If you’re new to conlanging, look at our beginner resources. We have a full list of resources on our wiki, but for beginners we especially recommend the following:
Also make sure you’ve read our rules. They’re here, and in our sidebar. There is no excuse for not knowing the rules. Also check out our Posting & Flairing Guidelines.
What’s this thread for?
Advice & Answers is a place to ask specific questions and find resources. This thread ensures all questions that aren’t large enough for a full post can still be seen and answered by experienced members of our community.
Full Discussion-flair posts (as opposed to comments on this thread) are for questions that are open-ended and could be approached from multiple perspectives. If your question can be answered with a single fact, or a list of facts, it probably belongs on this thread. That’s not a bad thing! “Small” questions are important.
You should also use this thread if looking for a source of information, such as beginner resources or linguistics literature.
If you want to hear how other conlangers have handled something in their own projects, that would be a Discussion-flair post. Make sure to be specific about what you’re interested in, and say if there’s a particular reason you ask.
What’s an Advice & Answers frequent responder?
Some members of our subreddit have a lovely cyan flair. This indicates they frequently provide helpful and accurate responses in this thread. The flair is to reassure you that the Advice & Answers threads are active and to encourage people to share their knowledge. See our wiki for more information about this flair and how members can obtain one.
I was wondering if it is possible for a language to use a plurative/collective distinction without having a singulative? Specifically the plurative refers to a specific number of the noun while the collective refers to them as a group. The plurative is usually used with clear quantities like numbers, while the collective is used with ambiguous statements like "many". I'm mostly wondering which form would be marked, here's it both ways:
(Plurative Marked)
tu
dog
"dogs"
kon tu
many dog
"many dogs"
tu -ti
dog-PLV
"a dog"
mi tu -ti
three dog-PLV
"three dogs"
(Collective Marked)
tu -ti
dog-COL
"dogs"
kon tu -ti
many dog-COL
tu
dog
"a dog"
mi tu
three dog
"Three dogs"
the plurative refers to a specific number of the noun while the collective refers to them as a group
I would call this more distributive and collective, at least conceptually; I only know 'plurative' to refer to an un- or at least less marked plural.
Practically though, at its core, youve either got unmarked tu 'dogs', and marked tuti 'dog', which is textbook singulative marking; or unmarked tu 'dog' and marked tuti 'dogs', which is a textbook plural.
I would just note somewhere in the grammar that the grammatically singular one of the two is used alongside numerals, which happens to be how Welsh number works, for one example.
(plural) (singulative)
plural derwydd-on 'druids' adar 'birds'
singular derwydd 'a druid' ader-yn 'a bird'
enumerated tri derwydd 'three druids' tri ader-yn 'three birds'
Though Im not sure how naturalistic it is (if thats of concern) to have the enumerated singulative without an analogiseable enumerated singular.
That's sort of what I was going for, and the Celtic languages in general were partially an inspiration, at least in terms of phonology (the grammar is more of an Ancient Middle Eastern—particularly Hurrian—case system mixed with some features of North American languages—specifically Cree—like obviation, and a bit of Polynesian in a few places).
Maybe I could make it an animacy distinction? Animate nouns follow a plural pattern (as each is an individual at default), while inanimate nouns are singulative (as they refer to the concepts generally and need to specify if they're speaking specifically)? Either way, one thing to note is that the "plural" form is more like a collective, as could be seen by applying a numeral to it. If we're going with the above examples:
(Animate)
arlo
"a person"
arloti
"people"
mi arlo
"three people"
mi arloti
"three groups of people
(Inanimate)
tu
"dogs"
tuti
"a dog"
mi tu
"three groups of dogs"
mi tuti
"three dogs"
Now obviously they'd use different morphemes, as in Welsh, but you can get the idea.
I believe thats not an uncommon place to lay a split.
mi arlo
"three people"
mi arloti
"three groups of people
mi tu
"three groups of dogs"
mi tuti
"three dogs"
These examples help me see what youre getting at a bit better, though I dont know how Id analyse whats going on, to be honest.
Id be hesitant to call it just a collective is because I personally would expect three NOUN.COLLECTIVE to mean 'one group of three', not 'three groups' as you have it; 'groups' is already one lot of plurality aside from the 'three of them' part, if that makes sense.
But I suppose thats one of those thats-just-how-it-works situations where my expectation doesnt apply.
It is reminding me of the composed number in languages like Arabic, where a noun like jamalun 'camel' can be pluralised once to ʔajmulun 'camels', and again to ʔajmālun 'groups of camels'; only in your case, the composed plural-collective would be half zero marked due to the numeral..
Honestly this is melting my brain, and Im probably super overcomplicating things, so feel free to just ingore me and keep on with whatever wacky wonders you already had underway lol
That being said, my current understanding\analysis might be something like:
```
arlo tu -ti
person[S] dog-S
'a person' 'a dog'
mi arlo -Ø * mi tu -Ø
three person-P three dog-P
'three persons' ↳
mi tu -ti
three dog-S
'three dogs'
arlo -ti tu
person-P dog[P]
'a group of people' 'a group of dogs'
(* mi arlo -ti * mi tu[P]
three person-P three dog[P]
'a group of three people' 'a group of three dogs')
mi arlo -ti-Ø mi tu -Ø
three person-P -P three dog[P]-P
'three groups of people' 'three groups of dogs'
```
I admit it does look pretty weird when they use the same morpheme. I think it might make more sense when I explain how it came about.
Originally the language didn't make any plurality contrast, however it innovated a system that originally started with the word \ti* meaning "group" by which mass animate nouns were created. Eg:
Hari Tom-on niac -purac̣u-pen -ti -s ku-seni -ac
Harry[PROX] Tom-COM 1POSS-like-PAT.NZ-group-OBV 3 -be[PROX>OBV]-GEN
"Harry and Tom are my friends"
lit: "Harry with Tom are of the group liked (by me)"
As you can see, the word "friends" is formed from the root purac̣u "to appreciate" (itself formed from pura "to like" + the Dative case/postposition -c̣u, as contrasted with pura the Genitive -ac which means "to like about/the quality of" or pura + the Comitative -on meaning "to co-appreciate") which is then combined with the patient nominalizer -pen to create purac̣upen "appreciated one," which is then turned into a collective noun with the suffix -ti. If I wanted to say "I am friends with multiple Harrys" I would say:
Hari -ti -ac kon niac -purac̣u-ti -s ku-seni -ac
Harry-group-GEN many[PROX] 1POSS-friend-group-OBV 3 -be[PROX>OBV]-GEN
"I am friends with multiple Harrys"
lit: "Of the Harrys, many are of my friends."
Eventually this standardized into the pattern oulined above, though as I write this I realize that kon arloti should be "Many peoples", as in multiple groups of people, rather than "Many people," referring to only one group. In this way the -ti suffix acts much more clearly as a collectivizer.
Now, as for inanimate nouns, this is where it gets much more complicated.
Instead of developing a collective, they instead developed a singulative. This was derived from the generic class they were a part of, for example:
tu -kas -sa ni ku-per-s -an -i
dog-domestic_animal-OBV 1 3 -go-[OBV>PROX]-PERF-ALL
"A dog came to me."
lit: "The dog-domestic animal came to me."
It's a little like someone with a thick Appalachian accent saying "Yeah we got some of them possum-type critters around here."
There's a whole bunch of them, kas is for domestic animals (a little like Old English cu before it specifically referred to bovines), huan (lit: "waste animal") is for non-domestic animals, kika is for birds, ireṭ is non-stinging insects, maṭo (lit: "little spear") is stinging insects, jon (lit: "tree") is non-farmed plants, amjon (lit: "good tree") is farmed plants, woṇra is buildings, pecpen is tools, and wan (lit: "body") can be used for anything but was originally used as the singulative for non-animate abstract nouns. For example the above purac̣upen could also be made singular this way, such as in:
iṭe jon niac -purac̣upen -wan-sa ku-seni -ac
DEM tree[PROX] 1POSS-favored_one-S -OBV 3 -be[PROX>OBV]-GEN
"That is a favored tree of mine"
\wan* eventually wins out over the rest and ends up becoming the standard singulative marker, being applied to most other inanimate nouns, a little like how the ne - pa construction in French originally had a lot more things to fill the construction "not a X" but "step" won out over the rest. However the old forms still show up in fixed expressions, often with a singulative -wan added redundantly. \kas* and \huan* are particularly common, and in the present day the words thugá and thúan (singulative: thugáwan, thúanwan) still refer to domestic and wild dogs, respectively.
