Slariton

Mr. Salmon, you speak wisdom.

 

I have one really important question... is "jezus Bok" something in Dutch, or is there now a Christian Vahnatai conspiracy? I knew "Vahnatai Creationism" sounded fishy...

 

About the words Nephilim and Nepharim... it seems reasonable that words like those could have irregular plurals, since they are important and unique. Personally, I always figured that they were words created by humans, either based on misapprehending something a nephil said, or some kind of mage language name for the kitties.

*facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm*

Thralni, you do realize that the only reason I was arguing with you about this was because you said its genitive was only used for possession? OY.

Aaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thralni, I am not discussing the genitive further unless you do one of two things:

1) Do what Kelandon asked. Find a book about English grammar which is written in Dutch and report the name of the case of the personal pronoun "my".

2) Do what I asked. Give me a citation for a book or a scholarly article stating that in Sumerian the genitive is only used for possession. That way, I can go look it up in the research archives at the university. It doesn't need to be online. (And if the book or article is not in English, that's fine too.)

 

!!!!!!

 

Finite and non-finite are just classifications of different forms of the same verb. This is like talking about "present tense verbs" and "past tense verbs" as two totally different sets of lexical entries, which they are not. They are just different forms of the same verb!

 

The problem is that transitive verbs and intransitive verbs are two different groups of verbs. Regular verbs and irregular verbs are two different groups of verbs. Finite and infinite verbs are two different groups of particular verb forms... but you can't logically separate out types of verbs after you separate out verb forms. Once you separate out groups of verb forms, you are no longer dealing with entire verbs, you are dealing with verb forms!

 

Furthermore... looking at the verb page, it seems that your explanation of what finite and non-finite verbs are is really misleading. A verb form is classified as "finite" or "non-finite" based on the presence of markers specifying person, number, gender, and so on. It does not matter whether the markers are prefixes or suffixes or pronouns! In English, the suffixes are mostly other information. In Nephilian, however, they are always part of the suffixes!

 

Perfect evidence of this confusion is in your table showing how a finite verb is constructed. How can a finite verbal form be an infinitive? That is a contradiction.

Sigh. Okay, a few points:

 

1) Nobody's attacking you. If you don't want any more feedback, then when you post that you have updated the site, I suggest you specify that you don't want feedback. Otherwise, please stop responding to my questions by saying "it's under construction." If it's really *that* unfinished, why are you publicizing it? (Rhetorical question, no need to answer

 

2) Almost any book about ancient near eastern language is written for a specialized audience. General overviews are no exceptions. First-year graduate students in such a field are expected to have (or to very quickly pick up) a WEALTH of knowledge on the subject that 99.99% of the world does not have. It is absurd for you to claim that any material giving technical details about the language is written for a general audience. It's not.

 

(For what it's worth, grad students at uofc aren't even allowed to take Sumerian until they have had a year of Akkadian; the faculty feels the scholarship is significantly more obscure to a newcomer.)

 

3) I am a little confused about this persistent disagreement over the genitive. I assume your mother knows what she's talking about, but it's strange that my sources disagree. Is it possible that this is some kind of discrepancy between English and Dutch? Alternately, can you point me to a bibliographic reference to a book, article, whatever which states that Sumerian has a genitive which is only used for possession?

 

4) Source wrote: "including possession, location and composition" You said: "How can it be location? they already have a seperate case for that: the locative! The locative would be made useless if this is true."

— ALWAYS, in a language, there is more than one way of expressing the same or similar things. Sometimes, one of these ways is specific to the grammar (like a case). Interrogatives are a really good example: many languages have more than one way of marking an utterance as a question, including those that rely on inserting words, on changing word order, on prosody, and so on. Often, these different ways are mostly interchangeable. Does that render any of them useless? No!

 

Languages are subtle creatures. Semantics interfaces with everything; variations on meaning are infinite. So be careful before you go calling a linguistic structure "useless."

 

5) Me: "It is probably worth noting that most Indo-European languages are Nom-Acc languages, however, the two terms are NOT the same thing, so talking about the enormous difference between ergative and Indo-European languages is really misleading."

