[APPLAUSE]
DAVID PETERSON: Thank you.
So I've worked on a bunch of stuff.
I'm just going to do a quick laundry list here very, very
quickly just so you can see.
So "Game of Thrones" was my first one.
I did a bunch of stuff for that.
"Defiance" on Syfy, "Star Crossed" on the CW, "Thor--
The Dark World," the second one, "Dominion" on Syfy, "The 100"--
airing its last season in May.
We are almost done shooting it.
"Penny Dreadful," that was a fun one.
I liked that.
"The Shannara Chronicles," the "Warcraft" movie,
"Dr. Strange," "Emerald City," "Bright" on Netflix,
"Into the Badlands," for the last season, "The Christmas
Chronicles" on Netflix.
"Arena of Valor" was a game, a MOBA game.
"Another Life," a series on Netflix.
Its second season is coming.
"The Witcher" just finished filming its first season.
"Shadow and Bone," it's also on Netflix.
It's coming.
And the "Dune" film that's going to be coming out
at the end of the year.
So anyway, given that it is the season for it,
I thought I'd begin with just a simple reminder
to please remember to wash your hands with warm water.
And now for the rest of the time,
we're going to be translating that phrase
into a brand-new language that we're going to create
right here on the spot.
And so we're going to use this here to assist us.
So please, everybody, get ready to say stuff,
because if you don't, somebody else is going to dominate it,
and this thing is going to go off the rails real quick.
Just kidding.
No, it'll be fun.
So when you're creating a brand-new language,
the first thing-- before you even start anything else--
is to decide what type of a language
you're going to create.
And that usually involves figuring out
who the speakers are, if the language is going
to be spoken or signed or written,
or if they're going to have some other means of communication.
So far the only thing that we know for certain about language
is that it's some way to encode meaning in some sort of form.
But that form could take various routes.
So we're going to skip over that step and just say let's just
practice with a spoken language, since most languages that we
know are spoken, and so most people have familiarity
with them.
So spoken languages have sounds.
And sounds actually come in groups.
So I'm going to start just by giving you some of these here.
So these sounds right here, which are pretty simple--
so we have P, T, K, S, H, M, N, and L.
And they all have about the sounds you would expect them
to.
So these are consonants.
And then these are vowels.
And they are ah, ee, oo.
They don't have their English pronunciations.
These sounds-- the consonants and vowels here--
most languages have all of these sounds.
And all languages have most of these sounds.
So it's a good place to start.
But after this, you can add stuff.
You can subtract stuff.
For example, Hawaiian, or at least
many dialects of Hawaiian, don't have a T.
They also don't have an S. No dialect of Hawaiian
has an S. Many languages don't have an L. Many languages don't
have an R.
So, anyway, this is a good place to start our sound system.
But now we're going to either add or subtract stuff to it.
So, go.
What do we like?
This is a very, very, very basic sound system.
Do you want to add anything?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: What?
AUDIENCE: Q.
DAVID PETERSON: No, wait.
Hold on.
First of all, Q, we're going to deal with the IPA.
So what is written as Q, if you do it in IPA,
this is a sound that's known as a uvular stop--
koh, koh, koh.
It's like k but further back in the mouth.
The back of your tongue touches the uvula
and produces a sound that's not keh but koh.
It's why we spell the name of this country with a Q.
It's not Iraq.
It's Iraq, Iraq, with a nice hollow Q sound in the back.
Anyway, so are you sure you want Q?
It's a fun one.
I like it.
But if you want it, we'll add it.
Wait, votes for Q?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, my gosh.
We're adding Q. All right.
Let's do it.
So we're going to have our basic phonology.
And we are adding Q, uvular stop.
All right.
Any others?
Any other favorites?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Velar nasal.
DAVID PETERSON: Velar nasal, of course.
This is the sound at the end of sing
and also at the beginning of the Vietnamese name
Nguyen, if you pronounce it right.
But I didn't.
But at least I pronounced the velar nasal part right.
So this is a good one.
Anything else that we want to throw in?
AUDIENCE: V.
DAVID PETERSON: What?
Give it a V as in--
AUDIENCE: V as in victor.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, V as in victor.
Let's talk about that.
So we have fricatives.
These are sounds that sound roughly like-- oh, we
don't have a table here.
I don't know if you're even going
to be able to pick this up, but they sound roughly
like this [SCRATCHING SOUND].
So sss, fff, sh, vvv, sss, and so forth.
The difference between, let's say, these two sounds
is whether the vocal folds vibrate.
These are the little things that help prevent food
from getting into your lungs.
So if we leave them silent, you get a sound like fff, f.
If you vibrate them, you get this sound, vvv.
They're exactly the same sound.
The only difference is that your vocal folds are vibrating.
So as we talk about V here, when you add sounds to a language,
sounds tend to come in groups.
So this guy is a part of two groups--
the group of voice sounds and the group of fricatives.
This one, voiceless sounds and fricatives.
So, so far we have voiceless stops, and a very good series
of them--
P, T, K, and koh.
We've got a series of nasals.
But we don't have a uvular nasal.
I'll note that.
And we only have voiceless fricatives
S and H. If we want to add V, do we want to also add F?
And do we want to add this guy's sibling, Z?
S and Z are the same sound, but one has
a vibration of the vocal folds.
So whoever suggested the V, what do you think?
AUDIENCE: Sure.
Why not?
DAVID PETERSON: All of them?
AUDIENCE: Add them all.
DAVID PETERSON: Are we good with this?
AUDIENCE: Can we add V and Z without the unvoiced pairs?
