#austronesian alignment

[happi-speech]

I think im gonna give up on trying to understand the theory of Austronesian alignment and just try to learn Tagalog thru the basics.

I wanted to have a theoretical understanding of its verb system before I started applying it in speech and writing but Im just so bored w trying to understand explainations thru all the jargon and dont rlly understand any since its all pretty indecisive. Perhaps theyre just overcomplicating what is actually pretty simple. Idk. Hopefully itll be easier once I practice.

Onto practicing!

[tlaquetzqui]

So there’s this weird construction in Japanese where they use the ga particle, which normally marks the nominative, to mark the object of a verb. Like you’ll say X no ki ga suru to mean something “gives the feeling of X”, but the literal translation of the phrase is “the feeling of X does”. Or there’s a scifi magazine called SF ga Yomitai, which idiomatically means “We want to read scifi”, but literally actually says “scifi wants to read”.

I wonder…is that a form, or perhaps a vestige, of the symmetrical alignment system as found in the neighboring Austronesian languages? Only instead of marking the verb with a different voice affix, they just mark the noun with a case-particle which means the opposite of what it normally does?

[cassandra-nth]

Y’all why are languages so cool? Like rlly they’re just ways to communicate with one another but humanity just HAD to come up with the hardest shit in the galaxy like Noun Case, Austronesian Alignment, Locative Copulae, fucking ERGATIVITY????

Soooo maybe it’s just me

Also, can anyone recommend me a good book on how ergativity evolved cuz I need it in my conlang

[salamat-po27]

Austronesian alignment

[miochimochi]

First part of translating for me goes like this:

Subject Object Verb Link

The Creator stood upon the mountain and overlooked a frozen land. This is how it was in the beginning.

English is an SVO language which means that, typically, the subject comes before the verb which comes before the object. I don't know how to explain what each of these is as it's not as simple as agent-patient (the one doing the verb and the one being acted upon). We understand subject, object, and verb even if we can't entirely formulate the words to entirely explain them. "The dog bit me" and "I was bit by the dog" mean the same thing, the agent and patient are the same in both, but the subject and object switch.

SVO isn't the only word order either. We'll use the words "She hit me" in all word orders:

SOV: she me hit (Japanese)

SVO: she hit me (English)

VSO: hit she me (Irish)

VOS: hit me she (Fijian)

OVS: me hit she (Urarina)

OSV: me she hit (Warao)

I ordered these from most common to least common word order as well - and before going to Wikipedia for example languages! (Had SOV and SVO switched on the list initially though)

SOV accounts for almost half of the world's languages. But there's actually one other word order: free word order. This was the word order of Latin that would eventual be replaced in the Romance languages with groups preferring to use words in certain orders, most of them being SVO. The way that Latin did this is by markings that indicate what is what through a nominative-accusative system, one of the morphosyntactic alignment systems.

These systems are dependent on the syntactic relationship between various components of a sentence rather than placement of words within the sentence. The simplest system is the Dixon argument system:

(S)ole - the subject of a transitive verb

(A)gent - the subject of an intransitive verb

(P)atient - most times called the Object, but I like giving it more separation from word order, the object of a transitive verb

And the various alignments:

Nominative-Accusative - S=A ; P

Ergative-Absolutive - S=P ; A

Active-Stative - S¹=A ; S²=P

Austronesian Alignment - both S=A ; P and S=P ; A are true, people can choose to use either, although there are common triggers for each, working similar to voice in English

Direct Alignment - there is no distinction between S, A, or P, it's based on context clues

Tripartite Alignment - S, A, and P have their own separate cases

Transitive Alignment - A=P ; S

The most basic breakdown of the section chosen without any alteration to words to mark for anything is this:

Creator stand mountain overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

Marking them again for word position:

Creator stand mountain and overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

And now marking for argument:

Creator-A stand mountain-P and [Creator-S] overlook land-(frozen)-P. This-A be beginning-P.