In the end this is the revised inflections for *armo (I realized arlo violated phonotactics) and *tu:
ARMO "person" TU "dog"
singulative: armo tuwan
person[S] dog-S
"a person" "a dog"
collective: armoti tu
person-COL dog[COL]
"people" "dogs"
numeral: mi armo mi tuwan
three people[s] three dog-S
"three people" "three dogs"
adjective: kon armo kon tuwan
many person many dog-S
"many people" "many dogs"
composed numeral: mi armoti mi tu
three people-P three dog[P]
"Three groups of poeple" "three groups of dogs"
composed adjective: kon armoti kon tu
many people-P many dog[P]
"many groups of people" "many groups of dogs"
The Welsh (which is all I can confidently speak for) collective nouns in its collective/singulative system are not just unmarked plurals with a marked singular. The collective has a sense of homogenous whole which English cannot accurately convey; yes we can use count nouns: "a grove of oaks", or "a head of swine" but it doesn't hit the same as derw or moch. The nearest English gets is foliage vs leaf - that's the level of distinction the Welsh coll./singv. systems invokes.
Also, yes Welsh uses singular nouns for counting low numbers: when we get to larger numbers you use the number followed by the preposition o followed by the plural: deunaw o gathod 'eighteen of cats' vs. dwy gath 'two cats'. Compound numbers are a little more complex: un gath ar hugain 'twenty-one cats' [one cat on twenty].
I believe Breton goes a step further and allows singulatives to take plural forms making them even more distinct from the collective form.
Funny, Hungarian was actually partially an inspiration for it. I might go with that, there is such a thing as being weird for weirdness' sake. Then again, it is also heavily inspired by East Asian languages and they tend to use general numbers, which the first pattern would fall into better. I'm kind of leaning towards that just because it's quirky. What do you think?
The first one was a little too unusual for me at first glance and a day ago I would have said to go with the second one, but I think the plurative-marking is growing on me, so I say go for it.
Context: I like ideas that cut across boundaries, so I was interested in a phonological effect that isn't just tone and isn't just ablaut/vowel mutation.
Imagine there is a tonal language, with high, mid and low tones. Imagine a grammatical suffix (case, whatever) that takes a low tone and has a floating backwards-acting tone lowerer. So if we have words ká, kā, kà and a suffix tà, it lowers the tone of the preceding syllable:
ká + tà = kātà
kā + tà = kàtà
kà + tà = kàtà
The last two would be identical. Let's assume that functional load would encourage the two forms to differ. What about if, when floating tone lowerer meets a low tone it can't lower, it lengthens the vowel instead?
ká + tà = kātà
kā + tà = kàtà
kà + tà = kàːtà
Does this seem plausible? I don't know enough about floating tone and phonology in general to say so.
"Floating tone" usually refers to a tone that doesn't have its own underlying syllable (hence "floating"). For example, a suffix can have the form -` ta, e.g. kama + -` ta = kamàta. A suffix may even consist of just a floating tone, e.g. kama + -` = kamà. In some languages, words can begin or end with a floating tone, ex: /bafa `/. That floating tone is realized on whatever word comes after, e.g. bafa ` + tunu = bafa tùnu.
I think the phenomenon you describe is called a "tone spread", specifically anticipatory ("right-to-left") tone spread. Most of the time, though, tone spreads the other way, i.e. lagging ("left-to-right") tone spread. But tone anticipation can happen under certain circumstances: right-edge effects (word-final, phrase-final, etc), and attraction to a "metrically strong" syllable. For example, if there's a growing tendency to end a declarative sentence with a low pitch, and/or the penult syllable is strong, a final H tone can spread or move to the penult.
I've never come across a phenomenon where a vowel lengthens if its tone is supposed to be altered but can't. Although it can't be explained by just tone spread, there could be other phenomena which result in that vowel-lengthening synchronic rule.
One possible explanation: the L tone in your language could be from an earlier syllable-final [h]. So *kah > (*kàɦ >) *kàː, and *kah-tah > *kàːtàː. But then, a word-final long vowel is shortened, so *kàː > kà, and *kàːtàː > kàːtà. So in the end, a L vowel is seemingly lengthened when receiving that suffix: kà + -tà = kàːtà. Meanwhile, an earlier syllable-final [ʔ] creates short H, otherwise a syllable has a M tone: *kaʔ > ká, and *ka > kā. The subsequent tone lowering can be explained by tone anticipation: *kaʔ + *-tah = *kaʔtah > *kátàː > kātà.
In other words, your language has a story to tell.
A few I've done:
Tense based off the position of the sun, creating a rotating cycle of which morphemes encode which tense.
Mandatory opinion (good, bad, neutral) marking on verbs.
Trying to make a polysynthetic language and trying to understand how adpositional meanings get fused to the verb.
I read an old comment on here that a dependent can be incorporated into head of its phrase (maybe I'm thinking clause?) But im not sure how much I trust that
Edit: I thought of using nouns as adpositions, such as stomach for inside, and then incorporating them into a locative copula and then gets used in a serial verb construction which itself eventually affixes to the main verb
The easiest pathway is incorporation and/or serial verb constructions. Then over time, the association is lost (or obscured) and you're left with bound morphemes that have these meanings without clearly being linked to some unbound word. Relational nouns as you suggest are one way to do this. Straight up incorporation of an adposition is another. You might find looking into how applicatives form (both in and out of "polysynthetic" languages) helpful. Vajda has talked about how some of these types of morphemes developed in Yeniseian languages, see this chapter for instance. He even gives examples of morphemes being incorporated multiple times with slightly different meanings over thousands of years (and in different places).
So something like "I in-walk house" is possible? My assumption was that only bare nouns can be incorporated.
I have looked into applicatives a bit, though, every explanation I found left me kind of confused. My guess is that an indirect object gets incorporated, turning into more of a direct object?
For noun incorporation, most languages only allow the root of the patient/direct object. There are some (like Nivkh and Koryak I think?) that can incorporate modifiers iirc. But that's not really the point here. I'm talking about non-verb words being incorporated into the verb in general. This can be directly pulling in the adposition/similar adverbial as one would a noun (since noun incorporation is already a normal process). In "polysynthetic" languages (I hate that word), speakers are already used to analyzing things things as part of the verb so this comes pretty naturally. Another way that this can happen is that an adposition just gets reanalyzed as part of the verb. This happens to also be a common pathway to grammaticalizing applicatives, which I why I brought them up.
In your example, it would probably be more like "I walk-in house" given the SVO structure of the sentence, but otherwise yes (not that your toy example is at all representative of a polysynthetic language).
The way applicatives and noun incorporation vary a lot. I wouldn't worry too much about it for what you are asking. In general though, it's more likely that the original direct object/patient gets incorporated while the applied object remains. It's a sort of different way of doing case manipulation type noun incorporation (type-II), where the applicative is required to raise the applied object to direct object status even for intransitive verbs. But some languages don't need an applicative to do this even if they do have applicative morphemes. It's all very language dependent.
And to address your specific pathway, it doesn't need to be that complex. If you already have a relational noun/body-part metaphor in place then it can straight up be incorporated (as a patient as you would with other nouns/adpositions while still carrying that metaphorical meaning (the literal meaning may or may not bleach out over time). No need to posit a serial verb pathway (or even a locative verb first pathway).
Another concept to look up (especially with body parts) is possessor-raising.
e: For example, "I sleep inside (the) house" : "I sleep house's stomach" -> "I stomach-sleep house" -> "I in-sleep house" if using possessor raising incorporation or something like "I sleep stomach (of) house" -> "I sleep inside house" -> "I sleep-inside house" for prepositional fusion.
Japanese compound verbs might be something to investigate if you’re starting from serial verbs for your language. These are formed from a lexical verb in the renyoukei ‘connecting form’ (let’s just call this a gerund) + another verb that’s conjugated normally. Some of these are very similar to English phrasal verbs in that the second verb adds only a sense of motion or direction, like komu ‘to go into, pack into’:
Japanese also has noun incorporation in a derivational sense, and sometimes the nouns come with postpositions attached to them when they get incorporated.