Or is that weird?
DAVID PETERSON: No, it's not, actually.
There are plenty of languages that actually have V
that don't have F. Z without S?
No, you don't find that.
And we already have S. So we'd have to remove it.
Remember, S is there.
But we could add just Z and V.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
DAVID PETERSON: There are lots of languages that will have a V
and not have an F. And this is because it's a weak fricative.
So something like these guys right here
are strong fricatives.
These, and that one they're actually, these are all weak.
And so things will happen with these
that don't happen with these.
So we got Z and V. Yes?
AUDIENCE: A rolled R?
DAVID PETERSON: A rolled R. That's a very good one.
I like that sound.
I'm just going to add it without even consulting anybody.
Everybody can do that one, right?
Rrr.
And so on.
That's a good one.
Oh, and actually I should have asked which type of rolled R.
Did you mean that rolled R rrr?
Or did you mean the one uhrrr?
The first one.
Good.
So let's see.
What we got P, T, K, S, Z, V. We have M and agma.
We have a koh.
We don't have any fricatives in the back.
We don't have anything like [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE]
or [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE]..
That's also one.
These are things.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: How about a yuh?
DAVID PETERSON: A yuh?
Hey, that's a good one.
That's a good one.
Any objections to yuh?
A yuh?
As in yellow?
All right.
The symbol for that one is a J, a J, a yuh.
We're getting a pretty good set of--
AUDIENCE: --any clicks?
DAVID PETERSON: Any clicks?
Clicks also will come in series if you add clicks.
So, for example, you'll never find a language
that has a whole bunch of non-click sounds
and then just has this, which is [INAUDIBLE]..
No language has that.
Every language has-- as far as we know,
I think at least the minimum is three.
It might be two.
I'm going to have to look this up.
I'm very interested now.
But usually something like that, which is a [INAUDIBLE],,
that one, and then what else?
There's also that one, which is [INAUDIBLE],, dental.
And then so wait--
[INAUDIBLE]
I guess very few languages have this one, which
looks like the chemical symbol for gold but is [INAUDIBLE]..
That one.
And then I'm missing my other click.
So it's [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Lateral.
DAVID PETERSON: Lateral?
Well, now, this one was the lateral.
This one was the lateral, palatal lateral.
[INAUDIBLE] All right.
Well, anyway, these are the four.
How do we feel about adding some clicks?
Because if we're adding one, we're adding at least two.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
Which two?
Which two we want here, [INAUDIBLE] or a [INAUDIBLE]??
Sorry.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] the last one.
AUDIENCE: The gold symbol.
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] And then what is our other one?
The horse one?
[INAUDIBLE] Or the clock one?
[INAUDIBLE]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Or the [INAUDIBLE]..
That one.
Here we go.
We got it.
Clock and also-- no, I'm sorry.
[INAUDIBLE] There was that and clock.
Good.
All right.
Let's give us some space here.
We've got a good set of consonants.
Why don't we jump to vowels?
Now, vowels are a little bit easier
because there aren't as many that
are distinguished in languages.
We've got, so far, ah, ee, oo.
And actually, it's not ah.
It's more of an aah.
Aah, ee, oo.
And these sounds are very common.
You'll find them in many languages.
English has a whole bunch of vowels
that are both at different levels and at different--
what do you call it?
whether they're tense or lax.
In other words, keyed versus kid--
keying a car versus joking with a car.
I kidded a car.
So we have things like that.
European languages will have the front rounded vowels.
So rather than ee they'll have [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE]..
And rather than just eh, they'll have
[INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE].
I don't think anybody has [INAUDIBLE],, that sound.
AUDIENCE: We should.
DAVID PETERSON: You think so?
Oh, god.
It has the IPA symbol like this, which
I don't think that they even list on the IPA
anymore because somebody finally realized
no language has that sound.
So they just removed it from the IPA.
But it's there.
[INAUDIBLE] Yeah, very low and round.
So not [INAUDIBLE],, but [INAUDIBLE]..
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Before we go deep into vowels, quick question
about the consonants.
DAVID PETERSON: You bet.
AUDIENCE: --saying you'll never find a language that
has one of these sounds in this class of sounds,
but not some of the other ones.
And I was wondering, you're designing a language now.
Are these rules that you really don't
want to break because it will sound unnatural?
DAVID PETERSON: That's a good question, actually.
So the question was, when it comes
to universal tendencies in languages,
are these things that you want to break or not?
It depends on the type of language you're making.
Which is kind of a--
I don't know.
For what we're doing right now, I
guess it isn't as super important.
I always try to make it a little bit, I guess, more natural.
But you don't necessarily have to.
Plus, these things are always just jumbling around
in my mind.
So every time one pops up, I say,
well, you can't do that because-- but you actually
can do whatever you want.
If you're just designing the language just on your own,
you can absolutely do with that whatever
you want as long as it actually functions
and some other person understands what you're doing.
And you don't need to bother a bit
about what other languages do.
Sometimes it can help inform so you
know when you're breaking the rules on purpose
and when you're not.
So we need to move.
There's much more in language than just the sounds.
Vowels?
AUDIENCE: What about long and short variance on vowels?
DAVID PETERSON: That's good.
All right.
Let's do that.
So rather than just ah ee oo, it's
ahh eee ooo, versus ah ee oo.
I kind of like that.
So I'm just going to add this little-- oh, brother.
Of course-- well, you just trust me.
This means that we're going to have long and short variance
of all the vowels.
And now we've got six total vowels, which is good.