Creator here is both the Sole and Agent in the same sentence since there's 2 verbs linked by an "and" which, in English, implies the subject being used again if no new subject is presented. Stand and Be are intransitive verbs where Overlook is transitive. Transitive verbs require an object for the subject to act upon where an intransitive verb can be acted upon by a subject without an object. You can say "I'm standing" and that's a complete sentence but you can't say "I'm overlooking" and have it be a compete sentence. "I'm standing" can take on an object with a preposition such as "on", but "I'm overlooking" always requires an object that is being overlooked and takes the object without the need for a preposition.

There's a few ways we can deal with the double argument:

Implied argument change - the subject is implied in the second part and so is the argument

Prepositional argument change - the preposition takes on the argument for the subject, so "and-S" would be its own separate thing from "and-A"

Repetition argument change - having to use the subject both times, changing only the argument

There's also other noun classes that can be used. For the nouns we have, we can go for a number of different possible cases (and this isn't an extensive list, just what would work here):

Creator : direct, ergative, nominative (not the intransitive case even though there's an intransitive verb because the preposition makes it grammatically act like a transitive verb and we could even make stand-on its own verb)

Mountain : absolutive, accusative, direct, locative, prepositional, superessive

Land : accusative

This : ergative, identical, nominative

Beginning : ablative, accusative

Could've missed some, but here we are. Thinking of cases, there's a hierarchy that languages typically follow, although breaking from these typicalities is typical of language as well. It's a general rule rather than a hard-set law.

nominative > accusative or ergative > genitive > dative > locative or prepositional > ablative and/or instrumental > others

Generally, if they're missing one of these, they are missing all after it. Such as, if there's no dative case, there likely isn't a locative, prepositional, ablative, instrumental, or others.

Verbs also have their own "classes" leading to what's called conjugation. Anything that changes a noun can even affect the verb form, such as having verb-a for a nominative and then verb-b for an accusative. The main ones to focus on first are gender, person, tense, and aspect.

Linguistically, gender has nothing to do with biology or psychology, although it's often tied to human biological genders (male and female). Could even look to a "spiritual gender" such as the concept of two-spirit in Amerindian cultures where one person has both a male and female soul and are, as a result, closer to the spiritual. That's why the culture building is an important part of language building. I imagine Mochian culture as having a belief in 3 souls: the genderless immortal soul that reincarnates, the soul that is inseparable from the body (and thus is what the body is) that rests when they die, and the soul that is created by memories that dies once they are forgotten. The memory-soul's "gender" is what they are remembered as and has nothing to do with one's biology.

Person depends on perspective. We all know first, second, and third person. First person is from the perspective of the subject "I ran home". Second person is from the perspective of the other "you ran home". Third person is from the perspective of an outside observer "they ran home". But there are other persons to go with. Could simply split the third person to have one case for denoting the topical person and the other case for the obviate person. Could even have a 4th person or a 0 person for an indefinite general referrence.

Tense is another commonly understood one. English has three - past, present, and future - right? Actually, no. That may be true in an abstract temporal sense but not in a linguistic sense. English only has two tenses: past and non-past. "I wanted", "I want", and "I will want" are all talking about want at various temporal moments, the past being "I wanted". But "I want" and "I will want" are using the same grammatical tense, the non-past tense. The word "will" is adding context about the non-past verb "want" to denote this as a future thing that is to come. But there are languages that do have a dedicated future tense so "I will want" would have "will want" as a singular verb with a future tense, so it's more like "I want-F". There are a lot more tense systems - and even tenseless systems which rely on context clues and "helper" words. Past-Nonpast is as described, Present-Nonpresent and Future-Nonfuture work similarly. Tenses work in two ways: relative or absolute. An absolute tense is relative to the "now", a relative tense is relative to another point in time. A relative tense can also be divided between a strict relative and an absolute-relative tense. Strict relative is relative to just some point in time, absolute-relative is relative to a point in time that is relative to the "now". "I ran", "I sweat when I run", "I will be running tomorrow" are examples of absolute, strict relative, and absolute-relative, in that order.