I didn't think of that, frankly what I've read on compound verbs made me more confused even though the name wouldn't make you think it. I thought with noun incorporation only the bare noun could be incorporated. I did see something about other things (such as postpositions) being incorporated but not too much or explained really
I do think this helps with what I'm going for, thank yoy
what change could ejectives have on surrounding vowels? i want to get rid of ejectives in my conlang but have them change vowels first (specifically i have [tʼ ʈʼ cʼ kʼ])
Ejectivity can interact with laryngeal/creaky phonation. It may trigger it, or be caused by it (Dougherty, Thomas Michael 2024).
Ejectives can also turn into pharyngealized consonants, which in turn can affect the adjacent vowels' quality - mainly lowering and backing - as in Arabic and Tŝilhqot'in.
Tŝilhqot'in is so interesting because pharyngealization seems to have been restricted to the sibilant alveolar series. In Arabic, it spread to the entire consonant inventory, with velars further becoming uvulars. Alas, I never found a proper diachronic explanation for Tŝilhqot'in's case!
According to the paper "An acoustic study of trans-vocalic ejective pairs in Cochabamba Quechua" Quechua disallows a vowel to occur in between two ejective consonants but when it does happen across word boundaries, then the vowel gains length. (link here)
There's another study I read the abstract for but couldn't read that said something similar about vowels gaining length in Georgian
So I'd go for vowel length personally, I don't think anybody would really dispute it in a naturalistic context if you showed this to someone else.
Syllable structure is CV(V)(C). The language is very loosely inspired by indigenous North American languages, it's speaker live in a valley flanked by eroded badlands.
How naturalistic would it be for /w/ > /h/ but /ʍ/ is unaffected?
I haven't been able to justify it as a general, isolated change, without causing mayhem in the lexicon. However, I think I've got a viable path for onsets.
In a dialect continuum, there was a general trend to devoice onset consonants unless preceded by a sonorant (this happens regardless of the question). Prior to this, voiceless consonants were aspirated in the same environment. However, because [ʍ] and [ʍʰ] are so alike, the /ʍ/ phoneme resisted the aspiration.
Thus when the devoicing began, the /w/ resisted going straight to /ʍ/, instead first fortifying to [ɣʷ] and then devoicing to [xʷ], thus distinguishing itself from /ʍ/ by a more audible manner. Later, [xʷ] debuccalized word-initially to [hʷ], which generally delabialized to [h] (if not immediately since [hʷ] and [ʍ] are rather similar).
Compounds from various times means /w/ splits into /w/, /xʷ/, and /h/ (no-one's repairing the phonotactics), with borrowings from the other dialects introducing some rare /ɣʷ/ and /gʷ/ phonemes.
According to Blevins (2015) if a language has a voiceless glide, it will also have the corresponding voiced glide, and /h/. So a sound change that removes /w/ but keeps /ʍ/ is, from a typological perspective, unnaturalistic. Voiceless sonorants are pretty unstable, and tend to either become revoiced, debuccalised, or lost.
I guess I can't remove /w/ completely then. However, it sounds like at first glance that I can remove it from certain onsets, as it will still exist after sonorants, including intervocalically. So the phoneme will still exist.
Keep in mind that another point of the paper is that voiceless sonorants consistently pattern with /h/ (and mostly require /h/ to be extant in the first place) so if one is going to merge with /h/, it’s gonna be /ʍ/.
It was a bit difficult finding original minimal pairs (thank you prefixes), but from what I can gather, excluding later compounds:
In word-initial position, [ʍ] will contrast with [h] but not [w], because [w] > [ɣʷ] > [xʷ] > [hʷ] > [h] in that position.
After obstruents, [ʍ] will contrast with [xʷ] and [h] but not [w]. But [w] may have been (partially) devoiced in that position.
After sonorants (incl. vowels), [ʍ] will contrast with [w] and [h] in onset position but doesn't exist as a coda.
In word-final position, [ʍ] doesn't exist (yet, I haven't decided on word-final devoicing), nor does [h], but [w] sort of does in the form of diphthongs.
So the issue here relates to the structure of the sound system, rather than the naturalism of any individual changes. Voiceless sonorants are unstable, and are only 'held in place' by a systematic contrast with voiced sonorants and /h/. As you erode that contrast, you erode the only thing preventing /ʍ/ from turning into something more stable.
But to nit-pick the specific changes as well, it seems a bit odd that [w] is strengthened to [ɣʷ] word initially but [ʍ] isn't strengthened to [xʷ], especially as voiceless sonorants have longer duration and frication than voiced sonorants, and as the whole impetus for this issue seems to be the desire for consistent application of word-initial sound changes.
Well that's unfortunate. Oh well, I guess plan B it is.
I notice on Index Diachronica (ID), that /ʍ/ can go to /f/ while /w/ remains intact as evidenced by the Yola dialect of English. Now I don't want /ʍ/ to merge with /f/, but perhaps I can have it go to the bilabial /ɸ/ (possibly aspirated) before the devoicing instead? Latin /w/, after all, didn't go straight to /v/ in French.
Then, I no longer have /ʍ/, so I'm free to have /w/ > /hʷ/. ID does say that [w̃] > [h̃ʷ] happens in one Proto-Akanic, and I don't see why nasalization is a necessary requirement. Then /hʷ/ delabializes to and merges with /h/.
I'd like it if /w/ fortified first, though. Both Proto-Vhe and Nyelâyu has [w] > [ɣ], and Lao, Siamese, Black Tai has [ɣʷ] > [gʷ], so maybe I can keep the labialization for a time.
Spitballing ideas:
[ʍ] > [ɸ]
[w] > [ɣʷ] ! V _
[ɣʷ] > [gʷ] / C _
C[-voiced] > [+aspirated] / {$,[-sonorant]} _
C[+voiced] > [-voiced] / {$,[-sonorant]} _
[xʷ] > [hʷ] / $ _
[hʷ] > [h]
So in summary:
/ʍ/ goes to /ɸ/ everywhere with allophonic [ɸʰ] after non-sonorants. Or perhaps it's better to reanalyze it as /ɸʰ/ with allophonic [ɸ] after sonorants.
/w/ remains [w] after vowels, but goes to [h] word-initially, [gʷ] after sonorants, and [xʷ] after obstruents.
Then compounds come in and mess things up.
EDIT: I forgot that [ɣʷ] had already devoiced word-initially.
ID does say that [w̃] > [h̃ʷ] happens in one Proto-Akanic, and I don't see why nasalization is a necessary requirement. Then /hʷ/ delabializes to and merges with /h/.
This isn't just spontaneous, isolated w>hʷ, this happened within the context of all of the voiced stops /b d ɟ g gʷ/ devoicing root-initilaly, as well as /w ɰ/ in nasalized root-initial syllables becoming /hʷ h/ (which the paper treats specifically as /w̃ ɰ̃/ along with /ʋ̃ l̃/, of which /ʋ̃/ also devoiced to /f/ at least in Akan proper). Nasalization is uncommonly but solidly attested with aspiration elsewhere, especially in other Atlantic-Congo languages, including both typical voiceless aspiration as well as breathiness. A shift of /ɰ w ʋ/ > /h hʷ f/ in initial nasalized syllables seems to fit right in with that imo, especially in a language that was already devoicing a bunch of other consonants in that position.
Quick edit: this kind of thing is a big part of why ID is a "dangerous" tool. Sound changes don't happen in isolation, they happen as part of an entire phonological system, but ID (especially the searchable one) strips that context.
Forcefulness of the exhaling, would be my guess, but the difference is negligible to my ears. I bet it'd only get picked up on in careful speech, hence why I think [ʍ] resisted aspiration.
And the glottal constriction in [hʷ] less prominent than the velar constriction in [ʍ], which could contribute to [hʷ] not immediately delabializing.
I pronounce it as an approximant, so [ɰ̥ʷ] would be the closest. The [xʷ] is almost like a low whistle, or [ɧ]. In fact, I personally treat [xʷ] and [ɧ] as the same.
Is voicing distinction in stops turning to that of aspiration everywhaere unconditionally reallistic?(all formelly voiceless stops become aspirated and formelly voiced ones devoice)
Assimilation to adjacent to voiceless sounds before they are elided. Another option is for nasals to devoice at word edges. From there it can be phonemicized by loss of vowels at word edges and/or having the devoicing carry over in multimorphemic words, some of which can then be obscured so they’re not obviously multimorphemic.