Thralni: "I didn't say they are the same thing. What exactly is your point?"

 

— Okay, I will try to be clearer. Quoting from your nouns page:

What you go on to contrast here is the difference between an ergative-absolutive language and a nominative-accusative language. However, what you SAY you are contrasting is the difference between an ergative language and "a standard Indo-European language." Basically you say the above phrase in place of saying "a nom-acc language" — very misleading.

 

It's extra misleading because there exist Indo-European languages that are partially ergative. Hindi and Urdu, which are ergative-absolutive in certain situations, are one well-known example.

 

6) "I thought the chart would be clear enough. What I mean is, is that the irregular verbs, like the transitive and intransitive verbs, form a seperate sub-group in the bipartite-group."

— EVERY verb is either transitive, or intransitive. EVERY verb is either regular, or irregular. They are two binary features which are completely unrelated. Your chart clearly suggests that if a verb is irregular, it isn't transitive or intransitive.

 

7) Now that you have explained the meaning of bipartite/multipartite, the names make more sense. It's still a really weird naming convention, and I am confused as to what the discrepancy between those two types of verbs is supposed to add to the language, anyway.

 

--slartucker

Regarding our assertion that the genitive has wider uses, Thralni asked:

"Then how come I don't see anything about it in already two or three books?"

 

My guess would be that you are reading highly technical books about languages like Sumerian and Hurrian, which are read by a very tiny pool of highly specialized scholars! They probably assume a broad base of knowledge both about the ancient near east and about general linguistics.

"You clearly didn't get it. The verb part is an introduction."

— If it's an introduction, then Kel's criticism is even more relevant. The intro is supposed to be clear and easy to understand. If it's confusing, your full text is probably doomed, and you should really fix the introduction before moving on to the more detailed work.

 

"The cases. Sigh. Look, I already wrote that that might change as I first will have to experiment with these grammar parts, and modify the cases when necessary."

— Thralni, you ask us for feedback, and then when you get it you deflect it by saying everything is going to change anyway. If you're not ready to get the feedback yet don't ask for it.

 

"There are other languages in which it may be different."

— Not really. While there are of course differences in how cases are used, the case names are NOT language-specific and are applied based on which one fits best.

 

"I have been looking in books about Sumerian and Hurrian to see how they do it. In Sumerian it is not done as you say, also in Hurrian it is not as say it is."

— NOT TRUE. I don't know about Hurrian, but for Sumerian see for example this partial grammar , which states (my italics): "the genitive case codes any relation between two noun phrases, including possession, location and composition as well as a variety of extended syntactic functions." But I am skeptical, with Kel, that Hurrian scholars would possibly call it the genitive if it is only used for possessive functions!

 

"I don't understand the fact that you don't seem to understand what I mean, although others whome I asked to look and read what I wrote (people who know less about linguistics) seemd to understand it enough to know what I'm talking about."

— Well, we are used to precision in describing language. We understand the basic gist of what you are saying as much as anyone else. However, if you want to produce a grammar that people can use to translate into or out of Nephilian, people will need to get more than just the basic gist! They have to understand the details, too.

 

Looking at the anatomy of a cat's mouth sounds like a cool idea. Don't forget, though, that nephils in A1-4 seem to be capable of producing most English words with minimal phonetic alterations, so their mouth probably isn't too different from a human's.

 

Thralni, I think some of the confusion in your writing is not caused by bad understanding of English, but simply by sloppy translating! In your nouns page by the part on [a] and [ina] markers, you say: "Some cases can only be used with animate, some only with animate, and some with both." I think what you meant to say is "Some NOUNS can only be used with animate, some only with INANIMATE, and some with both."

This is a small error, but these small errors ruin a grammar!

 

Nouns page comments:

It is probably worth noting that most Indo-European languages are Nom-Acc languages, however, the two terms are NOT the same thing, so talking about the enormous difference between ergative and Indo-European languages is really misleading.

 

Verbs:

If I understand you right, the difference between "bipartite" and "multipartite" verbs is that multipartites have 4 possible suffixes, whereas bipartites have 3 -- the person and number suffixes are combined into one. Right? In that case why the HECK are they called BIpartite and MULTIpartite?

