A Bittic Researcher

(1/2) Here are some examples of the word “bone” combined with Classic Bittic’s nouns. The red question mark (?) indicates a possible invalid combination. From left-to-right top-to-bottom. bone “bone” thing bone “bone” bulk bone “fertilizer” person bone “osteologist” machine bone “bone machine”? cold bone “bone coldness”? vehicle bone “bone-mobile” plant bone “bone plant”?

(2/2) Here are some examples of the word “bone” combined with Classic Bittic’s nouns. The red question mark (?) indicates a possible invalid combination. From left-to-right top-to-bottom. animal bone “bone animal”? document bone “bone law”? “the idea of bones” gerund bone “boning” place bone “crypt” handheld bone “tiny bone”?

#ConlangNovember 21: Bittic only has only 12 nouns. Here's the glyph for "bone" combined with every noun. Not every combination is productive, but that might just be an imagination failure on my end. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

#ConlangNovember 20:

I probably have covered this before somewhat in #phori, but in response to this prompt, here are some of them again:

Hello: "Eye᷈" (IFM)/"Eye᷈te" (FM)
Goodbye: "Bo̤l" (IFM)/"Bo̤lem" (FM)
Thank You: "Òwel" (IFM)/"Òwelann" (FM)
Sorry: "Bāre᷈n"
Yes/No: "Ye᷈l"/"Sha᷈k"
(1/2)

Here are some idioms and phrases in Classic Bittic! REL person gerund vent “Person who vents.” Someone who leaves a space habitat without permission from the habitat’s authorities. This is different from "person vent" which means “Someone who works on vents”. LOC place void be place hangar all place home “In the void, all hangars are home.” Don’t seek perfection when any solution will suffice.

Here are some more idioms and phrases in Classic Bittic! and thing conjunction thing different two “A conjunction and two different things.” Two things that happen to look related but are otherwise different. 49 (base 16) Farewell

#ConlangNovember 20: Bittic, being a language of a spacefiaring culture, has some space-related idioms. Here are some of them. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

#ConlangNovember 19: The only real change between the older Basic Bittic and the younger Classic Bittic is the change to a heavily prefixing grammar from a more sporadic infixing form. I do plan on demonstrating some semantic changes though. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

That blows my mind! I would've never have figured out the phonetic realizations of non-human speech. What inspired it?

In Classic Bittic, operators precede their operands. Relative clauses work the same. REL person finish see 1sg “The person whom I saw.” Relative clause markers must always have the thing they are referring to right after them, even if it’s an empty “dummy” noun. do know 1sg REL person finish see 1sg “I know the person whom I saw.” Recursion is possible, but it gets confusing after a while... ...the person whom the person whom the person whom the person whom the person whom the person whom the person whom...

#ConlangNovember 17: Polish Notation was a huge inspiration for the grammar of Classic Bittic. All the colors here are to make reading easier for you. Normally, all the glyphs would be two colors. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

Thank you very much!

I found Tangut in my research of writing systems that have no phonetic information. Nothing in Bittic has been directly inspired by Tangut. Tangut simply gave me the confidence that a photographic-only language was viable.

Thank you very much! There were pictures in Bittic messages. The 4x4 glyphs are the simplified images that became standard. I'd imagine that there were a large amount of messages that were just binary images. My focus has been mainly on the language proper.

#conlangnovember

Ngoaqona has two forms of negation: -la (general negation) and -uat (verb phrase negation ig?)

ex.
Nalasaktakvuk
I-NEG-to.stand-to.be.behind-you
“I didn’t stand behind you”

Nasakuattakvuk
I-to.stand-NEG-to.be.behind-you
“I didn’t stand *behind* you (I stood somewhere else)”

Classic Bittic forms questions by using the question glyph. [question glyph] Yes/no questions are formed by bracketing the statement with question glyphs. question do see 3sg 1sg question “Do they see me?” Open questions are formed by replacing the thing being asked about with the question glyph. do see 3sg thing question “What do they see?” **Note the use of “thing” as a dummy noun to “carry” the question glyph.

#ConlangNovember 15& 16: Playing catch-up... Classic Bittic uses VSO word-order and is strictly head-initial in both nouns and verbs. I'm planning on using the locative particle as a sort of topic-marker but that's for later. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

#ConlangNovember 14:

A table with some descendants from Alun's word for "to stand up".