The smallest number of vowels you can have in a language,
as far as we know, is two.
And there are a couple of languages in the Caucasus
that are argued to have two distinctive vowels.
Anyway, now we've got six.
So we're fine.
We can add more.
For example, we don't have any mid vowels, like this one,
eh or oh, or this guy that looks like an upside down E that's
just an uh.
But we can also be good.
Is there anybody that feels like we should have more vowels?
I'm actually seeing a lot of heads shaking.
All right.
I actually want to put this to a vote.
More vowels-- yay, raise your hands.
The vast majority say we're good.
So we're good.
We're done with vowels.
All right.
This is our system for the time being.
A very nice and stable system that also has two clicks in it.
All right.
So there's our vowels.
So the next thing, this is the important part.
When you're choosing whatever vowels and consonants are
in your system, you're not actually
defining the sound of your language.
The real definition of the sound of your language
comes from the syllables--
that is, what can be at the beginning of a syllable, what
can be at the end of a syllable, and how syllables are built.
So here are four different languages.
The top is Hawaiian, followed by Japanese, followed by English,
followed by Georgian.
So if you look at Hawaiian, Hawaiian
is very distinct in that it allows no consonant clusters
at the beginning of the word.
And it doesn't allow any consonants
to come at the end of a word or the end of a syllable.
And so you end up with words like [HAWAIIAN] which--
oh, what does that mean?
[HAWAIIAN] is, oh, to make better.
That makes a lot of sense, of course, because it's a--
Oh, wait, actually, since I'm over there,
I forget what the Japanese means, too.
Oh, studied, [JAPANESE].
So Japanese, you have only one sound
that can come at the end of a syllable.
However, you have certain circumstances
where vowels can disappear, making it sound more or less
like you can have more than just an n at the end of a syllable.
So here, there is an invisible I vowel that drops out.
English is just, I mean, terrible here.
Look at this-- strengths?
That's just awful.
There's even like a hidden K in there
when you pronounce it we don't write.
Strengths.
The truth is most of us just don't pronounce all this stuff
all the time.
Have you ever thought about the worst word in English?
Crafts?
There's nothing worse than that word, crafts.
Mhm.
I hate thinking about it.
And then the bottom one, this is Georgian.
And the word, as far as I know, it's pronounced [GEORGIAN]..
It was definitely a concocted word for this example.
It means, you peel us, like in the present tense.
So if somebody were asking a bunch of bananas,
like, what do I do with you?
The bananas would say, you peel us.
See?
I made a context.
But, yeah, you can get tons of consonants
all in a row in Georgian just like this.
So the question is, for our language,
what do we want to do?
And we're going to break it down this way.
Let's start at the beginning of the syllable.
Do we want to allow more than one consonant
to begin a syllable?
I'm seeing several yeses.
And if so, which ones?
Which ones?
And this is where it's going to help
to break things into classes.
You have stops.
And these are our P, T, K, Q. And I'm going to--
these clicks are going to be tough.
So just remember that they're not going
to play nice with other things.
Then you have nasals.
And that's our M, N, agma.
And fricatives-- we don't have F. We do
have V, S, Z, and H. And then our liquids, L and rrr.
And we have one glide, which is yuh.
So often when you're defining syllables,
it's usually with respect to these categories.
So in other words, sometimes if you look at English,
we allow liquids to come after stops.
But we don't allow L to come after coronals, T's.
So in other words, we have play, and we have clay,
but we don't have tlay.
There's no reason we couldn't.
We just don't in English.
It does go the other way, though.
So we have pray and cray and tray.
That's fine.
But for whatever reason, l coming after T and D
is just out.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: What about like kettle?
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, kettle, there, basically, it's
a different type of L. The L has essentially become a vowel.
Realistically, there's a little bitty vowel before it.
But it's kettle.
It's not [INAUDIBLE].
But you actually do get that in plenty of languages.
And you do get that with the R in French, which is why-- oh,
my goodness--
is this-- yeah?
Wait.
Is that how you spell that?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
DAVID PETERSON: [FRENCH] And you just kind of do the TR
at the end of it.
You don't actually say this little vowel
unless you're an American learning.
Then you do it all the time, "katra."
So, anyway, thoughts on consonant clusters?
You can do lots of wild things.
Like, you can have an N come after a T, [INAUDIBLE]..
You could do that if you wanted, but you don't have to.
AUDIENCE: Prenasalized clicks.
DAVID PETERSON: Prenasalized clicks, you could do that.
They're actually just called nasal clicks.
So that would be a distinction between instead of, when
you have a clock sound, instead of [INAUDIBLE],, it would be
[INAUDIBLE].
Did you did you hear?
[INAUDIBLE] Instead of a knock, it feels like a niche.
[INAUDIBLE] But that was too far forward-- sorry.
[INAUDIBLE]
Basically, what you have to feel is
air passing through your lungs out your nose when
you're doing the click.
Anyway, so we can have that distinction.
Let's just throw that in.
So yeah, nasal versus non-nasal clicks.
Good luck.
So we've got our nasalized clicks.
Anything else?
Do we want PL?
Do we want TL?
Do we want things like that?
Let's just say we can get liquids coming after stops.
So that's great.
AUDIENCE: Can we get glides after stops?
DAVID PETERSON: Yes, we can get glides after stops.
All right.
Cool.
AUDIENCE: How about fricatives after stops?
DAVID PETERSON: Absolutely, we can.
I mean, look, what we have is "kwuh."
When that gets borrowed into a lot of languages like German,
it's "kvuh," which is just, what?
