be picking up steam, it might be wise to reserve your preferred username while it's available.

Hello again, about two weeks ago I made a post about a Discord conpidgin and since then we've grown to 25 members. I am here again to ask if others would like to join us. There are a few rules, but the two most important ones are 1. No English and 2. No translating from the pidgin.

Join here if you're interested: https://discord.gg/Yx9uwuMnxZ https://discord.me/conpidgin

This article continues developing the grammar of the proposed worldlang Kikomun based on the most frequent grammatical features of its source languages, as represented in WALS, the World Atlas of Language Structures. After developing the phonology in my last two posts, I will now discuss the sections 2 (Morphology) and 4 (Nominal Syntax) of WALS. I have combined these two sections because they are fairly short and fit together well. Section 3, which is longer, will be the topic of the next article.

Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives (WALS feature 20A)

Most frequent value (13 languages):

• Exclusively concatenative (#1 – German/de, English/en, Spanish/es, Persian/fa, French/fr, Hindi/hi, Japanese/ja, Korean/ko, Russian/ru, Sango/sg, Swahili/sw, Tagalog/tl, Turkish/tr)

Rarer values are "Exclusively isolating" (#2, 3 languages), "Isolating/concatenative" (#7, 2 languages), and "Ablaut/concatenative" (#6, 1 language).

This feature explores how grammatical case is expressing in nouns and and how tense, aspect, and mood are expressed in forms. Specifically, when these exist, it investigates the accusative or object case (the him form in I saw him – English has explicit case forms only in pronouns) and the past tense in verbs (typically -ed in English: we talked etc.). The majority of the source languages express these forms in a "concatenative" form, that is by a forming a single word that modifies the base word. Typically this means that an prefix or suffix is added, just like -ed in English.

Kikomun will accordingly express the past tense by using an affix, just like English. However, this feature does not necessarily say that other verb forms are expressed the same way; nor does it say anything about whether grammatical cases exist in nouns at all. These questions will instead be resolved by looking at subsequent features.

Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection (WALS feature 21B)

Most frequent value (14 languages):

• monoexponential TAM (#1 – cmn, de, en, fa, ha, id, ja, ko, ru, sw, th, tl, tr, vi)

Rarer values are "TAM+agreement" (#2, 3 languages), "TAM+agreement+diathesis" (#3, 1 language), and "no TAM" (#6, 1 language).

"Monoexponential TAM" here means that verbs can take affixes to express tense, aspect, or mood (such as -ed for the past tense in English), but that these affixes don't also express anything else, such as the person and number of the subject. (In contrast to languages such as Spanish, which express both, called here TAM+agreement, leading to complex verb conjugations such as (yo) hablo, (tú) hablas, (ella) habla, (nosotros) hablamos, (vosotros) habláis, (ellos) hablan – all expressing the present, vs. (yo) hablaré, (tú) hablarás, (ella) hablará, (nosotros) hablaremos, (vosotros) hablaréis, (ellos) hablarán – all expressing the future, etc.).

As monoexponential TAM is clearly the predominant option, Kikomun will adopt it in a simple manner, using one or possibly a few affixes to express tense (and conceivably maybe aspect and mood), but without varying them for other purposes such as person agreement.

Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb (WALS feature 22A)

Most frequent value (7 languages):

• 4-5 categories per word (#3 – es, fa, fr, id, ja, ru, sw)

Other frequent values:

• 2-3 categories per word (#2) – 5 languages (de, en, hi, th, tl – 71% relative frequency)
• 6-7 categories per word (#4) – 4 languages (arz, ha, ko, tr – 57% relative frequency)

A rarer value is "0-1 category per word" (#1, 3 languages).

This one is a bit hard to explain, but it means essentially for how many different purposes grammatical affixes (inflections) on verbs are used. For English, two categories are counted, because it uses inflections for person agreement (though only in a very limited form in the present tense: she runs vs. I run) and for tense (with -ed as past tense marker). Other categories used in some languages include aspect (e.g. perfective or imperfective in Spanish), voice (active vs. passive), politeness (e.g. in Japanese), transitivity (indicating whether the verb has an object), and various others.

Though here the most common value (also the median) indicates that the "average" language would rely quite heavily on inflection, using it for 4–5 different purposes, in this case Kikomun will deliberately stay distinctly below that average. English, the most widely spoken source language, uses it for only two purposes, and for one of them (person agreement) in a fairly minimal way. The -s of the third person singular sometimes helps to clarify the sentence structure in English, but there is no need for such an affix in Kikomun, where nouns and verbs will always be distinguished by their endings anyway. Mandarin, the second most widely spoken source language, is grouped under "0-1 category". Though WALS doesn't have exact counts, I suppose it has 0 categories, being a strongly analytic language that doesn't use inflection.