Aspect is another side to temporal marking. Rather than telling the point in time, aspect tells the finality, or lack thereof, of the verb. These do more than just say whether or not the verb is ongoing (continuous "I'm running") or complete (perfect "I ran"), it can also tell that it happened in a single moment (momentane "I sighed"), that it's done regularly (habitual "I run everyday"), that it almost happened (defective "I almost fell"), and that it is beginning (inceptive "I'm about to run").

So breaking down the verbs:

Stood : Past tense, perfect aspect of Stand

Overlooked : Past tense, perfect aspect of Overlook

Is how it was : Past tense, perfect progressive aspect of Be

All of these verbs had an ending, all of them happened before the present, one of them is the end of some that was continuous. Last thing I want to get to is adpositions and modifiers, which are divided between prepositions (preceding their complement) and postpositions (following their complement). The main thing about adpositions to look at is Hawkins' Universals:

Preposition ⊃ ( (N-Demonstrative v N-Numeral v N-Possessive ⊃ N-Adjective) & (N-Adjective ⊃ N-Genitive) & (N-Genitive ⊃ N-Relative) )

Postpositions ⊃ ( (Adjective-N v Relative-N ⊃ Demonstrative-N & Numeral-N & Possessive-N) & (Demonstrative-N v Numeral-N v Possessive-N ⊃ Genitive-N) )

Lemme explain what you're looking at...

If the language is Prepositional, then is the Demonstrative, Numeral, or Possessive comes after the Noun then the Adjective will come after the noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Adjective is after the Noun, then the Genitive will come after the Noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Genitive comes after the Noun, then the Relative will come after the Noun, if not it can go either way.

If the language is Postpositional, then if the Adjective or Relative come before the Noun, then the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive will come before the Noun, if not then they can go either way. If the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive come before the Noun, then the Genitive will come before the Noun, if not then it can go either way.

I just threw a lot of words at you so I should define things that you probably don't know (we all know what an Adjective and Noun are, right? I don't need to define those, right?).

Demonstrative : "this" and "that" words, indicating what's being referred to

Numeral : "one" and "once" words, indicating the quantity of what's being talked about

Possessive : 's, indicating the owner of a thing

Genitive : an expression of the relationship between two nouns

Relative : a clause that modifies a noun

And finally, languages have hierarchies in the order of a modifier. The modifier hierarchy for English so as so:

Quantity > Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose > Noun

You don't say "the grey round old stone", you say "the old round grey stone". In an agglutinative language, you could pile all of these into one word, mashing word pieces together to build a bigger word. "The old grey stone" could be theoldgreystone if English were agglutinative.

Now it's time to finally build this language... in the next post! I did a lot for this one, I'll get back to it later.

[arkipelagic]

the sinicization of taiwan seems like colonialism and ethnocultural domination almost seemingly parllel to the spanish colonization and ethnocultural genocide of canary islands yet not as advanced as so many centuries. is supporting indigenous formosans sovereignties controversial in your locality?

as i am filipino, the topic of sovereignty of indigenous taiwanese peoples is not a topic where i’m from (i.e. davao, southern philippines.) even among filipinos, indigenous peoples’ rights is underdiscussed and crossed.

typically the only time indigenous taiwanese peoples are brought up in a conversation is when discussing the austronesian migration and our ethnolinguistic and cultural ties to our taiwanese cousins. as for taiwanese sovereignty in general, most filipinos are anti-china due to disputes over the west philippine sea and assaults upon filipino fishermen by chinese vessels & therefore align with an independent taiwan movement (still ethnically han as majority, of course).

[max1461]

I don't think it counts as polysynthetic but for a language that is very different grammar-wise from English I suppose I would suggest Tagalog [ although I'm biased because I speak Tagalog but it seemed significantly more difficult to grasp than any of the other languages I was once taught ]. Though I guess part of what makes it challenging is that learning how to speak it 'correctly' is still awkward to listen to because of all the code-switching with English (that is, there are different ways to 'properly' code-switch that immediately outs what sort of region or socio-economic class one belongs to depending on how they do it). Which is interesting but probably not relevant if you don't live in the Philippines.