 

Like Kel said, you need to stop using postposition. A suffix that indicates person, number, tense, or voice is presumably not ever used as its own word in a sentence, so it is not a postposition! Pro-dropped subjects are not postpositions, either!

 

It seems weird to me that you are using pro-drop on the SUBJECT despite making the language ergative-absolutive. I guess that would make the language one that employs partial ergativity. This is one of the few ways in which ergative languages really *are* messier.

 

Also, in the chart, it looks like you are saying irregular verbs are neither transitive nor intransitive. Is that true? Because that makes no sense!

 

"The difference between the normal bipartite-group and irregular verbs, is the way the stem and the ending are formed. The stem changes, and the ending adapts to that, sometimes getting totally different verbs in comparison to the infinitive."

— Totally different verbs?!? Do you mean "different-looking endings"? This is *really* unclear. If you don't want to explain it better in the introduction, you are better served by just referring the reader to a later section. That last sentence is spectacularly confusing.

 

"Only the four most necessary tenses exist."

— That's a bit of a value judgment. Also, it seems counterintuitive that aspect is only used for the past tense, not for present or future.

 

...Slartucker, who hopes that his comments are helpful, but fears that they are not

No harsh back of throat sounds? What, they can't cough up hairballs?

 

'My father told me about Hurrian: "Most students can easily translate a text after about nine weeks of taking courses." We are talking here about the more difficult texts, and not "Aenaes Trojanus est" stuff.'

 

Presumably your father is also talking about graduate students, all of whom (1) are pretty intelligent, and (2) have had previous training in languages. And I am a little skeptical that it is the more difficult texts -- the more difficult texts for any ancient near eastern language are going to involve ambiguities related to lect, these are the sorts of things that professors spend days analyzing and write papers ardently defending one interpretation or the other. Also, *nobody* is going to spend many hours per day for nine weeks learning to translate Nephilian, so I'm not sure how the comparison is useful...

 

Perhaps it would be good to take one step back. I have a question. What do YOU want to get out of the language? If you want other spidwebbers to use or enjoy it, you have to be able to communicate it PRECISELY, as I commented earlier. As you observe, it is harder for you to explain things in English. So, what do you propose to do about that?

"In the middle east they pronounce the H as a G. I have been in Isreal enough times to know that."

 

I don't know what you're talking about here either, as far as Semitic languages go (and I -have- studied them). As for "the middle east" -- you're making a ridiculously broad claim above ("in the middle east" does not equal "in Israel")!

 

Here's the thing -- H and G are really, really, REALLY different sounds. (I assume you are talking about a hard G like in "game" (the stop).) Try making them one after the other and pay attention to what your vocal chords feel like, where you are putting your tongue, put your hand in front of your mouth and see if the air coming out feels different... they have very little in common!

 

"I want your opinion, your advice, whatever. I want to know what you generally think of the language (at least the part that is finished)."

 

I think it's great that you are working on the language, and there are a number of ideas you've had that I think are very fitting and cool (the animate vs. inanimate gendering, for example). However, in general, I think you are reaching WAY TOO FAR. You have given yourself a very ambitious project, and you are reaching for complications that you don't totally understand.

 

How can you expect yourself to come up with a complete pronounciation system when you haven't learned about phonetics? It's silly. And with nouns and verbs, you implement things that you read about in other languages and that seem cool to you, without understanding all of the implications of those things. The result is a pile of cases and grammatical rules that are hard for anyone else to understand, and which are occasionally contradictory.

 

My suggestions would be:

1) KEEP IT SIMPLE. Take small steps. Add 1 or 2 things to the language at a time. You will always be able to add more later. Start with a very basic set of cases, tenses, and so on. In the first version of your grammar, aim to be able to make a simple sentence like "She hit the shaman." You can worry about more complicated stuff later.

2) USE WHAT YOU KNOW. Take ideas from languages you speak, not from Sumerian or Hurrian.

3) NO PRONOUNCIATION. Assume that the language is pronounced 100% phonetically, that is, each letter is always pronounced the same way, and there are no digraphs (like "TH"). This way you can completely ignore phonology (and you have plenty to learn and to do without having to deal with phonemes). You can always do it later if you want.