If one takes the "average" between English and Chinese here, one arrives at one category, and the obvious candidate for that one is tense. Everything else will either not be expressed at all (such as person agreement, which is not needed if explicit pronouns are used) or will be expressed analytically, that is, by using separate words (such as English uses for the future: I will go, conditionals: I would go, possibility: I might go, etc.)

It is possible that this will be revised upwards if other good uses for verb inflection will be found, but for now I think it's sufficient to be as minimal as English here, using inflection for the tense, and specifically the past tense, which is used frequently and so should conveniently be short. Since all verbs will end in a vowel, just adding a consonant as suffix won't add a syllable, while using a helper word inevitably would. That's useful for the past due to its frequency, and is similar to English -ed, which most often is just pronounced /d/ or /t/.

The future tense is much rarer needed, and so it should generally be fine to either use a marker word (corresponding to English will) or just leave it grammatically unmarked – in many languages, though not so much in English, it's fine to say I do it tomorrow, leaving it to a time expression like tomorrow to express the future.

Locus of Marking in the Clause (WALS feature 23A)

Most frequent value (7 languages):

• Dependent marking (#2 – cmn, de, en, ja, ko, ru, tr)

Other frequent values:

• No marking (#4) – 6 languages (arz, fr, id, sg, th, vi – 86% relative frequency)
• Double marking (#3) – 5 languages (es, fa, ha, hi, tl – 71% relative frequency)

A rarer value is "Head marking" (#1, 1 language).

This feature asks how in transitive sentences like The boys threw rocks the different roles of subject (the boys) and object (rocks) are marked. "Dependent marking" means that at least some nouns take a different form when they are object compared to their subject form, by using some kind of case affix (such as -n in Esperanto), or that their role is marked through a preposition or other marker word.

"No marking", the second and nearly as frequent option, means that no explicit case markers are used, but the role of subject and object is clarified in some other way, typically by their position in the sentence. (In English, the subject is usually placed before the verb, the object after it.)

"Head marking" means that the verb might change its form depending on the chosen subject or object, as is widespread in many Indo-European , where the verb has to agree with the person and number of the subject (e.g. (yo) hablo vs. (ellos) hablan in Spanish). "Double marking" means that both "Dependent marking" and "Head marking" are used.

Some languages (including English) have distinct case forms in pronouns (I vs. me) but not in nouns. In this case, the WALS people have only considered the noun form, or so they state. Considering this, I must admit that I don't understand some of the values assigned for this feature. I think English should be classified as "No marking", since it doesn't have case inflection in nouns, or possibly as "Head marking" because of the -s that's added to the verb in the third person singular (She runs). French should certainly be "Head marking" since it has verb agreement. Depending on how one classifies English, "No marking" would be tied with "Dependent marking" or even come out ahead.

But this is not really important – in any case one can notice that there are three categories (Dependent marking, No marking, and Double marking) that are all about equally common among our source languages. "No marking" is arguably the most simple of these, and hence it'll be the solution Kikomun will use by default. But "Dependent marking" has its advantages too, allowing a more flexible word order, therefore Kikomun will support it as an optional alternative strategy, offering marker particles that can be used before a noun or or verb in order to explicitly identify its role. (Possible there will be both a subject and an object marker, as in Lugamun, or else there'll be just an optional object marker with the subject remaining unmarked, as that should generally be sufficient for practical purposes.)

"Double marking" offers no real advantage over "Dependent marking" and we have already noted that Kikomun doesn't need verb agreement, therefore it won't be supported.

Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases (WALS feature 24A)

Most frequent value (13 languages):

• Dependent marking (#2 – cmn, de, en, es, fr, ha, hi, ja, ko, ru, sg, sw, th)

Rarer values are "No marking" (#4, 3 languages), "Double marking" (#3, 1 language), "Other" (#5, 1 language), and "Head marking" (#1, 1 language). "Dependent marking"

This refers to possessive expressions (in a wide sentence) such as Tina's cat or the brother of the president. "Dependent marking" marking means that the "possessor" rather than the possessed item is syntactically marked in some way, whether by a genitive case (such as the genitive suffix 's in Tina's) or by a marker word (such as the preposition of in of the president). As this is the clearly dominant strategy, Kikomun will use it too.

Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology (WALS feature 26A)

Most frequent value (14 languages):

• Strongly suffixing (#2 – Standard Arabic/ar, cmn, de, en, es, fr, hi, id, ja, ko, ru, Tamil/ta, Telugu/te, tr)

Rarer values are "Little affixation" (#1, 5 languages), "Weakly suffixing" (#3, 2 languages), "Strong prefixing" (#6, 1 language), and "Weakly prefixing" (#5, 1 language).

This feature investigates whether languages use chiefly suffixes, prefixes, or neither for grammatical features such as cases and plurals of nouns and tense and aspect iof verbs. A clear majority of our source languages use suffixes; Kikomun will therefore do the same.

Less widespread, but still the second most frequent option is the use of little or no inflectional morphology – a characteristic of the Chinese languages, Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Hausa. (Though I don't know why WALS classifies Mandarin as "Strongly suffixing" instead – I suppose it's another mistake.) Kikomun will take this option serious too by limiting its own usage of grammatical suffixes to relatively few cases – possible just the plural of nouns and the past tense of verbs.

Reduplication (WALS feature 27A)

Most frequent value (13 languages):

• Productive full and partial reduplication (#1 – Amharic/am, arz, cmn, fa, ha, hi, ko, sw, ta, th, tl, tr, vi)

Rarer values are "No productive reduplication" (#3, 5 languages) and "Full reduplication only" (#2, 2 languages).

Reduplication means that all or part of a word is repeated to create a new word or expression with a related meaning. According to these results, Kikomun will have reduplication (just like Lugamun), though the specific purposes it will be used for still need to be resolved. In cases of partial reduplication, it's most often the beginning of a word that's repeated, according to WALS. For Kikomun this could mean that in case of longer words only the first syllable will be repeated.

Case Syncretism (WALS feature 28A)

Most frequent value (11 languages):

• No case marking (#1 – arz, cmn, fa, id, ja, ko, sg, sw, th, tl, vi)

Rarer values are "Core and non-core" (#3, 5 languages), "No syncretism" (#4, 2 languages), and "Core cases only" (#2, 1 language).

This feature asks whether nouns and pronouns change their form (say by taking an affix) depending on their role in a sentence. Since most source languages don't, neither will Kikomun. Instead their role will by clarified by position (as often in English: The teacher watched the student vs. The student watched the teacher) or through prepositions (as also in English: The teacher took the book FROM the table and gave it TO Ben, who put it INTO the backpack OF Alice).

Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking (WALS feature 29A)

Most frequent value (8 languages):

• No subject person/number marking (#1 – cmn, ha, id, ja, ko, th, tl, vi)

Other frequent values:

• Syncretic (#2) – 7 languages (arz, de, en, es, fr, hi, sw – 88% relative frequency)
• Not syncretic (#3) – 4 languages (fa, ru, sg, tr – 50% relative frequency)

This feature explores whether the verb changes its form based on the person, number, or gender of the subject, as it does in Spanish – (yo) hablo, (tú) hablas, (ella) habla, (nosotros) hablamos, (vosotros) habláis, (ellos) hablan – and in a minimal way in English – I run vs. she runs. "Syncretism" means that some forms are used for more than combination, such as in English, where the base form is used for all persons/number combinations except the third person singular (I/you/we/they run).

Statistically, this is an interesting case – while the "No subject marking" option is most common, if one counts the other two options together, some kind of marking (whether syncretic or not) is more common. Kikomun will nevertheless stick with "No subject marking" (no verb agreement) option since it's simpler and since, as already noted above, Kikomun already unambiguously marks the verb and further details are not really needed, as they can be read from the actually used subject pronoun or noun. (Or possibly from the context if subject pronouns can be omitted in unambiguous cases – that's still to be resolved).

Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses (WALS feature 60A)

Most frequent value (6 languages):

• Highly differentiated (#6 – en, fr, hi, ko, ru, tr)

Another frequent value:

• Weakly differentiated (#1) – 3 languages (cmn, id, Yue Chinese/yue – 50% relative frequency)

Rarer values are "Genitives and adjectives collapsed" (#2, 2 languages), "Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed" (#4, 2 languages), and "Moderately differentiated in other ways" (#5, 1 language).

Accordingly, Kikomun will have genitives (the cat of Alice), adjectives (the green cat), and relative clauses (the cat I mentioned) as clearly distinguished forms that are expressed in grammatically different ways.

The second most option is that these forms exist, but are only "weakly differentiated" and might thus be expressed in the same way. An example of this is Yue Chinese (Cantonese), where the particle 嘅 (ge3) might be used for all these purposes, as the WALS people note. While Kikomun will have them as separate forms, it will allow some flexibility in their usage, e.g. allowing an adjective to express a possessive relationship if there's little risk of confusion.