Austronesian alignment... Tagalog has various dope sorts of passive voice and whatnot. Powerful and cool lang.

[scaled-escalator]

kinda want to make a proper conlang with austronesian alignment partly to help me vibe with learning tagalog

imagine being filipino but only speaking english couldn't be me

[puddox]

this isn't far off from how pop linguistics stuff talk about any not immediately intuitive grammatical concept not found in europe in my experience (such as austronesian alignment, semitic triconsonantal roots, split ergativity, etc)

hyperspecific nonsense idea that's been stuck in my head for days and tickling my brain a certain way: those corny 3am clickbait youtube horror videos but instead of being about like creepypasta monsters or whatever they're all inexplicably about grammar concepts

[gwendolynlerman]

Language typology

Phonology

You can read more about phonetics and phonology here.

Pitch

All languages use pitch (the melodic sounds of language that are carried by the syllable nucleus), but they divide into two types according to how they use it:

In intonational languages, pitch distinguishes between utterance meanings in a conversation context. For example, in English, this is the difference between a declarative and interrogative intonation. Declarative intonation is used for making statements, as in “Anna saw my sister”, while interrogative intonation is used for asking questions, as in “Anna saw my sister?”. Intonational languages predominate in western Eurasia, South Asia, the southern part of South America, and coastal northwestern North America. An example is Mapuche, an Araucanian language spoken in Argentina and Chile.

In tonal languages, each syllable carries a characteristic pitch, which may be a level tone, with a relatively flat pitch at a particular level, or a contour tone, with a pitch rise or fall over the duration of the syllable. Most of the world’s and almost all of Africa’s languages are tonal, but many languages in East and Southeast Asia have contour tones, as do languages in Central America and Mexico. This is the case of Bambara, a Mande language of Mali.

Metrical structure

Languages can be classified into three different categories based on their metrical structure, which is tied to syllable structure:

Syllables in mora-timed languages end in vowels, and rhythm aligns with their beat. Gilbertese, an Austronesian language spoken in Kiribati, is an example.

Syllable-timed languages either begin or end a syllable with a consonant. Rhythm aligns with the syllable. Among them is Turkish, a Turkic language of Cyprus and Turkey.

Syllables in stress-timed languages both begin and end with consonants, so rhythm aligns with the stressed syllable. Thai, a Kra-Dai language spoken in Cambodia and Thailand, is stress-timed.

Word size restrictions

Some languages require that a word be no smaller than a certain size (minimality restriction), while others require that a word be no larger than a certain size (maximality restriction).

In the Zezuru dialect of Shona, an Atlantic-Congo language of Zimbabwe, words must be at least two syllables. In Koyo, an Atlantic-Congo language spoken in the Republic of Congo, verb stems cannot be longer than three syllables.

[infernalwitxhcraft]

Let's Talk - Creating Your Own Wheel of the Year

In this first edition of Let's Talk, I want to begin a discussion on the wheel of the year. Please keep in mind, as I often try to remind others, that this is how I feel in my personal practice. You do not have to agree or do the same thing. I'm offering food for thought in this post.

Let me preface this by saying that the wheel of the year is a wiccan made concept, created by Gerald Gardner. Although he claims the wheel is ancient and took inspiration from celebrations of the old, in reality it's a relatively new concept. And as someone who isn't wiccan but feeling like I was a bad witch for not celebrating it when I was much younger, many of the traditions from the wheel stuck. Because everyone else took part in celebrating the sabbats, I did too. I wanted to partake in what other witch friends and mentors were doing. Sure, the mythology never resonated behind the stories of what happens on so-and-so day and I made that clear to everyone back then. But I liked the overall atmosphere and feel of it. The unity. The coming together to celebrate, well, the earth. Not to sound new age-y, for the love of the gods.