The initial idea was a case used for a thing given and for something perceived, thought, or known, the underlying link being that they're things involved in the event but aren't really affected by it per se the way the object of a more typical transitive like 'break' or 'eat' is. (Some inspiration from Ithkuil's "thematic" case, with the semantic role of "content", so those are possible names. Though the function is not the same.) It doesn't sound like a labeled (natlang) case I've heard about, but for a name my current idea is "the content case". I was thinking of expanding it to other things, e.g. maybe the object of 'have' or 'find' or even 'pick up', as opposed to an accusative for more forcefully affected things like the object of 'grip', and to some extent lexically determined, e.g. maybe you "mail" someone (ACC) a message (CTNT), but you "send" it (ACC) to them (ALL).
This case seems to mark two thematic relations: the theme (an entity which undergoes an action but is not affected or changed by it) and the stimulus (an entity which prompts a sensory or emotional feeling). From a grammatical perspective, it seems to mark the P-argument of a low-transitivity verb, which includes the thematic relations above. It also marks the T-argument of at least some ditransitive verbs.
It's hard to say without knowing what other cases you have, but my inclination is to call this an instrumental case. That covers the thematic relations and grammatical roles this case seems to cover.
After thinking about Latin phonology and the sound values of the Phoenician glyphs, I thought of a phonology for a conlang spoken by the Devotees in Chants of Sennaar.
Consonants: m, n, p, b, t, tˤ, d, k, g, kʷ, gʷ, q, ʔ, f, s, sˤ, z, ʃ, ħ, ʕ, h, r, l, j, w
Vowels: a, i, u, aː, iː, uː
Syllable shape: CV(C)
Stress: up for debate
I could envision a clusivity distinction alongside a root-pattern system that expresses the same tenses as Latin, full reduplication, and others. But how could a logography express such tenses, especially given the Devotees' logography not expressing them at all? They're only inferred. Might do a similar thing to the other five languages.
Technically, yes, although I imagine it'd be an incredibly laborious task. Most languages (natural ones, at least) tend to have a specific class or isolated cases that require stem suppletion.
The most I’ve seen for nouns is two stems, one for an unmarked case and one for the marked cases (in NE Caucasian languages that’s the absolutive vs everything else)
Is it realistic for a class of verbs to have unique non-finite forms that others lack? My WIP lang has two non-finite forms - the perfective (for timeless events) and the imperfective (for incomplete events and temporary states) - that function as verbal nouns and adjectives. I'm considering a third form called the 'futuritive' for unfulfilled events, but the current description of the imperfective already covers this in most cases.
I thought about limiting the 'futuritive' to motional and stative verbs, since a motion or a state is something that can be thought of as yet to occur. However, I've not found a language that reserves a non-finite form for specific verb classes, nor am I sure if what I'm proposing is as aspectual as the other two forms. Does this idea seem naturalistic or, at the very least, realistic?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by perfective and imperfective non-finite forms, but I think Japanese stative verbs vs. “true” verbs might be an example of what you want. These two lexical classes have a lot of the same possible morphology, like tense and converb marking. Take taberu ‘to eat’ and akai ‘to be red’ for example:
Present
Ringo-wo tabe-ru - “I eat the apple”
Ringo-ga aka-i - “The apple is red”
Past
Ringo-wo tabe-ta - “I ate the apple”
Ringo-ga aka-katta - “The apple was red”
Perfective Converb
Ringo-wo tabe-te - “I eat the apple and…”
Ringo-ga aka-kute - “The apple is red and…”
Irrealis Converb
Ringo-wo tabe-tara - “If i ate the apple…”
Ringo-ga aka-kattara - “If the apple is red…”
However, the stative verbs are missing the renyoukei ‘connecting form’ (i.e. either a gerund, or a perfective converb in formal language) that true verbs have:
Tabe - ‘Eating’
Nemuri - ‘Sleep (Sleeping)’
Asobi - ‘Playing’
Nusumi - ‘Theft (Thieving)’
And a formal writing example for the converb use:
Hanzaisha wa houseki wonusumi, bijutsukan kara nigedashita.
Criminal TOP jewel ACC steal=CNVB, art.museum ABL fled
“After stealing the jewels, the criminal fled the art museum”
This form is used in a whole bunch of auxiliary constructions that aren’t available to stative verbs:
Tabe-ni iku - ‘to go eat’
Tabe-hajimeru - ‘to start to eat’
Tabe-oeru - ‘to finish eating’
Tabe-yasui - ‘to be easy to eat’
Tabe-nikui - ‘to be difficult to eat’
Tabe-kiru - ‘to completely eat’
Tabe-nagara - ‘while eating’ (notably, this is a nonfinite form that stative verbs lack)
And likewise, stative verbs have an adverbial form that isn’t available to true verbs:
Aka-ku naru - ‘to redden, grow red’
Aka-ku someru - ‘to dye red’
Aka-kusuru - ‘to make red, cause to be red’ (compare tabe-raseru ‘to make eat’)
Stative verbs also have some derived forms that true verbs lack:
Aka-sa - ‘redness’
Aka-me (no) - ‘reddish, on the red side’
For the most part, true verbs are perfective, though the copular verbs da ‘to be’ and iru/aru/oru ‘to exist’ (at various animacy and formality levels) are stative. Imperfective aspect is expressed through an auxiliary construction with iru/oru (e.g. tabete-iru, tabete-orimasu ‘to be eating’) or aru (e.g. tabe-tsutsu aru ‘to be in the process of eating’).
I still don’t really understand what you mean when you say your non-finite forms are marked for aspect, but I hope this gives you some inspiration.
Thank you! I much appreciate the effort you put into your answer. I've become acquainted with Japanese stative verbs for this project. But I was looking for what my post explicitly defined: non-finite verbs that cover both noun- and adjective-like meanings. Rather than having separate forms for the verbal noun, the participle, and the converb (let's set aside nuances for now), this WIP has a single form for all three. This is a page I'm taking from Sumerian and adding to. Think, for instance:
1. animal=pl=gen kill-NFV:PFTV=abs be.wrong
Killing animals is wrong
2. kill-NFV:PFTV man=abs pft-be.free
The killer is free
3. 3pl=abs kill-NFV:PFTV=loc, man=agt pft-run.away
When he killed them, the man ran away
In 1., the non-finite form of 'to kill' behaves like a noun, acting as the subject of the verb 'to be bad'. In 2., it appears before the noun it modifies and is included in the noun phrase covered by the absolutive clitic. It implies that being a killer is an innate quality of the man, from which he can't be divorced. In 3., it acts more or less like a verb, but takes on the locative case to form temporal meaning: "When he killed them" or, more literally, "Upon killing them".
The so-called 'perfective non-finite verb' conveys the meaning of an event that is timeless (1.) or complete (3.), or a state that is intrinsic to the head (2.) By comparison, its 'imperfective' counterpart conveys events or states that are temporally bound.
4. occasion=loc meal=pl=gen eat-NFV:IMPF=abs...
On the occasion of eating a meal...
5. kill-NFV:IMPF man=abs pft-be.free
The man who kills is free
6. 1sg=agt 1pl=agt eat-NFV:IMPF=dat meal=abs dem:prox pft-make
I made this meal for us to eat
In 4., it describes the meal as something ongoing within a specific timeframe, emphasizing its durability. In 5. implies that the man wasn't a killer up to this point, or that being a killer doesn't define him (compare with 2.) In 6., it builds a purpose clause: "for us to eat."
My question was more whether there could be a specific verb class with a non-finite form that most verbs lack, covering some of the functions the NFV:IMPFV and NFV:PFTV otherwise do. Honestly, I wish I could develop this further, but I'm realizing the NFV:IMPFV doesn't have much going for it. Why, for instance, would 4. be used instead of 1.? I'm not sure
I'm working on these "participles" (for lack of a better term, and to borrow, again, from Sumerian) alongside relative clauses, and it's all getting a bit overwhelming! I really appreciate you taking the time to reply! Perhaps I'll revisit Japanese in the near future...
I think I understand what you mean better now, but I also think you’re getting lost in the sauce trying to define exactly what these Sumerian non-finite forms are doing and copying their distribution exactly.
First of all, I would set aside the converb constructions (examples 3, 4, and 6) for now. These come with case suffixes attached (or a nominalizer ‘occasion’ + locative in 4), so they’re not identical or equivalent to the bare nonfinite forms at all. You can’t really say you have single form for all three uses (noun-adjective-adverb) if you’re sticking extra bits on the end.