It's just this kkk.
"Kvah."
So, yeah, that's fine.
All right.
Anything coming after nasals or no?
AUDIENCE: Is there any combination of [INAUDIBLE]
that's universally not allowed?
DAVID PETERSON: Maybe a stop coming after a stop.
You can have a word that begins like Swahili does this a lot.
[SWAHILI] is a word for child.
So it's an m followed by a t.
Now the only difference is that in something
like [SWAHILI],, that little mark means it's syllabic.
So it's actually like this is three syllables.
It's not two.
But yeah, you can do that.
You also have this thing called prenasalized stops where
it actually isn't a syllable.
It's like [INAUDIBLE].
You can even have the opposite, which
is really frustrating to me, like [INAUDIBLE]..
I don't even know how to do it.
I've never been able to successfully pronounce this.
But you actually have nasal exits
for stops, which doesn't make any sense to me,
but it's possible.
All right.
Let's call that a day for the beginning of the word.
How about the end of a word?
Are words going to be able to end with a consonant?
I actually heard a lot of no's.
We don't want words ending with consonants?
AUDIENCE: No.
AUDIENCE: That's nonsense.
DAVID PETERSON: That's amazing.
I love it.
Actually, you want to know one of the weirdest universals
when it comes to clicks?
Apparently, clicks can't end a syllable.
I don't know why.
Seems fine to me.
So like [INAUDIBLE],, it seems fine.
I don't see why that would be anything bad about that.
But, yeah, it doesn't happen at all.
So no codas.
So we're done with sounds.
So let's-- oh wait, I'm sorry.
You were asking can you associate sounds
with particular parts of speech.
Oh, look at that.
That would've been helpful.
Anyway, I mean, yeah, you could.
Languages generally do not.
Natural languages generally do not.
But you absolutely could.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: If we have phonemic distinctions
between long and short vowels, does
that necessarily mean it can't be a stressed language?
DAVID PETERSON: No, absolutely not.
Hawaiian has long and short vowels and has stress.
Arabic has long and short vowels and has stress.
Yeah, no problem there.
We didn't talk about stress, but we actually
could talk about stress versus tone.
But we can't because we're running out of time.
So let's move on.
It's just going to be a stressed language.
All right?
When we talk about nouns, nouns can do
a couple of different things.
They can have number.
So in English, we have ship versus ships.
The second one is Arabic.
So you have [ARABIC],, [ARABIC] and [ARABIC],, which is a cat,
two cats, and then three or more cats.
So you have a special form in Arabic
that means exactly two of something.
And it still enjoys a lot of use.
Then you also have something like Pokemon, where
it is singular and plural.
Basically there's no distinction in number at all.
And did you know this goes for the names of the Pokemon?
So it's like, it's two pikachus.
It's two pikachu.
I mean, I find that easier with some than others,
especially geodude.
There are three geodude over there.
What a terrible name.
Anyway, so we can do any of those things--
so just have a simple singular versus plural.
Or we can have a singular, dual, plural, or nothing.
Gender.
I know that when you hear gender in a language,
you immediately jump to this.
But it doesn't actually need to have anything
to do with biological sex or gender representation at all--
I'm sorry, gender expression.
It could be other things.
So this could be the gender system of a language.
Could also have this.
And then again, this means that every single noun
in the entire language will belong
to one category or the other.
So chair is obviously tent, but podium is probably hotel.
So anyway, this is a favorite of mine,
I mean, just because that they're
three things I really like.
You could have rectangles, squares, and other shapes.
Natural, artificial, supernatural--
this is actually one that's instantiated
in one of the languages of the world, or a few of them.
You could divide them into this, or this is a good one.
Because most of the languages that we're
familiar with in the west, which is
all of the Indo-European languages and also
the Semitic languages, have nominal gender that
is based on masculine or feminine,
we tend to think that the two must be conflated,
but they don't need to be.
Swahili has a--
I'm sorry, all the Bantu languages
have a ton of genders, none of them are masculine or feminine.
They all have to do with other things.
Lots of times it's humans versus big things versus small things
versus implements and so on.
Anyway, so that was that.
And then what comes after that?
Oh, verbs.
We're not ready for that.
So let's talk about nouns.
Number, yea or nay?
And if so, what?
I'm seeing nay for number.
Anybody want to jump up and say yea?
Wow.
AUDIENCE: Yea!
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
Whoa.
Hold on.
I've got one yea.
Any other yeas for number?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, my goodness.
This is actually-- raise your hands
if you want a number distinction of some kind in this language.
Oh, my goodness.
Raise your hand for no number distinction.
I don't think we have time for a serpentine, but I mean--
is there anybody here that can count sheep by their feet
and divide by four?
My goodness.
I don't know how to solve this.
So I think we have to go with, in the interest of time,
no number.
All right, no number.
How about gender?
Are we doing gender?
First of all, yea for gender.
Oh, nay for gender.
Oddly, I think the yeas have it.
There were many people who didn't vote.
AUDIENCE: I have a question about gender.
What are some of the interesting genders
you've added to your languages?
DAVID PETERSON: Some of the interesting genders
I've added to my languages?
Probably my favorite gender system
was one I did for an alien language
that I created on "Defiance" called Iratheint.
It had 18 genders.
And the genders, the top portion of them-- the bottom portion
were things like diminutive, argumentative,
which are very common, abstract, and so more like, I guess,
category-type things.
The ones on top, it was plant, animal, person, and object.
And each of those was divided into dangerous
or threatening versus non-dangerous
and non-threatening.