 

I like a lot of what you've done. I like that you are trying to give the language a Nephilim "feel." You're just walking into a big puddle of chaos, that's all.

Maybe familiars just went out of style. There used to be lots of lizards with dog tags running around the caves.

Thanks for pointing me to this thread, Kelandon. Replying first to the website thread :

 

No, Thralni, I am not an Assyriologist. I spent a year studying the field (mostly Akkadian, and mostly the Old Babylonian lect) at U of Chicago before switching to structural linguistics. (The phonemic attrition caused by weak verbs rivals anything in Greek and was starting to drive me crazy.) (After all that, I am now a social worker.)

 

The example sentences are definitely useful. Examples are *never* a bad thing.

 

Hurrian is not a Semitic language. It is part of the tiny Hurro-Urartian language family.

 

Now this thread:

 

Language family (Semitic, Indo-European, etc.) is NOT the same kind of descriptor as "ergative-absolutive" or "nominative-accusative" -- those describe two basic types of interaction between case system and semantic role assignment. "Isolate" goes in the language family category however, as it describes languages that are not part of a language family.

 

Unlike Kel, I like ergative languages. Actually, I'd love to see a language that distinguished all three roles morphologically (intrans subject, trans subject and trans object) as I appreciate the kind of clarity that forces on you. Too much unneeded clarity for a natural language I suppose, as such systems are extremely rare.

 

However, ergative languages aren't any more "logical" and I don't see any significant difference in how verbs are conjugated.

 

"I only copied that part from a book, written by a gret Sumerologist, so wht exactly is it you want to say?"

 

Sumerian is a really, really, really, really, really, really bad language to use as a model of ANYTHING if you don't know a lot about it. It's an isolate, it's agglutinative, and in general it's just one of the most unusual languages there is.

 

Getting rid of the center alignment made the nouns page much easier to read. Thank you! Some of the sections are clearer now, but I think I would still be really confused if I didn't have a background in linguistics.

 

On the use of the genitive: I can't speak for Sumerian or Hurrian, but the Akkadian (= Assyrian) genitive is definitely used for more than just ownership. In Akkadian the only case options for nouns are nominative, accusitive, and genitive, plus the status constructus form which is used in conjunctive with the genitive. The latter two are used for everything except subjects and objects. So the genitive is quite versatile.

 

Absolutive: check the grammar on your first sentence there. Your second sentence is misleading -- without looking at the example it's impossible to tell you mean "with the appropriate gender ending." Also, you probably mean "These two take the same case," not "these two are the same." They are definitely not the same.

 

In the Ergative section, your use of "often" is confusing. "Often" means "frequently." It sounds like you may want to say "always" or "almost always." If you really mean often, then you are providing really patchy information about one of the most critical elements of sentence construction!

 

Also, the way you say "transitive verb or two-participant verb" makes it sound like they are two different things. The "two-participant verb" part is also misleading, since there are three-participant verbs (and in some languages, even more) and if you do not allow prepositions, it seems to me they are a necessity.

 

I could go on... when you are using a language, it's okay to make mistakes and to be imprecise, because people can usually figure things out from the context of what you say. That's a basic part of how we process language. However, when you are describing a new language, it is VITAL to be extremely PRECISE. I know very well how hard it is to do that in a language that is not native to you. That doesn't make it any less necessary, though.

 

--slartucker

Hrickis' lightning will probably make summoning a sub-optimal use of your SP. Acid Spray is by far your most powerful attack spell at that stage, so use it. Haste and the other buffs are no-brainers. Also, it is probably worthwhile to Slow Hrickis as much as possible. Like most of the game's magic-users, he will waste a lot of time hasting himself, and if he doesn't, he'll get few attacks in.

 

What difficulty are you playing at?

Hrickis' lightning will probably make summoning a sub-optimal use of your SP. Acid Spray is by far your most powerful attack spell at that stage, so use it. Haste and the other buffs are no-brainers. Also, it is probably worthwhile to Slow Hrickis as much as possible. Like most of the game's magic-users, he will waste a lot of time hasting himself, and if he doesn't, he'll get few attacks in.