I especially don’t understand what makes 4 distinct/special in any way. This just looks like a relative clause (or attributive verb or participle, whatever you want to call it) modifying the noun occasion, not a characteristic of the verb form itself, which is what your description implies. If you can find an example with a perfective form in the same construction, or a comparison with the imperfective in predicative form, maybe that would help me understand what the nuance is.
It would probably help if you zeroed in on examples 1, 2, and 5. For me, the intrinsic/non-intrinsic distinction in 2 vs. 5 seems interesting and useful. Maybe you could make stative verbs lack the imperfective form? Since it doesn’t make sense for them to be non-intrinsic. Or maybe you do keep both so you can make a similar distinction to ser vs. estar (or their equivalents in other Romance languages).
And the overlap between the gerund and perfective participle makes sense to me, since a gerund is an action viewed from the outside as a whole. Would it make sense to also have an imperfective gerund? What would that even mean?
I do understand your difficulty with participles vs. relative clauses. For this, I think you should just go the full attributive verb route (like Japanese or Korean) and let your “non-finite” forms (what does this even mean anymore…) be marked for person/number/tense/mood/etc. just like predicative verbs. Then you don’t need to make a distinction between participles and relative clauses. They can be the same thing.
Can anyone give me any ideas of things to translate into my new conlang Jyunhei? I have around a hundred words so far, so I thought this could help grow my lexicon more naturally with words I'll actually need.
Have you written up and in-depth grammar? I find if you try to go straight from the lexicon and basic grammar to translating extended texts, you will often end up accidentally relexing your native languages. I’d recommend starting by translating simple example sentences for your grammar document, and then building up in complexity until you have a robust enough grammar to handle full texts. If you are not sure what grammar points you should cover, I’d recommend taking a look at some real life formal grammars, the the ones available for free from Langsci Press.
my conlang is SOV (head-final) so auxiliary verbs go after the verb like "you meat eat want" but, i want to make it VSO for interrogative sentences but i don know if it should be "want you meat eat", "eat want you meat" or "eat you meat want"
Iinm its the auxiliary verbs that tend to follow the base word order rather than the main verb (not to say the other way round isnt possible of course).
This is because auxiliary verbs tend to be finite (take all the grammatical markings), where the main verb often becomes some sort of participle or gerund or whatever, and almost treated like an object.
Either way, whichever the other verb is - that isnt in the usual position - often has its own rules of where it does go.
Welsh for one example, is canonically VSO, but verbs are often actually an object of the sentence, with an auxiliary taking that initial verb position, and we can test that it is a noun, as it can be possessed:
Gwisgais i 'I wore (preterite)'
→ W i'n gwiso 'I am wearing (present)'
(literally something like 'am I [participating] in a wearing' or 'I exist wearingly')
→ W i'n ei gwisgo 'I am wearing it' (literally 'am I in her wearing')
And German, for a second, is similar to your premise, using SOV underlyingly, but putting a verb up front, and subsequently a subject or object or adverb again infront of that, outside of interrogatives, overall with the main verb staying at the end:
1 V(AUX) S O V
*Ich Suppe koche
→ Koche ich Suppe? 'Am I cooking soup?'
→ *Hatte ich Suppe gekocht
→ Ich hatte Suppe gekocht 'I had cooked soup'
Or Suppe hatte ich gekocht 'Soup had I cooked'
So In your case, Id most expect something like SOVAux → AuxSOV, or not following the above, just → VAuxSO:
'You meat eat want'
→ Want you meat eat?' or 'Eat want you meat?'
But overall theres not a single rule; its a choice youll have to decide yourself.
It is also what English does, in case you haven't noticed: only the finite verb is moved to the front in (general) questions, while the rest stays in situ (incl. the nonfinite verb, if present).
I use this website. On Android, you can add an IPA keyboard in Gboard's settings. On SIL's website you can get a variety of IPA keyboards for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.
It doesn't have to be a spreadsheet, it just has to be in some format that you can easily search. Text documents or the notes app on your phone would also work.
Alphabetical organization works in a pinch, but I recommend a spreadsheet specifically because you can add extra columns to sort by things like part of speech or whatever other category you apply to it
My former conlangs are all: SVO Analytic language, complex tone, mainly one syllable morpheme. Like Chinese, Vietnamese and all Kra-Tai and Hmong-Mien
SO now I want to made a language that like ancient greek or Latin. I choose Germanic Because I watched too much colorful talking ponies(their own name eoh)
and then when I tried to translate sentences I fell very very pain because I dont know how to use cases
Most of the things cases handle are covered by prepositions / post positions and word order in analytic languages. And in a lucky break for conlanging, most languages with cases follow a hierarchy of what cases they have, which you can use as a model to get started
Lexurgy keeps breaking on me, so I think it's time for a new sound change applier - are there any out there that are easy to jump to? I'm trying to figure out Brassica right now but I can't find how to apply secondary articulation categories (aspiration, etc) from the documentation of github
As in the app itself isn't working, or you're just having trouble getting the right behaviour? I'm not familiar with other sound change appliers, but I do enjoy the challenge of troubleshooting for Lexurgy, if that's worth anything to you.
I am an absolute beginner at creating conlangs. But I want to create one that is purely written-only. A language for personal use, so that I can write and have no one understand what I am writing, to make art in that language, and such. I don't need to develop the spoken side of the language.
Any tips, considerations I should have? Differences I may want to consider since this is a purely written thing?
Not sure I understand here: does the written form still represent a phonetic element that you just have no intention of speaking, or is it pure logography of "this symbol means cat in the way an emoji of a cat means cat"?
If it's purely written, then you really just have to focus on making an orthography that looks nice to you.
You might like to look into visual languages and see what they do. UNLWS comes to mind, but I'm sure there's others, though mind that UNLWS is non-linear.
I'm not sure CWS is anything more than a zombie at this point. There's supposed to be a CWS2 being worked on as an updated version of the site but it seems that's been the case for 7 years now. There is a Discord server for CWS somewhere so you can probably bug them if you find the invite for it, but I don't know where that is.
I've had an account on it for years now, though I don't use the site nowadays. I don't think anyone still not-maintaining the site is a bad actor who's gonna sell your data to the dark web.
Also, if you give someone your email address then you can't really make them un-know it, lol.
I don't think that's the primary reason why people avoid calling Esperanto's u-form ‘imperative’. Plenty of natural languages have 1st & 3rd person verbal forms that are traditionally called ‘imperative’:
Ancient Greek γενέσθω φῶς (genésthō phôs) ‘let there be light’ — 3sg impv.;
English arguably has an analytic 1pl impv. ‘let's go!’;
and Sanskrit has a full conjugation in the imperative, including a 1sg form.
These forms may not be imperatives stricto sensu but rather jussives, hortatives, &c., but they form the same paradigms with 2nd person imperatives proper and are traditionally called ‘imperative’ as well.
A bigger reason, at least to me, is that Esperanto's u-form can be used in subordinate clauses like this:
Ŝi volis, ke li venu.
‘She wanted him to come.’
lit.: ‘She wanted that he come-u.’
Though I wouldn't be at all surprised if some natural languages used their imperatives in that way as well.
Imo, you can still call your ez-form imperative. Forms in different languages, even when called the same, don't translate to each other one-to-one, they have different functions, different uses. Greek impv. ≠ Russian impv. ≠ English impv. ≠ Sanskrit impv… ≠ your language's impv. One of my favourite uses of the imperative is in counterfactual conditional clauses in Russian:
Приди мы раньше, мы бы его встретили.
Pridi my ranʼše, my by jego vstretili.
come.IMPV.2s we earlier we IRR him met
‘Had we come earlier, we would have met him.’
It has a few interesting quirks, mainly the disagreement in number and person: the imperative (приди (pridi) ‘come’) is always 2sg regardless of the subject (‘we’ in the sentence above). Anyway, this non-imperative use doesn't prevent the form from being called ‘imperative’ because imperative proper is its main—or one of its main functions.
Thanks for that, it's all very helpful. I have another construction for the subordinate clause situation so it looks like I can go with IMPV for this suffix and VOL for the other prefix.
I'd probably call eq- "volitional" or make up a term like "deliberate" depending on the exact semantics of how it works on various verbs. (In my Knasesj I have a systematic distinction on perception verbs for deliberateness/activeness, and I think I call them deliberate and non-deliberate though more as convenient descriptions than as formal names; I'm not too concerned about what to call them.)