And so there was a distinction, for example,
between water, which was in the non-threatening substance
class, and hot water, which was in the dangerous substance
class.
So that one was kind of a fun one.
I really liked that.
AUDIENCE: Neutral [INAUDIBLE].
DAVID PETERSON: What?
AUDIENCE: Neutral.
[INAUDIBLE] for the neutral.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, neutral.
For neuter, neuter is something that really only makes sense,
or we only see it, in systems that also
have masculine and feminine.
You don't tend to see it elsewhere.
Or if you do, it's basically a category
called other rather than neuter because, of course,
neuter is [INAUDIBLE].
It means neither one.
So it implies two others.
So other is usually a better name for that.
And, honestly, there usually is a dumping ground
in gender systems where it's like, if you
don't know what it is, it goes here
unless it's a binary system.
And usually it's one of the ones that
has to do with if it's not specifically
this or that thing, or this thing, then it goes here.
So, anyway, does anybody want to jump out and suggest a gender
system for this?
AUDIENCE: Physical and non-physical.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, that's nice, physical versus non-physical.
It's pretty good.
Anybody want to add something?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, my god.
You're jumping all the way to alienable
versus inalienable possession.
Maybe that's something that we should talk about.
Alienable possession is something like this.
Right now this is my--
I don't even know what you call this-- my thing.
But this arm of mine is probably not something
that I'm going to part with very soon.
So calling this my thing versus calling this my arm
is something that languages will treat differently.
Do we want to make that distinction?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
So we have alienable versus inalienable.
This doesn't necessarily need to be a part of the gender system,
but it can be just something that happens.
And it can show up elsewhere.
Let's just throw it up.
Physical versus non-physical.
Who is in favor of this?
All right.
We got it.
And then, we're just going to look at verbs really
quickly, because both of the verb
forms that we have are a little strange.
But verbs will sometimes change their form
depending on how they're used in the sentence.
So for tense, for example, one way that your verbs can change
is not at all.
It just doesn't change no matter how it's used.
It could also have a past versus non-past distinction.
This is what English has.
You could also have past, present, and future.
This is what Latin had.
Past, non-past, ancient past-- that's
actually a thing that happens.
Gnomic means timeless.
So in other words, past.
So it's like the dogs barked versus the dogs
are barking versus dogs bark in general.
It's a true fact about the world.
You can also totally ditch tense or combine it with aspect.
And so complete just means that the action has finished,
and incomplete means the action is not finished.
And it doesn't say anything with respect
to tense, in other words, when it happened.
There's was also about to happen, happening,
just happened.
And now this is where it's going to be relevant for us.
Commands can come in several varieties.
It could just be a basic command like an English.
Do this.
Do that.
And that's it.
But you can also have a different form
of the verb depending on polite versus impolite, singular
versus plural-- that is if you're talking
to one or more people, and then, of course, you
could probably also do dual.
I don't think I've ever seen one, but you could.
Positive versus negative-- in other words,
do this or don't do this.
Sometimes you'll have different forms for that.
And then for non-finite forms, these
are things like if you're going to have a separate infinitive
or if you're going to have a participle
or something like that.
Now the reason I'm giving this the short shrift,
even though this is the most complicated aspect
of languages, remember that what we're translating
is "please remember to wash your hands with warm water."
And so there's only two verbs there.
There's "remember"-- I mean, depending
on what we do with "please," but there's "remember"
and then there's "wash."
"Remember" is a command.
And the "wash" part, or the "to wash" part
is basically an infinitival construction,
meaning that there's no tense.
There's no aspect.
It's just the bare form of the verb.
So the only question that I think I want to put forth to us
is--
these are nouns.
Let's talk about verbs.
Command forms.
Do we want to make any distinctions between polite,
impolite, how many people we're talking
to, or positive or negative?
AUDIENCE: Polite.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
So you want to make it-- basically,
if you have a polite distinction in your--
what you're talking about-- in your command forms,
all you're doing is making it extra clear when
you want to insult somebody.
So all right, here polite versus impolite.
We're going to have to eventually do these things,
right?
So polite versus impolite.
Multiple, talking to one person or more?
AUDIENCE: No.
DAVID PETERSON: No.
That's very good.
You know why it's good?
Exactly.
These things tend to agree.
Very good.
And then positive versus negative?
It's not really going to come into play for us
because usually if one is going to be default,
it's going to be positive.
In other words, if there's going to be like a little affix
on something that indicates a difference in category,
usually the one without it is going to be the positive.
It would be pretty cool if there was
a language where the default form was negative command
forms.
If you're just saying the word, it means "don't do it."
That's pretty cool.
And then for infinitives, do we want
something that's going to indicate
the infinitive in English?
We have this little "to" that we throw in there.
Other languages like Spanish will actually
add a little ending like [SPANISH] versus [SPANISH]..
What do we think, something or nothing?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, boy, we haven't even
gotten to the fixes yet.
Those are coming later.
AUDIENCE: Make the infinitive the root, the simplest form.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, I'm hearing infinitive the root.
Does anybody agree or disagree?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: OK, OK, OK.
Basic form, good.
All right.
But this could still be different.
All right.
Next, modifiers.
So when you look at these, reading from left
to right, which one of these is the cat box versus the box cat?
All right.
We say that because in English, our modifiers come first.
So even though these are both nouns,
if you put one in front of the other,
we assume that we're talking about a this kind of thing,
not a this kind of thing.
Obviously, a language can be totally neutral with respect
to this fact.
And you could have this be the natural order.
Which one do we want, like English or like Spanish?
