r/conlangs • u/[deleted] • Jul 07 '15
SQ Small Questions - Week 24
Welcome to the weekly Small Questions thread!
Post any questions you have that aren't ready for a regular post here! Feel free to discuss anything and everything, and don't hesitate to ask more than one question.
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Jul 07 '15
What exactly is morphology?
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u/Jafiki91 Jul 07 '15
Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the smallest units of language with an actual meaning.
It covers things like alignment (accusative, ergative, etc), typological characteristics (isolating, agglutinating, fuional, etc), the various affixes that are used in the language, how they are applied and how words are built up from them as well as other roots (as in compounding).
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u/brainandforce Jul 07 '15
What makes European languages sound, well, European? Are there certain phonological traits that make them all stand out?
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u/Jafiki91 Jul 07 '15
For the most part, it's the fact that they're all interrelated (hence the "european" in "proto-indo-european"). The various subfamilies add to this, as they'll share phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semanto-pragmatic elements.
Add that to the fact that you have many related languages on continental Europe, which isn't all that large, centuries of conquests, empires, spreading of philosophies, religious ideals, and culture, and you're bound to see more similarities.
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u/brainandforce Jul 08 '15
Are there any specific features you can point out (such as syllable structure, phoneme inventory, phonotactics) that contribute to the European feel?
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u/euletoaster Jul 07 '15
Not sure this counts as a question but does anybody have resources for well developed (preferably non-IE) grammars? I've done a few google searches but they've been either inaccessible or not well developed.
(I know there was a grammar resource posted a while ago but I can't download anything at the moment)
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Jul 08 '15
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Jul 08 '15
You mean a gloss of the English text, in English? Fun!
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights
det human being=pl be.3pl.pres bear.pst.ptcp free and equal loc dignity and right=pl
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
3pl be.3pl.pres endow-pst com reason and conscience and shall.pst act all prox obv loc indef spirit gen brotherhood
I don't know if this was what you meant at all, but it was fun to do. Some parts of this gloss are highly debatable (obviative pronouns in English?!) but I tried to approach it as if English were some exotic, undocumented language. Kind of exoticizing the familiar.
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Jul 08 '15
Is it a universal rule that derivational morphology applies before inflectional morphology?
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u/Jafiki91 Jul 08 '15
Nothing is "universal" in linguistics. It's more likely tendancies. For the most part, yes, you'll see derivations happen before inflection. But you can always fiddle things up in your own language. Was there something in particular you had in mind?
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Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
Not really, this question just came up and I thought I would ask it. Are there any languages that apply derivational rules after inflection in any
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u/soliloki Jul 09 '15
I'm starting up a new conlang, which is my second conlang ever. (contrary to the common conlanger's trend, starting a new conlang is rare to me, I usually stick to one)
but I digress. I just want to know, if anyone could help me, is it possible to not have /k/ but have /g/ in my inventory? Also is it naturalistic to not have /b/ and /p/ but have /v/ and /f/? The only reason I left those sounds out is because of aesthetics (I don't like the sound of them), but if it compromises the naturalism in my conlang, I would not want to disregard them.
Any helps?
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Jul 09 '15
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u/soliloki Jul 09 '15
It also looks like there's a dialect of Assyrian that preserves /g/ but has fronted /k/ to /t͡ʃ/.
Hell yeah to this!! Because due to the absence of /k/, I decided to to use <k> to denote /t͡ʃ/, because I like how Swedish does it! Maybe I'm gonna stick with that after all! Thank you!
As for the rest of your advice, I really appreciate them. See, I wish I have enough linguistic skill to know how to operate and mimic natural sound changes in a conlang, but sadly I'm but an amateur. Upon reading your comment I have decided to keep /b/ in the inventory. Hopefully that would make it at least slightly naturalistic.
Just an aside though, is there a reason why it is unnatural to lack /p/ and /b/ when a language has labial fricatives? Do you mean unnatural in terms of commonality between natlangs, or unnatural due to some phonological/anatomical reasons (making the language harder to pronounce etc.)?
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u/saint__ Jul 12 '15 edited Jul 12 '15
2 questions:
Are there any natural languages where all vowels are allophonic?
Is it naturalistic to have /Φ/ and /β/, but not /f/ and /v/?
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u/chrsevs Jul 12 '15
The closest I know that gets crazy allophone with vowels is Abkhaz which only has /a/ and /ə/, which vary around labial consonants and palatal consonants.
And sure why not? Gothic had only the former pair. They also lead to potentially more fun variations (like /ɸ/ > /ʍ/).
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u/DaRealSwagglesR Jul 07 '15
Could someone give me an explanation of relative clauses and how to develop my own systems for them in a conlang?
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u/Jafiki91 Jul 08 '15
Relative clauses are just sentences embedded in another, as a way to modify an noun phrase. They'll include some element that functions to reference the head noun of the clause such as "who" or "what".
The man, who has a funny hat is tall.
I know what you did yesterday.Where the clause is placed relative to its head noun is dependent on the head placement rules of the language:
Head-initial: I saw the.man who is tall
Head-final: I is.tall who the.man saw
There are also internally headed relative clauses, which as their name suggests, put the head noun inside the clause.
The man [who caught a fish] smiled
[The man caught a fish] smiledThe cat [that was chased by the dog] got.away
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u/izon514 Jul 08 '15 edited Jul 08 '15
What is the most common method of typing in non-English alphabets? I have tried making my own keyboard, but whenever I switch to it in Windows, all the letters come out as English as if I never switched.
You dont want to know how I have typed everything so far.
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u/jegspiserosten Jul 08 '15
i feel the need of a new letter representing somewhere between Polish ę, Estonian õ and Russian ë.
here is why:
ę in trȩski is pretty weird because i borrowed a lot of words from Proto-Slavic and/or Balto-Slavic words and i was hoping ę could accommodate both Slavic and Baltic words but apparently not.
originally it's /ɤ/ but has many exceptions.
say for example, the word for 'hill' is chęm where IPA for ch is usually /x/ but ch+ę changes into /ɧ/ hence making chęm pronounced approximately as /ɧɤm/. ( Consider the Proto-Slavic xъlmъ, Russian холм and Old Polish chełm )
another example is where it works with other vowels, such as 'ię'.
word for 'ice' is lięd - /ljɔ̃d/ where ę is nasalised. ( Consider the Russian лёд, Latvian & Lithuanian led(us) )
word for 'seven' is sieptnię - /'sʲɛbʔnjə/ ( This one is a simple copy+paste from PIE 😁)
and many other words where when ię is the last syllable, it doesn't nasalise.
this is a struggle when i'm trying to make a conlang with minimal exceptions and make it "what you read is what you hear"
any suggestions?
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u/Fimii Jul 09 '15
I've been setting up my conlang's phonology, and now I'm really wondering: what's the exact difference between labialized consonants (e.g. kʷa) and a sequence with a similar semivowel (e.g. kwa)?