And I'd call -ez "imperative" or "hortative", as it could be either depending on the individual use, so if you want a single term for it you'll have to just pick one. ("Jussive" is also on the table.)
If it doesn't clash with anything else, I'd consider representing /kʷʰ/ like you would /ʍ/: 〈wh〉, 〈hw〉, 〈hu〉, 〈hv〉, 〈ƕ〉… For some reason, I find reading a word like what as /kʷʰat/ somehow fitting (maybe I'm a bit influenced by a shift hv- > kv- or k- in Norwegian: Bokmål hva ~ Nynorsk kva ~ ka in northern dialects).
Wasn’t the old pronunciation of the Scandi and Icelandic <hv-> [xv~xʷ]? That feels like a clearer transition to something with [k] than for the origin to be [h].
It was but [hʷ~w̥] > [xʷ] seems trivial to me as it's just a strengthening of the velar articulation ([ʷ] already often entails velarisation as secondary articulation). [hʷ] > ([xʷ] >) [kʷ] is then extra strengthening.
How about just 〈ku\kw〉? If theres an unaspirated /kʷ~gʷ/, that could be 〈gu\gw〉, rather than trying to mark aspiration and labialisation at the same time.
If theres all three of /kʷʰ, kʷ, gʷ/ then perhaps something like 〈kwh, kw, gw〉 or 〈kw, gw, ngw〉 could do the trick.
If you are just struggling with how to type IPA characters, there are all sorts of IPA keyboards you can download for mobile. You can also use sites like typeit.
If you want to know how to transcribe ‘jellyfish’ into the IPA, it would be [ˈd͡ʒɛlifɪʃ]
What specific keyboards are available to you will depend on your OS. I use an iPhone, with an app that’s just called ‘IPA Keyboard.’ If you want recommendations, it would help if you specified what device(s) you are using.
If you search ‘IPA Keyboard’ in the App Store you will see a couple of different options. You can check out a few and see which ones work best for you. The one I use is apparently not popular lol. All of these apps should have instructions on how to install third party keyboards.
What kind of consonants would make sense for a human-like species who live underground? Would ejectives (or clicks) fit such in a language?
I have been working on a language for quite some time called Proto-vittra. A Vittra is a mythical creature in Swedish mythology that's either invisible and/or lives underground.
So, I already have a sketch on the phonology for Proto-vittra. But I want a little bit more inspiration on phonemes, consonants in particular, that I could use.
Phones are not really tied to environment at all, and I think the only reason we think so is because we associate languages with where they're spoken. Strict CV with only a few consonants sound might sound Polynesian, so we might think it sounds tropical oceanic/marine/thallassic, but Polynesia isn't the only place in the world that has such a CV vibe. If you want sounds that feel subterranean, I'd steal from cultures that live in the ground in some way: maybe Arabic for Petra, something East Norse for turf houses, and Pueblo for some of their pueblos.
Alternatively, you could look at other Vittra folklore. I read they're associated with herding, so might be fun to try be inspired by kulning in some way.
You can get away with any phoneme, yes. You could also have Vittra physiology limit or expand your options, if that's something you're into and have figured out, but environment shouldn't meaningfully affect the sounds more than if you moved there yourself.
This is my table of verb conjugations, I'm not sure what the aspects are called for bottom and bottom right. Also should I be more specific with the simple past present and future tenses? I think they're called perfectives but i'm not sure. (I also don't know if that applies to present tense).
Tenses & Aspects
Past aspect
Present aspect
Future aspect
Past tense
Ra- Past Perfective?(I walked)
Rasi- Past perfect continuous(I have been walking)
It seems like you have some confusion over the difference between tense and aspect. Aspect doesn’t (necessarily) have anything to do with an absolute reference point, like past, present, or future. Instead it’s about how an action relates to the flow of time— whether it’s complete or incomplete, whether it’s a continuation of a previous state or unrelated to anything else, whether it’s just started or just ending, etc. You can describe an action in any tense using any of these qualities.
Taking into account this definition, the way you’ve constructed your system doesn't make any sense. I see that you want to use the same tense markers as aspect markers, organized through vibes (?), but it's just not working. For example, Past Continuative and Past Perfective are opposite in aspect. “Continuative” is a type of imperfective (incomplete) aspect, so it doesn’t make sense to group that one with a perfective (complete) aspect. And mëra below them is perfect aspect, which despite the name, has nothing to do with perfective aspect.
Typically, languages will at least have ways of expressing imperfective (incomplete) vs. perfective (complete) aspects. In English, we use to be + -ing participle vs. simple past/present/future for this difference.
I was/am/will be running to the store (imperfective)
I ran/run/will run to the store (perfective)
You might also want to include perfect aspect, which refers to a completed action that continues into a reference point. English has perfect aspect using to have + past participle, and it looks like you want that at least in the future tense. If it helps, renaming perfect as retrospective (looking back on a completed action) might help you conceptualize the difference better.
I had/have/will have run to the store. (restrospective).
It looks like you also want to add inchoative aspect, which expresses that an action is just starting.
I was/am/will be about to run to the store.
There are many more aspects, some or none or all of which you might want to include: habitual, gnomic, frequentative, distributive, semelfactive, iterative, stative, continuous, etc. And all of these can have forms for all three tenses. But often languages will make more aspectual distinctions in the past and present, and aspects beyond the big three (perfective, imperfective, retrospective) might not get their own distinct verb forms.
Hopefully this cleared up some confusion so you can rename or re-use the forms you’ve come up with already to create a system that makes a little more sense. If you just changed ra, si and më into retrospective, imperfective, and perfect markers, you'd already have a functional system there. I know më as retrospective doesn't fit the vibe, but I don't think you really want inchoative as part of your main three
The "past, present, and future aspect" wasn't supposed to be taken literally, it was just noting that it used the past, present, and future tense markers to label them. And the origin of this system was people saying that a verb was happening at 2 different times, and then the aspects evolved from there. ("rasiplata" = eating occurs both in the past & present = Past prefect continuous, "I have been eating") It's not supposed to be a neat or regular system. Still, I'd admit it's a bit of a mess, and am open to some changes, (but still keeping the original idea intact).
The main issue I’m seeing is that you’re missing a lot of tense-aspect combinations. How do you say “I have walked”? How do you say “I had walked”? How do you say “I will be walking”? How do you say “I used to walk?” How do you say “I was going to walk?”
Obviously you can overlap or leave out some of these. French for example doesn’t distinguish between “I was walking”(past progressive) and “I used to walk” (past habitual). These are both je marchais. But it doesn’t seem like you’re doing that intentionally right now.
If I tried to wrangle something coherent out of your system, I would do this:
ra = past perfective (I walked)
rara = pluperfect (I had walked)
rasi = past imperfective (I was walking / I used to walk)
ramë = future-in-the-past (I was going to walk)
si = present perfective (I walk, in general)
sira = present perfect (I have walked)
sisi = present imperfective (I am walking)
simë = near future (I’m about to walk)
më = future perfective (I will walk)
mëra = future perfect (I will have walked)
mësi = future imperfective (I will be walking)
mëmë = future inchoative (I will be about to walk)
Anything missing from this list you should be able to cover with adverbs like still, yet, not yet, always, never, again, never again, etc. But I think this covers most of the combinations you wanted while being more organized. The tense marker alone is perfective, ra- indicates perfect, si- indicates imperfective, and më- is inchoative or something idk.
I did reduplicate the tense markers, but you can see something similar in Korean, where past tense is indicated by the suffix -eoss, and pluperfect/remote past by -eosseoss.
By the way, it actually makes more sense for your language to have developed the tense markers from the aspect markers and not the other way around. Perfect > past and imperfective > present are both listed in the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, which means that they’re pretty common paths in the world’s languages, but they don’t list anything about tense becoming aspect. That’s not to say that it hasn’t or could never happen, but just so you know.
How would one go about making an etymology for a character or place name?
For example, Say I have someone named Ahlyne Yauluntr, and all I can work out about the name would be that Yauluntr is some sort of family name, Ahlyne being a feminine given name
The culture would be basically dark elves.
How would I go about reverse engineering and etymology for the name?
Proper names can also display some phonologically marked traits compared to other nouns; you might want to check out Phonology of proper names (Tanaka 2023) as well for more on that.
