User:Soap/samples

Background

The Play language was famous for its difficult morphology, and from some points of view, also its succinctness. In many cases, a Play phrase would become much longer when translated into another language, even one with a larger syllable inventory. This was in large part due to Players' often including more information in their sentences than did the speakers of other languages, in particular, information that was grammaticalized in Play but required content words in most other languages. Yet, Play content words were often longer than those in other languages. Thus it was often the case, when translating between Play and another language such as Dreamlandic, the translation became longer going in both directions.

Note that fusional glosses below are given as though they were segmented. For example, pupa "book" does not contain /pup/ "book" + /ba/ "handheld object", but /pb/ > /p/ is an automatic sound rule that applies when that cluster would otherwise appear. This applies to more complex morphology as well; neither /pupa/ nor /pup/ appears in puku, the locative form of the stem of the word for book, but it is glossed as though it were /pup/ plus a locative morpheme even so. Likewise, /puku/ does not appear in the compounded form pukūaveepaes; rather the long vowel appears due to another sandhi process. And so on throughout the rest of each word. As Play's morphology is entirely fusional, it would be inconvenient to represent it in any other way.

Open questions

Why are you eating me?

Play

Paminiipsetes?

eat-PASS-REFL-goal-CQ

Which of my books did you read to me?

Play

Pukūaveepaes?

book-LOC-read-OBL-PASS-REFL-handheld-CQ

Proto-Dreamlandic

huppuŋuami ........ ya ppirialippi

book-1P.GEN ........ INSTR DUR-read-2P

Where do you live, little spy?

Play

Pītabis pisisaes?

spy-child-OBL-EXT live.in-EXT-field-CQ

The typical Play practice was to place terms of address at the head of the sentence, even if in disrespect. In some instances, it would be ungrammatical to reverse the order of the words without changing the inflections. However, in this case, the sentence would work in either order, as both words contain the same -s- morpheme indicating the listener.

What country (are we in)?

Play

Vatīs?

country-CQ

The choice of whether to use tes or tīs is up to the pleasure of the speaker, as they both mean essentially the same thing, and both were in use for thousands of years leading up to the maturation date of classical Play. They were originally formed from distinct roots and a static suffix, but over time, Play came to reanalyze tīs as an inflected form of tes, specifically the essive case.

Proto-Dreamlandic

nimpumpia ...

LOC-country ...