 

What difficulty are you playing at?

Those do look really nice. *applause*

 

One question/suggestion: Have you tested to see if they look okay for the palette swapped chitrach variants? (Though I suppose they will look better than the clawbugs no matter what.)

In E/A2, she *does* say that she's only leaving until the Northern Waters are safe again (i.e., when the Empire is gone). This happens shortly after the game ends, so she could certainly have returned.

 

Given Aimee's character (and her age) it seems to me that she probably let herself die a natural death. (And good for her, I say.)

Very annoyingly, the Nature Lore boost does *NOT* function like that -- it gives the boost as if you had actually bought the level of Nature Lore, so the cost for future levels is increased.

Very annoyingly, the Nature Lore boost does *NOT* function like that -- it gives the boost as if you had actually bought the level of Nature Lore, so the cost for future levels is increased.

Against anything that isn't demonic, the Venomous Blade and Oozing Sword will usually cause more damage. The Frozen Blade does nearly as much as Demonslayer, plus has a better hit bonus and causes cursing. And if you have very high scores in Strength, Melee, and Blademaster, a Stick will do more damage.

Out of curiosity, what suggestions *has* Jeff taken?

Boy, do *I* smell a pointless challenge.

 

"How many iron bars can you collect over the entire game?"

"If players could see Garzahd burning down giant lizards, raping houses, and riding off on women, defeating him would be more satisfying."

 

Actually, Garzahd gets a lot of these details. I'm not sure a cutscene of him "riding off on women" would be such a good idea, hehehe. But Enla talks about his womanizing, and various others talk about what he's done, most major NPCs really. It's quite spread out, but I think Garzahd's actually one of the better developed characters in the series. Especially considering he was only really in one game

"For example, someone like Lord Rahul gets little backstory other than that he is a big, powerful shaper. Had we known more about him, his personality, etc. Rahul would certainly have been interesting and crticism far less."

 

I want to highlight this point. Not every character needs to have an interesting story and personality, but SOMEBODY should. In Exile I and II, these people were everywhere. G3 really only has two (Litalia and Khyryk), and A4 has practically no one besides Rentar-Ihrno. Previously interesting characters, like Solberg, were shuffled into corners, if they weren't eliminated entirely (Patrick, Aimee, the dragons, for example). BOB doesn't need to have a huge backstory, but he needs to be somehow differentiated from everyone else.

 

"I have been thinking of someday writing a whole new humorous rpg series. And, when I do, there will be a chain of quests given by Ambrose The Talking Brick."

 

IMHO, Ambrose the Talking Brick would make a MUCH more compelling Bob than any Bob we've had since the Three Crones. Avernum has weird magic. If there's room for GIFTs surely there's room for a talking brick. (Do I smell a Sylak crossover?

 

In all seriousness, I REALLY hope you write the humorous RPG series, Jeff! I think it would bring out some of your best assets as a game-maker.

Wow, this has turned into a really great conversation.

 

I think Stareye's analysis is spot-on. I would add, however, that even a game that has this kind of repetitive and unoriginal general construction CAN be a really cool and creative game -- but there has to be something else about it that makes it cool. Lufia II, for example, has a basic structure more blatantly and stupidly repetitive than anything I've ever seen, and it has awful cardboard characters, yet it's a celebrated game because the combat is challenging, it has interesting widgets, and the characters do unusual things like cry, a lot, and have children.

 

Avernum IV was Jeff's 13th game. All his games have been remarkably similar as RPGs go -- probably because he works alone. I don't think any other game designer has produced more than two or three games all by himself. The trend, however, is that the games have been getting more similar. With the exception of Geneforge 1, there haven't been any real paradigm shifts, either in terms of gameplay or story, since Nethergate (game #5). Everything has been getting more streamlined... so there is less room for cool stuff, for experimentation.

 

It also seems that he's under a lot of time pressure. I salute him for his ability to force himself to publish. It's something that's very rare, and damn straight it's the reason Spiderweb has been so successful. But it does seem like this schedule, with close to 2 games per year plus ports, may not be the most conducive thing for innovation -- or for humor, or for intricacy of worlds. Intricacy does not mean putting in lots of details that don't matter -- a shirt and pants in every drawer that you can pick up. It means all the personal details E/A 1 and 2 had. All the wrinkles.