Adjectives without Nouns (WALS feature 61A)

Most frequent value (8 languages):

• Without marking (#2 – es, fa, fr, ru, sw, th, tl, tr)

Another frequent value:

• Marked by following word (#6) – 5 languages (cmn, en, hi, ko, yue – 62% relative frequency)

Rarer values are "Marked by preceding word" (#5, 2 languages) and "Marked by mixed or other strategies" (#7, 1 language).

Accordingly, Kikomun will allow the use of adjectives as head (main word) of a noun phrase without requiring some kind of accompanying marker word. For example, if li is the definite article and blui the adjective 'blue', li blui would mean 'the blue one'. English requires a following marker word here (one), which is the second most common option. But in Kikomun, where verbs, adjectives and nouns are easily distinguished by their ending and where (as we'll see later) the subject and object are usually separated by the verb, using adjectives as head words should be generally possible without any risk of ambiguity or confusion, hence we'll follow the most common strategy here.

Action Nominal Constructions (WALS feature 62A)

Most frequent value (7 languages):

• Possessive-Accusative (#2 – am, hi, sg, sw, tl, tr, vi)

Another frequent value:

• Ergative-Possessive (#3) – 6 languages (de, es, fa, fr, id, ru – 86% relative frequency)

Rarer values are "Mixed" (#6, 3 languages), "No action nominals" (#8, 2 languages), "Sentential" (#1, 2 languages), "Double-Possessive" (#4, 1 language), and "Restricted" (#7, 1 language).

This refers to cases where a clause such as John is running or the enemy destroyed the city is converted into a noun expression: John's running or the enemy's destruction of the city.

The "Possessive-Accusative" strategy in such cases means that the subjects of such clauses become possessors (John's running or the running of John, the enemy's destruction or the destruction of the enemy), while the objects keep their usual form (including an accusative affix, if any is used).

The "Ergative-Possessive" strategy, which is nearly as common, means that the object is treated as possessor, if there is one (the city in the second example), while in clauses without an object, the subject is treated as possessor (John in the first example). The subject in clauses that have an object is treated in some other way (not further specified by WALS, as it might differ from language to language).

In the interest of clarity I plan to adapt for Kikomun a variant of the most widespread "Possessive-Accusative" strategy, but with the more specific agent or author preposition (by in English) instead of the more generic and possibly confusing possessor preposition (of). The object retains its usual form since we have already resolved that there won't be required case markers for the subject and object. That is, it's just an unmarked noun following the nominalized verb. Using a pseudo-Elefen vocabulary (since Kikomun's own vocabulary doesn't yet exist) 'the enemy's destruction of the city' might thus become something like li destrosion li sita par li enemu. In this way, two noun phrases (li destrosion and li sita) will follow each other without any intervening preposition or other marker. Will that be a problem? I don't think so, as I suppose the grammatical structure and intended meaning will still be sufficiently clear.

(If it should turn out to the be problem, the object could be shifted to take the dative or recipient preposition in such cases – to in English – but for now I think that's not needed.)

Noun Phrase Conjunction (WALS feature 63A)

Most frequent value (14 languages):

• 'And' different from 'with' (#1 – am, arz, en, es, fa, fr, hi, ko, ru, Tamil/ta, th, tl, tr, vi)

A rarer value is "'And' identical to 'with'" (#2, 6 languages).

This is simply a test of vocabulary: it means there will be different words for and (as in: Alice and Ben came to visit) and with (as in: Alice came to visit with Ben).

Nominal and Verbal Conjunction (WALS feature 64A)

Most frequent value (14 languages):

• Identity (#1 – arz, de, en, es, fa, fr, hi, id, ru, sg, th, tl, tr, vi)

A rarer value is "Differentiation" (#2, 6 languages).

Another vocabulary test: the same word, corresponding to English and, can be used to combine noun phrases (my sister and her children), verb phrases (Ben reads and studies a lot), and whole clauses (Ben plays the piano and Tina plays the violin).

Skipped features

There are a few features in these two sections which I haven't discussed so far since they are more or less trivial and don't lead to any interesting new insights. Feature 21A (Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives) investigates whether some kind of inflectional marker is used for the accusative or object case of nouns. But confusingly it conflates true inflection (affixes or other direct changes to the noun) with stand-alone words such as the Spanish preposition a and the Mandarin particle 把 (bǎ). Feature 23A investigates the marking of such forms in a more useful and informative way, hence I have skipped the earlier feature in its favor.