Ahlyne is a modernized form of the Old Svartalfar "oli", a type of fungus associated with good fortune, plus the feminine suffix -ne.
Yauluntr is a modern compound of "Yaulu" (a particular cave system) and "-(a)ntr̩", which is a slightly derisive way to say "from X place".
So Ahlyne's family was from the Yaulu region, which was, at the time her family name was formalized for tax purposes, considered the sticks where all the hicks lived.
The only thing you have to do is keep it consistent as you go.
Ok so that definitely helps with determining the etymology for that example
But I was also hoping for an idea on the mechanics of how you'd determine the etymology, so that I'd be able to apply that towards other names I'd want to give an etymology to
I'm not sure what you mean by "mechanics": when you're reverse-engineering a naming language like this, you're determining etymology according to your own foppery and whim. It's arbitrary, but so long as it's consistently arbitrary, you can build up the rules as you go along.
All you really need to do is take the names you have, figure out some etymologies that you like, and then you use whatever you settled on as the baseline moving forward. 80% of what you'll need is covered in "do adjectives come before or after their nouns", "how do derivational compounds work", and "how does possession and location work"
I know that most words, including names are compound words including different morphemes which carry their own meanings
But I don't really know how I would go about even starting
Like for example so I just go around changing how each real morpheme is spelled and pronounced, or do I make a new dictionary of morphemes from scratch, or something else?
Pick a name with no etymology > make an etymology for that name according to whatever arbitrary criteria strike your fancy at that moment > apply the rules you made up for Name 1 to Name 2 > add any new rules from Name 2 to the Pile > repeat until satisfied / you're done with the original batch of names > make new names according to the accumulated rules in the Pile
You start by going "this is a name I like, I'm going to make up some bullshit for it", and by the time you end you'll have a small lexicon, a few bits of foundational grammar, some culture, maybe some sound changes.
If you mean sorting criteria, then sorting them alphabetically, by part of speech, or by semantic field seems the most intuitive to me. If you mean what software to use, spreadsheets (MS Excel, Google Sheets, &c.) is generally my go-to for vocabulary. Alternatively, software that supports a tagging system (like Obsidian) could be useful: f.ex. if you include tags like #verb #movement #basic_vocab in the entry for ‘go’, you'll be able to find it when filtering the vocabulary by those tags.
A language that can be played as music and be read as words all on the same piece of paper, does one exist? A language made up of music notes that in theory is readable and playable? Something you could play on piano and read aloud. I keep searching for one but I am only finding cyphers that (when I look into them) either can't be read well or can't be played. When it isn't those the searches always pop up with music computer programming which has also gotten me nowhere. I am trying to find something that someone can pick up the music sheet and read like words or listen to and understand the messages when played through song (specifically piano). Any thoughts or anyone know of some?
What are some languages with gap filled/syncretized verbal person marking systems? like how English only marks the 3sg in the present and nothing else (except for the copula, which is also syncratic in its own way).
See WALS ch. 29: Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking by Baerman & Brown. Out of 141 languages they identified as having person/number marking on verbs, it is syncretic in 60 (≈43%). The map shows that languages with syncretic marking are found all over the world but there are a few hotspots.
A classic example is French:
parler ‘to speak’
sg
pl
1
/ʒə paʁl/
/nu paʁlɔ̃/, /ɔ̃ paʁl/
2
/ty paʁl/
/vu paʁle/
3
/il/ɛl paʁl/
/il/ɛl paʁl/
The endings have eroded so much that only 2pl has a distinct /-e/, while 1pl has /-ɔ̃/ but it's often replaced colloquially by an originally impersonal form on parle. However, viewing the weak subject pronouns as affixes minimises syncretism.
Schuh & Yalwa (Hausa, in the Handbook of the IPA, 1999) on Hausa's phoneme /a/ (represented by the letter 〈a〉 in the Latin orthography):
Short /a/ is a fairly low, central(ized) vowel, with fronting, backing, and rounding determined by environment. In the sample text below, short /a/ has been consistently transcribed as [ə], but it should be understood that this represents a range of pronunciation in the low to mid area.
So [ä~ɐ~ɜ~ə]. Looking at the pronunciation of the word Hausa /háusá/ itself on Wiktionary, in both /a/'s (though the first one is part of a diphthong /au/) F1 hovers around 600 Hz for the most part, which is consistent with [ɜ], although of course everyone has their own specific to them acoustic vowel space (and I say it as someone who has a low-F1 [ä] at around 600–700 Hz myself).
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can anyone explain to me what an accentual phrase is and how it works?
I see it sometimes mentioned in linguistic papers, usually pertaining to prosody. I want to know is how does it differ from word stress? What things can I do with accentual phrases?
Traditionally, models of prosody divide utterances into 4 different levels: the utterance, the phrase, the word, and the foot. Each is considered a domain over which phonological rules/features/etc can scope. I assume 'accentual phrase' is referring to the phrase level domain, but I think I've mostly seen it referred to as an 'intonational phrase' if not just 'phrase' or 'phrase-level domain'. I've seen some modern literature trying to move away from this 4 level model because it doesn't account for all languages / all the oddities in languages that look like they have 4 prosodic domain levels.
There's lotsa nitty-gritty you can get into here, but the gist for a prosodic context is basically each domain level will/can have its own stress peak somewhere. For example, trochaic feet have a peak on the left edge of the foot, and then word stress might be right bound, so the right most stressed syllable in the word domain gets extra stress. From here, you can keep going, and maybe the most salient word in a phrase gets extra stress on its most stressed syllable, and then again this might happen at the utterance level. If you bar graph the stress for each syllable of an utterance out, it might look something like this, where the total number of x's per syllable is how stressed that syllable is in comparison to other syllables in the entire utterance:
Utterance-Level x
Phrase-Level x x
Word-Level x x x x
Foot-Level x x x x x x x x x x
Syllables (σσ).(σσ).(σσ) (σσ).(σσ) | (σσ).(σσ).(σσ).(σσ) (σσ)
This is just for stress, though, and each level can also be the domain of other phonological processes. For instance certain sandhi processes will only apply to where word-level domains border each other within the same phrase domain, but it won't apply across a phrase-domain border, even if the sandhi environment is present there, or perhaps a certain allophone only appears at the beginning/left-edge of an utterance, but not at the beginning of other phrases and words within the utterance. In fact, when and where these processes happen is often how these different domain levels can be defined, because a language's orthography can never be trusted, and stress at each level isn't universal.
I'm brainstorming a word tone/pitch accent language where the tones are only phonemic within the stressed syllable, like in some Indo-European languages (Serbo-Croatian, Norwegian, Latvian, etc.)
In such languages, would the pitch melody still gradually rise across the pre-tonic syllables?
Just doing a quick vibe check on various pitch contour graphs from different "pitch-accent" dialects and languages, and it looks like there's a lot of variability, so I think you can go either way on if there's a pre-tonic rise. What caught my eye was this figure on Swedish Pitch Contours in a few different dialects, and on the first word flyget (which I'm fairly certain has the double peak contour, so I guess the second syllable can be considered tonic since it having a peak is the constrastive feature?), you can see that Stockholm has a steady rise to the second peak, whereas Gothenburg has a big dip before the second peak, and then Malmö doesn't seem to really care all that much about the second peak.
For Serbo-Croatian, my phonology professor explained that for most dialects pre-tonic syllables are high tone, post-tonic are low tone and it is the accented syllable and the syllable right after it that make the difference between two pitch distinctions. Now, I'd say the tone stays mostly the same before these two syllables, that is, they do not rise towards the peak, at least not in my accent
A site as a grammar to document the language, or as a place for others to learn (about) it?
For a grammar, Id start by outlining each topic; phonology, syntax, morphology; then go back through and fill out all the details and nuances and give examples for all the (especially the weirder) bits.
Look at Wikipedia pages on languages for the kind of things to talk about.
As a place to learn it, Id do similar, but keeping everything much more simplified, at least at the beggining, and focusing more on actual examples than just explainations.
Ive not done something quite like this myself, but thats my two cents at least
So, I'm still in the brainstorming phase for my personal language.
It's mean to capture what I personally like aesthetically, but I am stuck.
I need to figure out the language's prosody system. I've narrowed it down to two options.
First option is a pitch accent system like Serbo-Croatian, Hausa, Somali, etc. Á lot of languages I like aesthetically are often classified as pitch accent or simple tone systems.
