Welcome to another chapter in the story of the emoji conlang 🖼🗣. This time around, we’ll get most of the more complex clauses you’d find in a language, including some that are traditionally considered the hardest to pin down. So let’s get right into it, shall we?
Comparisons
Comparing two things is both easy and common. In English, of course, you use “comparative” forms of adjectives: bigger, stronger, more interesting. 🖼🗣 does things a little differently, however.
First off, there are no special adjective suffixes for comparisons. That fits with the general idea of the conlang as being very isolating. Instead, we use the verb ⬜▫. Normally, it has the meaning “to exceed”, but we can prefix it with an adjective (effectively functioning as an adverb) to create a comparison: 👇 👨 ↕〰 ⬜▫ 👆 👩 “this man is taller than that woman”.
The form, then, is fairly simple. First comes the thing that is being compared. Next is an adjective for the quality being compared. Third on the list is the verb ⬜▫ (which can take suffixes if needed). Last comes the “standard”, the yardstick being measured against.
Note that this construction is for actual comparisons only. If you just want an adjective meaning “more of X”, you can just use the superlative suffix ⬛. It works for English “more” and “most”.
Causation and purpose
In 🖼🗣, these two concepts are closely related. Something can cause something else to perform an action, or something can perform that action for a reason. Either way, the form is similar, so we’ll treat these two types of clauses together.
First, the simpler purpose clause is just a string of verbs or verb phrases, with objects and the like inserted where they would normally go. So “I went to the store to buy food” becomes 🤳 🛫◀ 🏬 🛍📨 🥘.
Note here that the subject of the second clause is implied. That’s normal. Just having multiple verbs strung together is enough to indicate what we’re talking about. But we can add a subject, too: 🤳 🛫◀ 🏬 🤲 💁 👉▶ 🥘. (That strange 💁 in there will make sense in a minute.) Roughly, this sentence translates as “I went to the store so we’ll have food.”
Now, building off this, we can use the verb ↘ “cause” to create, well, causatives. For instance, ♀ ↘◀ 🤳 🛫 🏬 would mean something like “she made me go to the store”; here, we explicitly indicate the subject in the second clause, showing that it is not the same as in the first.
Finally, two special words work with the purpose clause to add to it. Between the verb phrases, we can add ⤵⌛: or ⤵↘ to express times or reasons, respectively. Here’s an example of each:
- 🤳 ❔➡ 🚫 🛫◀ 🏫 ⤵⌛ ➡ 🤢. “I couldn’t go to school while I was sick.”
- 🤳 ❔➡ 🚫 🛫◀ 🏫 ⤵↘ ➡ 🤢. “I couldn’t go to school because I was sick.”
The topic particle
I promised I’d explain 💁, so here goes. In linguistic terms, it’s a topic particle, sometimes called a topicalizer. If you know Japanese, it should feel familiar, as it functions much like the particle wa (は). If not, read on.
The topic of a sentence is often the same as the subject. In cases where it isn’t, however, or when we want to emphasize it for some reason, we use the topic particle to draw attention to it. Notably, 🖼🗣 uses this in possessive predicates. The formula here is (owner) 💁 ➡ (possession), and we could translate it loosely “with (owner), there is a (possession)”. Complicated, I know, but you’ll get the hang of it.
Indeed, possessives like this are one of the few cases where the language gives two similar concepts wildly different forms. Compare 🤳 💁 ➡ 🐈 “I have a cat” versus 🤳’🐈 “my cat”. Not nearly the same.
Back to the topic particle, though, because it’s got another use: subjects. Not the grammatical sort, but the discussion sort. If I wanted to say in 🖼🗣 that my favorite food is chicken, for instance, I might type 🥘 💁 🤳 🔘👍 🐔. You can follow the same pattern to express preferences, opinions, ideas, and much more.
Relative clauses
Last, we’ll look at what is traditionally considered one of the most difficult phrases to describe, the relative clause. Fortunately for us, 🖼🗣 makes those fairly easy to start.
Relative clauses always begin with 👈, so if you see that, you know what you’re dealing with. In some cases, you don’t even have to worry about anything else. When the head noun is the same as the subject of the relative clause, you’re done: 👩 👈 🏡➡ 📍 👵 ⬜▫ 🤳, “the woman who lives here is older than me”.
When it’s not the subject, the only thing that changes is an extra pronoun that we add into the relative clause, kind of a placeholder for what we took out. 👨 👈 🤳 👀◀ ♂ means “the man that I saw”, but a more literal translation would be the grammatically incorrect (in English) “the man that I saw him”. If you’ve ever lost yourself in relative clauses, you’ll recognize this one!
That extra pronoun functions exactly as the noun it’s replacing, even in possessive constructions. And pedants will either love or hate the way 🖼🗣 deals with relative nouns in prepositional phrases. Because of this “placeholder”, we have no reason to end a sentence with a preposition: 👇 👈 🤳 ➡ ⬅⬅ ◻ “this is where I’m from” (or, if you must be formal, “this is the place from where I come”).
Conclusion
That’s all for now, but we really have all that we need. Well, except for words. Those are, after all, the meat of a language, so the next part of the series is going to go back to making them. Keep watching, because it’s about to get even more fun!