AUDIENCE: Like Spanish.
DAVID PETERSON: Spanish, it is.
All right.
So we're going to just make a quick little note here.
Nouns are followed by modifiers.
Good.
Are we going to have adjectives?
Or are the adjectives going to be verbs?
In other words, do you want to just have an adjective
that means warm and we'll deal with how it means warm later?
Or should it be something like there's
a verb that means to be warm and we need a participle?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, boy.
We need to revisit verbs then.
We're going to have to-- so let's
just-- we're going to say adjectives to verb,
and we'll come back to that.
Adverbs, do we need adverbs?
Let's see.
"Please remember to wash your hands with warm water."
I don't think we need adverbs, but just know that they exist.
Anyway, so now we're jumping to pronouns.
Pronouns can have a bunch of different things.
This is something that every single language on the planet
has, as far as we know.
Every single language of the planet
has a first and second person pronoun.
It makes it least that distinction.
Many also have a third person pronoun.
Most will not have gender associated
with that third person pronoun.
By the way, as something I also throw in there,
many also distinguish singular versus plural.
Some don't.
Then there's also a system where there's gender on the pronouns.
And then the question is, is it on just the third person?
Is it also on the second person?
Is it also on the first person?
And it gets less and less common as you go from third to second
to first.
So, for example, Arabic has a gendered second person pronouns
but not first person pronouns.
Russian distinguishes gender on the verb in the first person
in the past tense only.
It's kind of wild.
Anyway, so I don't think I've got anything else for pronouns.
Oh, yeah, there's also politeness
that you could throw onto these things.
So, what do we think for--
and then agreement, in other words,
when is the verb going to agree with something?
So, first, are we going to have first, second, and third person
pronouns?
Or just first and second?
AUDIENCE: First and third.
AUDIENCE: First and second.
AUDIENCE: First, second, and third.
AUDIENCE: Only third.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, my goodness.
Let's go first, second, third.
And then the question when it comes to gender,
gender in pronouns always comes from the gender from the nouns.
So we have physical versus non-physical.
Is this going to show up in our pronoun system or not?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Third person, second person,
and first person?
Just third person?
What do we think?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: What's a non-physical first person exactly?
DAVID PETERSON: A toaster, a talking toaster.
AUDIENCE: A talking toaster?
DAVID PETERSON: Wait, oh, non-physical?
Non-physical, no, it's an entity, isn't it?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: A talking ghost.
DAVID PETERSON: It's an idea.
Well, ideas speak.
When freedom speaks-- no.
It's all right.
So here we go--
phys versus non-phys.
Good.
And then I guess we're not going to have number, huh?
AUDIENCE: No.
DAVID PETERSON: Yeah.
All right.
So we're just going to have those three pronouns
and be done with it.
That's good.
So next-- syntax.
So in English, this is our word order.
Eye means I. The heart means love.
And the cat means cats.
So "I love cats" is the basic way to say that,
with the verb coming in the middle.
You can also have, as in Japanese, you basically
say, "I cats love" if you throw the eye in there.
[JAPANESE]
Hawaiian, you have "love I cats."
Malagasy, spoken in Madagascar, "love cats I."
American Sign Language, depending on how you sign it,
but I was thinking of like "cats love I."
That's kind of a common way that it happens.
Now there is some extra stuff going on.
Obviously, the cats is getting case marking, but anyway.
And then there's this language I did
find that has "cats I love."
This is the percentages worldwide of how common
these word orders are.
Japanese word order is the most common.
Ours is the second most common.
Hawaiian is the next.
But you can see there's a huge drop-off there.
And then basically this one, "cats I love," I mean,
it's 0% because that's what it rounds to.
They argue that there's like two languages that do it.
But that's about it.
This one is also extremely uncommon, but somehow better
than that one.
It's kind of interesting.
The truth is you can probably find
every single one of these word orders
in every single language, depending on the construction
and how they're saying it.
But this is the basic default word order
that you're going to hear 90% of the time.
What do we want to go with for ours?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: I heard a bunch of different things.
So there's one for Malagasy, which is "love cats I."
That was actually what you said, too.
So two for Malagasy.
AUDIENCE: VSO.
DAVID PETERSON: VSO?
That's Hawaiian, "love I cats."
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, boy.
AUDIENCE: I could compromise.
[INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: OK, here we go.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Here we go.
It's Madagascar versus Hawaii.
Which one's the best island?
So first, VSO, like Hawaiian, "love I cats."
And now, VOS, Madagascar, "love cats I."
I'm sorry.
Hawaii has it.
So we're going to write our word order.
I'm just going to write it right here--
VSO-- so we remember.
All right.
Let's move on to the next thing, which is one of the reasons
that we have varying word order or varying strategies
is everybody always needs to be able to know how do you figure
out who does what to whom.
So if you're hugging the cat, how
do you figure out if it's you hugging the cat or the cat
is hugging you.
Because it's a cat, you know it's not going
to be the cat hugging you.
So, for example, if you make this distinction with word
order, it would mean for English,
"I love cats" is correct for the order of the person
hugging the cat.
The other order, "cats love I" is wrong.
So that's when you use word order to make this distinction.
You could also use case.
This is the eye shadow I gave these things.
So you can see the orders are different,
but the meaning of "I love cats" comes through for both
because the eye always has the blue eye shadow
and the cat always has the pink eye shadow.
So it doesn't matter what order you put the words
in because the case is there.
On the other hand, and this would be fine, too.
But this would be wrong because the eyeshadows changed.