But the issue here is also that we are not farmers anymore, if we want to consider the actial *real* celebrations that took place historically, and ignore the whole Gardner creation for a second. The festivals were created to honor these kinds of cycles and are claimed to trace back to certain traditions that link back to old times. Whether this is true or not isn't easy to verify, as far as what actually was being celebrated and how it was done goes. Plenty of great historians are working on it though (I recommend keeping up with their research). Back then, however, farming was the way of sustaining life and most families partook in it.

Another issue that I have with the wheel is that it's a mash-up of different celebrations from Europe. Gardner makes it seem as if everyone did these, no matter where they were located when that wasn't the case. It seems a little disrespectful. Not to mention, we all come from different cultural backgrounds. I sure as hell can tell you my austronesian tribe wasn't dancing around a maypole or leaving candles in the window for a goddess to symbolize the winter ending. Yes, we did have our celebrations and festivities. But they were very different, as one can imagine. It's a little weird for me to have the mastermind behind this big religious movement feel that everyone should follow these sabbats and esbats that may or may not have existed, not considering other cultures exist. Why does, at times, it feel that Wicca was only created for those of European descent? I mean, Gardner did partake in cultural appropriation, but when I had studied Wicca to understand it better, it really did feel as though only white people were intended to follow it. Interesting subject for another time, I suppose. If you are wiccan, by the way, please do not take it as that I am ripping on you or your practice.

When I look at these things, I have to think about how it relates to me and my practice. I made my own wheel to not only deepen my practice, but to do things that made sense to my beliefs. There are many non-wiccans that do this by the way, if this is your first time hearing this concept! Some witches add or take sabbats away. Some decide not to follow the wheel at all. Some celebrate on different days, when the changes of the seasons happen depending on their particular climate. I'm an astronomy nerd, so I find following the planetary alignment to resonate with me on the solstices and equinoxes. Plus, I don't live in a climate that has varying seasons. It's known as: hot, hotter, stupid hot, and warm over here!

For me, I do like celebrating the other days. Some, such as Lammas, I just observe. I do find it to be a fertile time for doing abudance rituals however. Imbolc I also don't celebrate, but find it to be a day that is excellent for spirit communication. These also tend to match up with demonolatry rites - such as Beltane being linked with the Rite of Leviathan or the First Rite to Lucifer being linked to the Spring Equinox (aka Ostara on the wheel of the year). I love Samhain and will never stop celebrating it! I'm big on ancestral veneration in my practice after all, and I follow it up with All Soul's Day since that is a part of my own culture.

Some of the holidays I added in, outside of the sabbats, esbats, and demonolatry rites, are because they are of importance to me. Why not celebrate them and make it personal? I do rituals on them anyways! I do at least one tribal harvest festival celebration a year, to make sure abundance comes to my people and to appease the ancestors, for example.

Something else I take into account is my local climate, when the seasons *sort of* shift, and the seasons regarding produce and harvesting. Even hurricane season plays it's role. I find this adds depth to my celebrations and keeps me closer to the area I reside in. It might be something to add into your annual calender as dates to pay attention to.

Oh and wait, as a reminder, get this: want to forget the wheel of the year altogether? You can! You 110% do not have to celebrate anything. How cool is that?!

Don't let people push it on you. You do you, boo. If you do decide to celebrate some or all of it or create one that is entirely your own, I hope you have fun with it!

If you have anything you'd like to discuss regarding this topic, please do add your opinions to it!

[siamesephoenixrandomideatank]

Warhammer Factions /Races/Armies Ideas List

If we have ogre kingdoms, how about we have an army of something small, agile, and annoying? (Like, Pixies, Gnomes, or Leprechauns)

Undead Norscans: If all Chaos Gods abandon you in the deadly moment, pray to Nagash.

Joseon Korea-inspired Kingdom, because Korea is neither China nor Japan.

Polynesian/Austronesian-Inspired Army: Lore of Mana/No metal, but jades & monster bones/Tattoo buffs

Beastmen of Southland: Being based on scavenging animals, like vultures & hyenas

Order-Aligned Horde: For examples, Bands of Nomadic Wuxia Warriors, The Collectors of Artefacts, or Warband of new pantheon.