Feature 25A (Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology) investigates whether feature 23A and 24A both use the same solution (e.g. "Dependent marking") or rather different ones. It turns out that the majority of our source language adapt different solutions for these two features, vindicating Kikomun's choice to do the same (with "No marking" the preferred solution for the former, "Dependent marking" for the latter feature). Feature 25B (Zero Marking of A and P Arguments) from the same chapter follows this up by investigating specifically which languages use "Zero-marking" in both cases, but only a small minority of our source languages do so, and neither will Kikomun.

Features 58A (Obligatory Possessive Inflection), 58B (Number of Possessive Nouns), and 59A (Possessive Classification) explore some fairly exotic options regarding the use of possessive expressions. As none of our source languages has any of them, Kikomun won't use them either, so there is no need for further details.

This is an article about Yanous Verifakous's idea of Technofeudalism which he calls Cloudalism, written in the Lusofon Zonal Auxlang. This is Portuguese Creole based auxlang dependant on Papiamento for many grammar principles, but delving heavily into Portuguese, Kabuverdianu, Galego, et al. Some pronouns and nouns are from Romanian. I have been studying Romanian and also Romani (sanscrit based traveler language) more and more. I expect to use Romani more in the future, such as the word "shukar" for "lovely", which is more sanscrit oriented than normal Lusofon words.

https://lusofon.com/dictionary.html

https://lusofon.com/grammar.html

https://lusofon.com/sounds.html

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SERBIDORALISMU / CLOUDALISM

O Serbidoralismu ta definido komo a noba forma di kapitalismu ki ha dunado lus a empresa di internet komo Amazon, sityu di namorasau komo Tinder i tur sortu di negoxyu intermedjaryo riba linya."Cloudalism is defined as the new form of capitalism given birth to by internet companies such as Amazon, dating sites like Tinder, and any variety of online retail middle-man businesses."

O Kapitalismu di Serbidor ta djistinto en ki ta duna puder pra empresas di Os Stadus Unidos i Cina pa tumar u persentaji di bens i servisus for di kes nasaus. "Cloud capitalism is distinct in that it gives power to companies from the USA and China to take a percentage from goods and services outside of those nations."

Efetibamenti, si bo sta den Oropa ou Indya, bo ta paga ua taxa pro merkanu per tur kos ki bo ta faze riba linya, i kel kompanya pude bender ku perda pa superabu."Effectively, if you are in Europe or India, you pay a fee to an American for everything you do online, and this floating company can sell at a loss to outdo you."

No Reinu Unido, kada unu dos sityus di namorasau i di kompras sau esensyalmenti na ota banda di Atlantiku."In the United Kingdom, every dating site and shopping site are essentially across the Atlantic."

O serbidoralista ta o intermedjaryu, u sortu di senyor feudal ki ta dunabu o diretu pa fazer kualker kos per ua taxa ou renda den di seu feudu sibernetiko."The cloudalist is the middle-man, a kind of feudal lord that grants you the right to do anything for a fee or rent in his cyber-fief."

O serbidoralismu ta considerado un tipu di feudalismu, i na verdadi ta distinto di kapitalismu pamodi do nivel di monopolyu i do deseju libertaryo pa fikar liberado di restrisau di gobernu di kualker tipu."Cloudalism is considered a kind of feudalism by some thinkers, and actually it is distinct from capitalism due to the level of monopoly and libertarian desire to be rid of government restrictions of any kind."

Di akordu ku ekonomista i pensador gregu Yanis Varoufakis, o kapitalismu ja fika morto peos grandi baron di internet manera di Jeff Bezos, i awor nos ta bibi baxo di Teknofeudalismu."According to Greek economist and thinker Yanis Varoufakis, capitalism has been killed by the internet barons such as Jeff Bezos, and we now live under technofeudalism."

I’ve was wondering if there was a pre-existing auxiliary language for the Balkan Peninsula? When I search for it online I only see results for Pan-European or Pan-Slavic languages but I’m looking for something more like an Esperanto for people of the Balkan nations, an unifying auxiliary language based specifically on Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Greek (and Turkish is fine) and was wondering if anyone has made one. If it doesn’t exist I guess I’ll just have to start working on it myself lol

Our goal is to create a coherent pidgin from language contact using no English and no translation. We have 15 members as of Oct 31.

Join here: https://discord.gg/Yx9uwuMnxZ

The conpidgin right now has mostly German, Frisian, and Old English influence, so it would be nice to see people who speak other languages join us!

https://github.com/barumau/panlexia/pull/4