The case is changed, meaning that the meaning is now
opposite.
So that's another way to tell who does what to whom.
There's also head marking, which is the verb itself changes form
based on some salient form of the noun in question.
It doesn't matter what order you put
everything in because the verb will tell you
who does what to whom.
That is head marking.
And so that would work, and this would not.
AUDIENCE: Head marking is correlated to the object?
DAVID PETERSON: No.
It could be object-- well, actually,
most commonly it is the object.
But it's often both.
It could be the object.
It could be the subject and object.
It could be the subject, object, and indirect object.
That's what actually we saw with Georgian.
It does that.
And then you could also mark it with adpositions-- so,
in other words, just a little word like "to"
or "at" which tells you who does what to whom.
And adpositions can come in two different orders.
This is English-- "the cat in the box."
This is Japanese-- "the in the box cat."
This one's called a preposition because the thing
that it's being inside of or whatever comes first.
And this one's called the postposition
because it comes after.
In other words, this thing governs this.
And you call it a preposition if it comes before
and a postposition if it comes after.
And then you can also do it with affixes.
And affixes, by the way, they tend to line up.
So if the verb comes at the end of the sentence
or after the object, you tend to have suffixes more.
If the verb comes at the beginning of the sentence,
you tend to have prefixes more.
I will note that our verb comes first.
So how do we want to say who does what to whom?
Strict word order?
Case marking?
Using an adposition, probably a preposition?
Or head marking?
AUDIENCE: Head marking.
AUDIENCE: Preposition.
AUDIENCE: Word order.
DAVID PETERSON: Whoa.
How many for word order?
How many for head marking?
And how many for prepositions?
I'm sorry, how many for cases?
All right.
Well, let's say cases or prepositions because--
and then you can decide if we want to mark it with an affix
or with a preposition.
So cases, strict case marking?
This is dependent marking.
That one definitely lost.
So your candidate is out.
So we're going to go back to word order versus head marking.
Word order?
Head marking?
Holy smoke.
Here we go.
Head marking.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Yeah, all right.
So I'm just going to pop a quick H in there.
All right.
Head marking, I'll remember.
And then this coordination, I'm just
going to throw up this note.
We don't have to worry about it.
But you can say X and Y. But you can also say X Y
and, or and X and Y. There are many different ways to do
coordination, just so you know.
Now for the words.
So what world are we describing?
So this is where it gets busy.
So we have-- ignore the "please" for right now.
So "remember to wash your hands with warm water."
So let's start with one of the simple ones, "hand."
As a reminder, we do have alienable
versus inalienable possession.
So unless this is a pair of hands
you chopped off somebody else and brought to work,
this is going to be inalienably possessed
when you're talking about washing your hands.
So one of the ways that inalienable possession
works is that you don't use a word like your with it.
That could be one way to do it.
So in other words, instead of saying
"remember to wash your hands," we would just say
"remember to wash hands."
And because it wasn't used, we would know.
Otherwise, we can have a little marker on there.
What are we feeling like?
AUDIENCE: Marker.
So like I said, these tend to be either prepositions or prefixes
for the type of word order that we have.
Do we want preposition or prefix?
AUDIENCE: Prefix.
DAVID PETERSON: Now let's talk about the word itself.
The word for hand is probably very basic
if we're talking about human beings.
There are many languages that don't
distinguish between a word for hand and arm.
Russian is one of them.
And then there are some like English that do.
So, in other words, the word for this in Russian, which-- is it
[RUSSIAN]?
Anybody?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: [RUSSIAN].
So it could be talking about the hand by itself
or it could be be talking about the whole arm.
It just depends on context.
And it usually doesn't make a big difference
which one you're talking about because you'd know.
Anyway, we don't also have arm in this,
so we don't have to worry about it.
But it is a basic word.
So bearing in mind our consonants,
does anybody want to take stab at creating
our very first word, hand?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: What?
Hold on.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: Actually, they were very similar.
Wait.
And say it again.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] And that was with the nasal one,
right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
DAVID PETERSON: Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE] All right.
So let's put our words right here.
And this is how we indicate nasalization usually.
But, I mean, you do it differently for clicks.
Don't you usually just put the N right there-- or an agma--
but I'm going to leave it like that.
Also, was that a long [INAUDIBLE]??
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, yeah.
All right.
There we go, long.
All right.
So we've got that.
[INAUDIBLE], hand.
And so now we need to say that this hand is inalienably
possessed.
How do we want to do that?
Do we want to do it with just a prefix that
just says, this thing is inalienably possessed?
Or do we want to do it with a special pronominal marker?
So, in other words, you have different pronominal markers
that means this thing is alienably
versus inalienably possessed.
AUDIENCE: Prefix.
DAVID PETERSON: Right.
So, yeah-- oh, I see what you're saying.
So one that's related to pronouns, or one that's not.
So related to pronouns, raise your hand.
Not related to pronouns.
Wow.
You really are programmers.
Separate all the meanings out.
Make sure they each have their own little bit.
So what should this prefix be?
What should the form of this prefix
be that says this thing is inalienably possessed?
AUDIENCE: Zzz.
DAVID PETERSON: Mm.
Just by itself?
We never said that we couldn't, did we?
You happy with [INAUDIBLE] Sorry, [INAUDIBLE]..
AUDIENCE: I'd go with [INAUDIBLE]..
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] versus [INAUDIBLE]??
Hold on.
How many for [INAUDIBLE]?
All right.
Fair compromise, it is.
[INAUDIBLE] is going to be inalienable.
We'll just write it like that.