The Faction that is neither friends nor enemies to most races; they're sort of independence mafia gangs scattered around, causing troubles, while also offering services to those with good price.

[foeofself]

gush about morphosyntactic alignment 🥺

i thought you people would send me a real challenge like "say smth good about bnha" but okay wosh.

honestly i dont know shit about morphosyntactic aligntment except that it bends my little gay brain over, not bc it's difficult to understand but bc at public school they try to teach u what a verb is for 12 years (and fail). i think i understand ergativity pretty well for someone who doesn't speak a language with it but rn i'm experimenting (when i have free time to cumlang don't @ me) with direct-inverse alignment, which absolutely bends me and i don't quite understand how it falls into the alignment thing. don't ask me about austronesian alignment though, my brain is too smooth for that.

nonetheless and tho it's overhyped ergativity is so much goddamn fun especially bc there's so many ways in which it can manifest. i'm not gonna go over them bc artifexian's video on that already exists but i'm going to say, the only thing almost as fun as ergativity is trying to explain it to normies and getting yelled at.

[tlaquetzqui]

Dude dude dude dude.

I was looking up the concept of direct vs. oblique cases (I suggest doing it the Irish and Romanian way: nominative and accusative are direct, genitive, dative, etc. are oblique—both also have a vocative as their third case), and the Wikipedia article explained how the fuck Austronesian alignment works.

Namely: “…In … languages with Austronesian alignment, the direct case is the case of the argument of an intransitive clause (S), and may be used for either argument of a transitive clause (agent or patient), depending on the voice of the verb. The other transitive argument will be in either the ergative or accusative case if different cases are used for those roles. In languages where a single case is used for the other argument, as in Tagalog, it is called the indirect case. This is analogous to the direct–oblique distinction in [split-ergative Indo-Iranian languages], but with the split conditioned by voice rather than by tense.”

I.e., “Austronesian alignment” should be called “voice-split ergativity” or something similar (and the other kind “tense-split”, or “aspect-split” in the case of Mayan split ergativity—maybe “time-split” to combine the two?).

[yuk-tepat]

Typology

You know what analytical/isolating, agglutinative, and fusional languages are, I presume. You’ve heard about heads and dependents and word-orders, you can tell the difference between head-initial and head-final. You know what SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV mean, and which ones like prepositions and which ones like postpositions. Maybe you know what an ergative language is. Is that all? What else do you know about your language? Some things to think  about:

Does your language have vowel harmony? OK, but does it have consonant harmony?

What restrictions does it place on the shape of roots? Are they different from restrictions on the shape of words or syllables? Can the same phoneme occur twice in a root? Are phonemes from the same class required, or banned?

Is its prosody stress-timed, syllable-timed, or mora-timed?

If it’s tonal, does it have contour tones? Is tone lexically determined? Does each syllable have marked tone?

Does your language mark grammatical relations in clauses? Does it bother to mark them at all?

Is your language accusative, ergative, tripartite, transitive, or neutral?

Is your ergative language totally ergative or split-ergative?

Does it have active-stative alignment? What determines the alignment of intransitive subjects? The semantics of the subject? The semantics of the verb? Something else?

Is it a topic-prominent language?

Does it use some other system, like an Austronesian ‘trigger’ system, or direct-inverse marking? What determines the order / marking of the arguments? An animacy hierarchy?

Does it mark experiencers of experiential verbs like agents or patients or something else?

Does your language have any ditransitive verbs? Is it dechticaetive or secundative?

Can a sentence omit any argument of the verb? Only the subject? No arguments at all?

What is the word order, and what determines it?

Is it consistently head-final or head-initial, or mixed? And where does the split occur?

Is there V2 order, or another unusual order?

Do certain structures, like subordinate clauses or questions, require different orders?

Does something other than syntactic relations determine word order?

Do relative clauses precede their head, or follow their head, or does it have internally-headed relative clauses?