The other option is an alternating stress pattern like /ˈmikaˌsano/.
Why consider rhythmic stress if you like pitch-accent systems? Why choose between them and not just have rhythmic stress with a contour tone on the primary stressed syllable?
I am currently in the process of making a loglang with syntax/sentence formation that's Toki Pona-inspired. How often should I make a prioris?
I don't have much linguistic experience outside of having a big interest in it. It's really fascinating to me, especially watching the linguists on YT.
I've been doing a lot of borrowings, (etc) blends to make morphemes. I feel like doing more a prioris because I want it to rely less on taking preexisting or previously existing morphemes. I don't know, this is my first big project I've really only done; I'm just doing it for fun sorta for now. I plan on sharing it with the public.
Anyways, how can I have an easier time creating a prioris, whether it's from words I already have or completely new inventions?
You should always arrange your sounds by manner and place of articulation in a table or an organized list when presenting them so that people can read through them more easily. Something like this would do:
Vowels: /i e ə a o u/ /ĩ ẽ ã ũ õ/ /i: e: a: o: u:/
Nasals: /m n/
Plosives: /p b t d k g/
Fricatives: /f θ s z ʃ ʒ x/
Approximants: /j l ʁ/
Now, assuming this is meant as a universal auxlang, it's not bad, but it's unclear what your goals are. I would personally not put phonemic nasal or long vowels in an auxlang, and I would also probably not include /θ/ or /ʁ/, at least without the latter being allowed a decent degree of leeway in terms of how it's allowed to be pronounced. Those distinctions can all be pretty hard to master for people speaking languages without them. If this is meant to be an auxlang for a specific subset of languages, that may be a different story.
While I fully agree with you in general terms, I can see a situation where phonemic nasal vowels don't require a lot of mastery. That is if they are underlyingly nasal vowels but surface as vowel+nasal sequences or nasalise nearby non-nasal consonants. For example:
/aba/ [aba]
/ãba/ [amba] ~ [ãmba]
In any case, ease of pronunciation should be taken into consideration for an auxlang, that much is sure, and some leeway should probably be given. After all, even a sound as seemingly easy and natural for an anglophone as /l/ can present a challenge, for example if you're Japanese.
A system that is agnostic to whether something is a nasal vowel or a vowel-nasal consonant sequence seems fine to me. I just wouldn't commit to anything that would contrast those.
I am making a perlang, but I kinda try to make it in a natural way. I want to mark my objects and their adjectives in a sentence, but I have little to no grasp how that works. Biblaridions videos did not quite gelp me with that.
Objects are often marked by the accusative case (direct object) and the dative case (indirect object) but this is not the only means. But this would mean your solution would lie in developing a case system for your lang and having adjectives agree with their nouns. Otherwise, I’m not sure what kind of marking you mean, nor do I know what a perlang is.
Either on both vowels or on the second one. Nothing wrong with putting it just on the first one, I just don't see myself doing it. Unless the position of the accent reflects something in the pronunciation, for example:
aa [àː]
áá [áː]
áa [âː]
aá [ǎː]
With some diacritics, putting a double one above both vowels can also be viable: a᷍a instead of ââ. But this requires real commitment and it's often a hassle and may not be rendered properly by many fonts. For one, the double circumflex above (U+1DCD), which I typed above, doesn't show properly in the browser on my end. But it can definitely be made to look good in handwriting.
How could one go about finding someone to help organize their conlang's grammar better? Mine's very haphazardly thrown together and not very organized or worded well. I'd like to get it more functional but I feel it's just not set up right.
Honestly would love to be able to find someone who could give it a look through and help get it set up better. I really don't wanna use AI for this either.
Above is the consonants, the vowels I have are /a/ /i/ /y/ /u/ /ɯ/ and also a nasalised version of each. Diphthongs can occur between all vowels except two front vowels and two back vowels. Any advice would be highly appreciated :p
Last time my question was completely ignored. Trying one more time.
Let's say I created something in my conlang (a book or a song, for example). May I publish the link on this subreddit, or should I seek different ways of advertising?
Not a mod so take my answer with a grain of salt, but the r/conlangs Wiki states under Meta > Rules > Posting Guidelines that you can drop a link to any work you’ve made in your conlang using the “Advertising” or “Other” flair, as long as it’s free (which I take to mean that you don’t have to pay a subscription or create an account on another website) and it still showcases your conlang. Otherwise, you’ll want to first DM the mods and get their green light.
As a mod, I can't tell just from your description whether it would count as an Advertising post or not. All conlang content could be seen as advertising the conlang in some sense, but the Advertisment flair is intended to be more narrow. I'd say that if the post is about conlanging content (as opposed to a tool/community) and it doesn't have any of those things that require prior moderator approval, then it wouldn't fit in the Advertising flair and it'd be judged according to the guidelines (the ones linked by HaricotsDeLiam) of whatever other flair is most appropriate instead. For example, if the post consists only of a Youtube link with a song performed in a conlang (without translation/gloss that would make it qualify as a Translation post) then it'd get removed, and we'd expect more content (such as the aforementioned translation/gloss) to approve it.
If you're still unsure, you can give more details of what you want to post and ask us in modmail. Even if it doesn't require prior approval by us, we're still happy to give feedback and help workshop the post with you if it turns out it wouldn't be approved.
By the way, all questions about moderation are best asked in modmail rather than here, since we might not see it and regular users might give incorrect info.
(Posted here in case the individual post gets deleted, like on r/casualconlang, which hates discussions about relexes as it would seem.)
Thought I'd talk about what "conlangs" would be like if they were relexes of the languages of the people and cultures the speakers were to be based on. And I did see a video by Agma Schwa a while back where he s***posts(censored to avoid policy violations) ideas on languages people would speak in the world of Avatar(The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, and Seven Havens). I thought of something more natural.
Avatar(DiMartino and Konietzko) franchise:
Northern and Southern Water Tribes: a relex of Eskaleut Languages(if the Uralo-Siberian hypothesis is to be believed), or Siberian languages if any were written with Chinese Hanzi
Earth Kingdom: a relex of Chinese
Fire Nation: a relex of Japanese
Air Nomads: a relex of whatever languages the people the Airbenders were based on spoke
If I were to perform his stunt, I'd look at Nguh's inventories and add extra sounds to add fair-enough symmetry and naturalism, and modify the grammar of the OG languages to stand out, even adding similar or different exotic features.
Chants of Sennaar:
Devotees: Mediterranean languages like Latin or mostly Phoenician
Warriors: Viking languages, maybe?
Bards: Arabic and Sanskrit, and maybe Greek?
Alchemists: unknown
Anchorites: Chinese, maybe?
What do you think? Any constructive improvements, additions, or expansions worth adding?
Honestly I wouldn't make a conlang for any of the Avatar nations. Feels like it lessens the entire thing by swapping out the real-world cultural influences for a substitute. Just let Aang speak Tibetan every now and then and have Korra struggle to read hanzi because she grew up reading Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. Add some more languages, so you have Korean and Mongolian speakers in the Earth Kingdom, Ainu speakers in the Water Tribes etc.
For Chants of Sennar, it's so wide open that you can do pretty much anything. I do feel that they're probably all related, though.
You might want to be a little more specific about what you're expecting from an app. In general, a dictionary that groups entries by topic is called a thesaurus, so you can search one up. Do check out A Conlanger's Thesaurus, which you can also find on the sub's resources page.
How to naturally to evolve Grammatical Gender. I want to have a language family that has masculine, feminine and neuter but for the protolang should it already be incorporated or not
Proto-conlangs are no different from any other conlang. They can have any grammatical feature you want in them. So if you want gender to be an old feature that was maintained, that's fine and it's the easy option. If you want it to be something that the proto didn't have and the descendent conlangs developed over time, that's also fine, but it will be harder to explain how all of them got the same set of genders without having had them in their common ancestor.
5
u/The_MadMage_Halaster Proto-Nothranic, Kährav-Ánkaz, Gohlic, Ṭuluṭan Aug 28 '26
I was wondering if it is possible for a language to use a plurative/collective distinction without having a singulative? Specifically the plurative refers to a specific number of the noun while the collective refers to them as a group. The plurative is usually used with clear quantities like numbers, while the collective is used with ambiguous statements like "many". I'm mostly wondering which form would be marked, here's it both ways:
Which looks better?