Now we're probably going need the "your" part somewhere.
And remember that modifiers come second.
So the modifier is going to come after this.
So we're going to need a second person pronoun for--
I don't know.
Well, actually, since we have this gender system, physical
versus non-physical entities, that
means that you have to make a choice.
Are you talking to physical or non-physical entities?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: I suppose, well, the question
is, would non-physical entities have hands?
Or, if they did, would they even need
to be washed because they're not physical?
AUDIENCE: They don't want to get a computer virus.
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
Well, let's start with this.
What is our physical second person pronoun?
AUDIENCE: Something with R.
DAVID PETERSON: Something with R. Rrr.
Anybody want to add to rrr?
AUDIENCE: Rrree.
DAVID PETERSON: Rrree?
Rrree it is.
So then we can do one of two things here.
So we have-- sorry, [INAUDIBLE] and then rrree.
Now we can just leave it like that.
In other words, the pronoun itself can serve as a modifier
as well.
Or we can change it in some way so that this pronoun
is marked as a modifier.
So leave it alone or mark it?
AUDIENCE: Leave it alone.
DAVID PETERSON: Good.
All right.
So now we have the "your hands" part.
All right.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: How do you tell that the person is physical
versus non-physical?
It seems ambiguous here.
DAVID PETERSON: That's because we only
created the physical one.
You want to create the non-physical one just
for the heck of it?
Yee?
All right.
There we go.
Rrree is a physical "you."
Yee is non-physical "you."
All right.
So we have the "your hands" part.
"Always remember to wash."
So remember, we're doing just the basic form
of the verb for an infinitive.
What do we think about "wash?"
Is that something that is going to be a basic notion that goes
back to time immemorial? or is it
going to be something that's derived from something else?
AUDIENCE: Basic.
DAVID PETERSON: I disagree, but let's do it.
Somebody give us a form for wash.
AUDIENCE: Shhh.
DAVID PETERSON: The language doesn't have a sh.
Remember that.
We had the option.
We didn't go with it.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] anybody?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] All right.
Here we go.
So yes, and we need the infinitive.
Remember it's "to wash your hands."
So right now we have "to wash your hands."
[INAUDIBLE] I'm sorry.
[INAUDIBLE] No, I'm sorry.
[INAUDIBLE] Gosh, this is a really tough one [INAUDIBLE]..
This will take me a bit.
Anyway, OK.
What do we want to do next?
"Remember" or "with warm water?"
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: "Remember"-- now that's
certainly something that's probably not going to be basic.
How do we want to do that?
How do we build a word for remember?
AUDIENCE: Remind yourself?
AUDIENCE: Start from know.
DAVID PETERSON: Start from?
Oh, K-N-O-W. Got you.
We can start from know.
Give us something for know.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] with a long [INAUDIBLE]??
AUDIENCE: Yep.
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
[INAUDIBLE] All right.
Know.
Now how do we get from know to "remember?"
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: You want to do full reduplication
or have it shorten up a little bit?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, I kind of like this, actually.
All right.
So with reduplication, we get [INAUDIBLE],, "remember."
AUDIENCE: I like that.
DAVID PETERSON: I like that, too.
So [INAUDIBLE].
So now the question is, how are we
going to indicate this command because it's
a command to remember.
AUDIENCE: Ya as a suffix.
DAVID PETERSON: Ya as a suffix.
Oh, ooh, [INAUDIBLE].
I kind of like that, actually.
I'm just going to go with that.
[INAUDIBLE] All right.
Was this polite or impolite?
AUDIENCE: Polite.
It's polite.
DAVID PETERSON: Polite.
Now you're right.
[INAUDIBLE] "Remember to wash your hands."
And then the last thing we'll do--
forget "please."
We'll just say it was built into this.
"With warm water"-- all right.
Since we didn't do case, it's probably
going to require a preposition.
Anybody want to throw something out
for a preposition for "with"?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: We can't end anything with a consonant.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
DAVID PETERSON: All right.
And now, water-- probably super basic.
Anybody want to throw out something for water?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] with a long?
AUDIENCE: Short.
DAVID PETERSON: Short.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE].
And then, now we got to this whole deal with--
so if we don't have adjectives, it's water that is warm.
You did that.
You all did that.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: So it's a verb.
It's going to be in some sort of a form,
probably present tense or gnomic tense.
And it might agree with something.
So let's start with "warm."
Is it going to start as warm?
Or is it going to be built off of hot?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: What?
Hot.
Give me something.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID PETERSON: Wait.
I heard [INAUDIBLE] first.
How are we going to take [INAUDIBLE]----
wait, we don't have that vowel.
Let's call it [INAUDIBLE].
How are we going to take [INAUDIBLE]
and turn it from hot to warm?
Yeah, how are we going to do that?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Change the starting vowel to [INAUDIBLE]..
DAVID PETERSON: To what?
AUDIENCE: To the low round one.
DAVID PETERSON: Oh, my god.
I'm going to accept that even though--
[INAUDIBLE]
All right.
So this is how it will work.
We probably put [INAUDIBLE] here.
And then it would probably have something on it
to indicate that it was agreeing with something.
Since the pronouns are coming afterwards,
it's probably built off the pronouns.
And it's probably going to be built off of this pronoun.
Somebody just give a shout for a third person
pronoun, a really simple one.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAVID PETERSON: [INAUDIBLE] All right.
So I'm going to say [INAUDIBLE].
And so we have "please remember to wash
your hands with warm water."
[INAUDIBLE] There you go.
[APPLAUSE]