Does it use a relative pronoun, another linking word, a special inflection, or no marking on the relative clause?

Does it allow gaps in a relative clause, or require resumptive pronouns?

Does it use some less common relativization strategy, like correlative constructions?

Is your language highly deranking? Are coordinate or subordinate constructions more marked?

Do you allow serial verbs?

Is your language head-marking or dependent-marking? Or double-marking? Or zero-marking? Or marks relations on something else?

Is your language inconsistent in marking type? Where does the split occur? Is there a pattern? (E.g., head-marked clauses and dependent-marked noun phrases in Bantu.)

Is your language synthetic?

Does your language have derivational morphology, but no inflectional morphology?

Do morphemes tack on to each other like legos, one after the other, in linear order? Or not?

Does it have portmanteau morphemes?

Does it have non-concatenating morphology?

Does it have templatic morphology (e.g., Semitic triliteral roots)

Is there a limit to the number of morphemes you can tack onto a root?

Do the morphemes occur in a fixed order, or can you change the order, say to indicate scope?

Do you allow multiple roots in one word form, or does each complex word have only one root, no matter how many derivations and inflections you apply to it?

Can verbs incorporate multiple verb roots?

Can verbs incorporate nouns?

If a verb incorporates a possessed noun, does the possessor get marked on its person-marking

How many different arguments are indexed in your verbs’ person-marking? None? Only subject? Subject and object? Indirect objects too? Non-core arguments?

How do you construct comparatives?

Do you use a case form or adposition, or a particle like ‘than’?

Do you have ‘exceed’ comparatives, positive-negative comparatives, or topical comparatives?

Are motion events verb-framing or satellite-framing?

For satellite-framing languages, are the motion verbs manner-conflating or figure-conflating? Or even ground-conflating?

Do you mark evidentiality?

Do you distinguish alienable and inalienable possession?

Does your language have a copula? Multiple copulas? Does it have a separate existential verb? Does it have a ‘have’ verb?

Does it have separate words for ‘tree’ and ‘wood’?

[linguisten]

LDC Australia & Oceania 7/7: Sasak

Linguistic Diversity Challenge Australia & Oceania

What is the language called in English and the language itself?

Sasak, Lombok

Where is the language spoken?

It is spoken on Lombok island, West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia

How many people speak the language? Is it endangered?

The language is spoken by roughly 2.6 million native speakers, but it might become endangered within one or two generations nonetheless

Speakers perceive their language as less prestigious, so they often switch to Indonesian to create their identity such as being educated or come from the city. [...] Indonesian is the national language and has been strongly imposed in many of the domains (ELP)

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

Austronesian (1277) >> Malayo-Polynesian (1257) >> Malayo-Sumbawan (78) >> North and East Malayo-Sumbawan (74) >> Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa (3) >> Sasak-Sumbawa (2) >> Sasak;  the most famous close relative is Balinese 

What writing system does the language use?

Traditionally, Sasak had its own writing system which is closely related to the Balinese script (see links); nowadays, however, it is mostly written with the Latin alphabet, following Indonesian orthography standards

What kind of grammatical features does the language have? What is its typological profile?

It is your typical Western Malayo-Polynesian language with a few “but”s; it has a focus-style alignment, but it has mostly fee word order; it has few prefixes and suffixes but a fairly impressive set of clitics; and to add some distinct flavor, it has a politeness level system reminiscent of Balinese or Javanese

What does the language sound like?

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

A former colleague of mine (when I was still teaching at the dept. of anthropology in Münster) was (probably still is) married to a Sasak.

I made this post upon special request from @ajengnh. 

(re)sources

https://phoible.org/languages/sasa1249

https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/sasa1249

https://omniglot.com/writing/sasak.htm

https://lingdy.aa-ken.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/140227-intl-symp-and-ws_peter_k_austin_paper.pdf

http://www.language-archives.org/language/sas

http://odin.linguistlist.org/igt_urls.php?lang=sas

http://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/10451

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasak_language