(1/2) Here are some examples of the word “stable” or “stand” combined with Classic Bittic’s verbs. (from left-to-right top-to-bottom) stable “stable” or “stand” be stable “is/am stable” do stable “is/am standing” go stable “going to stand” take stable “stand (for own benefit)” give stable “stand (for someone else’s benefit)” come stable “stand and repeat” insert stable “recklessly stand”

(2/2) Here are some examples of the word “stable” or “stand” combined with Classic Bittic’s verbs. (from left-to-right top-to-bottom) sit stable “foolishly stand” able stable “able to be stable” hold stable “firmly stand” finish stable “finish standing” rise stable “begin standing” fall stable “accidentally stand”

#ConlangNovember 14: The closest word Bittic has to "stand" is "stable". I've combined it with all of Classic Bittic's verbs. They're not as minimalist and elegant as Kēlen, but I still like them. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

be eat 3sg AND REL plant animal below dirt thing zero "They habitually eat plants for groundhogs (lit. below dirt animal) and nothing else. Note that "plant" "animal" and "thing" are the only true nouns in the sentence. They require compounding content words to develop more specific meanings.

#ConlangNovember 13: Depending on the interpretation, Bittic has about 12 nouns and 13 verbs. Nearly everything else are content words that need to follow a noun or verb to have meaning. More complex ideas are expressed through compounding. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

#ConlangNovember 12: Bittic has two verbs that can be used to convey that the action has happened sometime in the past. Otherwise, it uses prepositional time phrases. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

do see 1sg 3sg "I see them." do see 3sg 1sg "They see me." Note the lack of change in the pronouns as they swap roles.

#ConlangNovember 11: Bittic uses Direct Alignment. The reader must rely only on word order to infer who is doing what to whom. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

We hope you get well soon!

Classic Bittic is distinct for its heavily prefixing grammar. It classifies all words as operators or operands. When forming phrases, operators precede their operands, and heads precede their dependents. Some words can be operators or operands depending on the phrase. For example, the basic word order is verb-subject-object. The verb is an operator that takes two nouns as operands. Subjects are more salient than objects. make 3sg machine “They make a machine.” Note that the operator precedes the operands.

Noun phrases follow the same pattern. Operators like nouns, case particles, and determiners are at the front with the operands following them. More “salient” operands preceding less salient ones. GEN animal person “The person’s animal.” GEN and animal plant person “The person’s plant and animal.”

#ConlangNovember 10: Bittic is an isolating language. The form of the glyphs do not change depending on grammar. Classifiers, simple verbs, and particles are common. Classic Bittic is special in that its grammar resembles Polish Notation. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

Day 9 is kinda boring. Bittic lacks allophones or sandhi due to its binary nature.

Glyphs in Bittic are four-by-four grids made up of bits (borders are here to show the individual bits). Ones are represented by white pixels. Zeros by black pixels. Every glyph must have at least one “one” bit in every no or column In other words, rows or columns containing all “zeros” are not allowed. A comparison of glyphs, the first is valid and the other two aren't.

#ConlangNovember 8: Since Bittic does not have a phonology, here is are the rules that govern what is a valid glyph. The idea is that every glyph fills out the whole space it occupies, making boundaries between the glyphs clear. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

Amazing work! lol

A translation of Classic Bittic word meaning "feather". The word is comprised of three parts: a general "thing" classifier, a word for hair, and a word for the concept of flying.

#ConlangNovember 7: I haven't decided if the Iridians knew about birds or not, but this might be their best approximation for "feather" using Classic Bittic's current lexicon. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

A Classic Bittic sentence that translates to: "They habitually eat plants for groundhogs (lit. below dirt animal) and nothing else." The coloring is to demonstrate phrases or groups of words.

#ConlangNovember 6: Glyphs in Classic Bittic are 4x4 grids of binary digits which represents a thing or a concept. These evolved from larger and more literal pictograms that had simplified and shrunk for more information density. #conlang #conlangs #langsky #conscript

Your work is great! I can tell by the detail you put in your art that you care deeply about it. I can't wait to see the final version.

#ConlangNovember 5: Bittic,being an international pictographic language, does not have a phonology in the traditional sense. On the radio waves, the message is encoded in bits of high and low frequencies. The total number of bits in a message must be a semi-prime for decoding.

I haven't really thought of that. I just figured that the message compiling would be handled by computers constantly listening to the common radio bands for messages and bringing attention to specific messages for the user based on keywords. Thank you for bringing it up!

Messages in Bittic are transmitted in bursts such that the number of bits is a semi-prime. That way, the linear string of binary can be easily reordered into a 2-dimensional image. If you ended up with a non-semi-prime amount of bits, then you can assume you got an incomplete message.

The "standard" was alternating high and low frequency pulses to a fixed BPM. The modern standard is that high frequencies are 1s and the low frequencies are 0s. All glyphs standardized around 4x4 bits with no row or column being all low frequency pulses.

How did Heiman influenced astrology? Was it just some basic terms, or a whole way of thinking about the cosmos?

Day 4: The Arecibo message and the conlang Marain by Iain Banks were the main sources for Bittic's look. Toki Pona was a huge source of inspiration for the early grammar of Bittic. Random sources of inspiration for other parts ranged from Sumarian to Tangut.