 

One last comment: Avernum does seem to be picking up a little bit of that D&D good vs. evil vibe, doesn't it? Av1 (and its prehistory) are all about Grah-Hoth, and then Garzahd and Rentar-Ihrno both merge with demons... huh.

*nod* Wise words from Alo. A few bones to pick, though:

 

Exile *2* had tuneups. Exile 3 changed things entirely. The graphics were completely redone. If you thought seeing the trees mutate in A4 was a shock, imagine having the pale gray cave floor suddenly turn neon blue. Neon blue! Every piece of text in the engine changed font and size, often drastically. Loads of new mechanics were introduced, including Spiderweb mainstays like acid and one-shot widgets like owning a house and the first job system. Athron had a sex change. The list goes on...

 

A4 basically has a linear plot surrounded by exploration elements. I agree that the linear plot actually works decently, and I suppose it is more creative than the surface plagues. There are some nice touches, like Almaria. The problem is that the without the underlying need to gather information about a mostly unknown world in order to accomplish your goals, as in the first two games, the exploration gets extremely, extremely repetitive. Oh look, another bandit. I'll kill him. Oh look, another demon. I'll kill him. Let's find a quest reward.

 

Anyway, I really disagree with your comment that A1 (and mostly A2) have no plots. A1 has a marvelous plot, which unfolds at the pace of the player. You're thrown into the underworld - minor plot point there! - and you gradually become more and more involved in a huge tapestry of events: the nephil and slith wars, Sss-Thsss, the legacy of the First Expedition, Erika and the other wizards, Grah-Hoth and Adze-Haakai, the destruction of Fort Remote, the Abyss and the Scimitar... it's simply that instead of moving from A to B to C to D and so on, there are a number of different plot tracks that you can follow simultaneously. In the end, most of them crisscross. The big difference is really that there's nobody telling you "now go do this." A2 preserved this "gather information and resources from all over the place" format while centralizing the main threads. The Olgai Council, Mahdavi, Micah, and Erika help frame things, but without linearizing the story.

 

Finally, while the tactics are definitely a step up from previous games, I hesitate to call them better than fine. They are sometimes more interesting, but they are also sometimes more repetitive. That's what happens when you give all the monsters more HP than usual.

 

Okay, I have now officially turned into an old geezer rambling about the good old days, so I'm gonna shut up.

Years ago, a foul incantatrix put a curse on all the caverns, making potions, herbs, and small items of all variety take on a different appearance every time somebody looks at them.

 

No doubt this was part of the reason identification was so necessary in the early days of the kingdom. We should all be thankful for Rita and Patrick's scholarship -- but even they were not powerful enough to break the curse, it seems.

Alo said: "other Avernums have been more interesting in the plot department, although I think that A4 is actually better than A3 there."

 

Dikiyoba said: "I think old-timers, if I may use that word, I disappointed because A4 is very different than the Avernum series..."

 

Well, if you guys are old-timers, then what the heck am I? A mummy?

 

It's worth remembering that A4 is basically the first new Avernum story that Jeff has created in almost NINE YEARS. E3 and BoE came out in 1997, and while A1-3 and BoA contained new embellishments, the vast majority of the story is not new. No doubt the man behind the curtain is very different now.

 

I agree with Alo that A4 is on par with A3 plotwise. Actually, it reminds me a lot of E3 in general: E3 had comparable upgrades to the graphics and changes to the engine that not everyone liked, but which ultimately were very important for the longevity of the series. The story was a natural continuation of the previous game without the sorts of contextualized details that made the world of Exile so rich.

 

It will be very interesting to see what happens in A5. Whereas A1 and 2 had heaps of loose threads leading into the next installment, A4 has pretty much nothing. The multiplicity of endings means that it will be hard to do much with a certain archvillain, and the whole Dorikas thing is frankly less interesting than the A1/2 plots that *didn't* get followed up on.

It's definitely possible to lose more than 1 AP per round, if you're heavily stunned.