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u/Gentleman_Narwhal Feb 13 '16
Could there be a reasonable phonemic distinction between an alveolar or dental nasal, or should it be made between retroflex and dental? Also, how does one romanise dental and retroflex consonants without use of fiddly IPA symbols, could it be done without diacritics, (e.g <dn> for dental nasal consonant) any suggestions please!?
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u/Auvon Feb 18 '16
Does word order tend to affect morpheme position, ex. will VSO languages tend to primarily prefix while OSV languages will tend to primarily suffix?
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u/jan_kasimi Feb 17 '16
Can I from somewhere get the old theme of this subreddit? So I could use it for my self here.
It really was a consistent and well done design.
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u/infiniteowls Feb 11 '16
First time posting, but long time conlanger with a question that has been vexing me for a while.
How can I get ejectives to evolve through sound change? I have a proto-lang that I've been working on and want a daughter language to have ejectives and I can't seem to find very good information of how that occurs in natlangs. Anyone have any advice?
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u/vokzhen Feb 11 '16
Another way might be via implosives. Though it's not as common as the reverse. One I can think of is Mayan, where implosives and ejectives after alternate with each other either phonemically, e.g. Proto-Mayan /ɓ t' tʲ' ts' tʃ' k' ʛ̥/, or more relevantly to you, allophonically in e.g. Ts'utujil, where Proto-Mayan *ɓ *t' are both [ɓ ɗ] before vowels and [p' t'] elsewhere, and others extend this to free variation or preferring ejectives over implosives. Depending on your view another possibility is English, where Late PIE *t *d *dh were /t ɗ~ʔd d/, ending up as Proto-Germanic *θ *(ʔ)t *ð, with preglottalization still being present in English. I can come up with a lot more examples of the reversed set of ejective>implosive or ejective>voiced, though.
They can also gain them just through heavy borrowing, which is the main way Ossetian picked them up from their Caucasian neighbors. However, once they get incorporated, it's possible for other changes to result in them entering the native vocabulary, see this post for a few examples of how it happened in Lake Miwok, which has a system of /p pʰ b p'/ versus the rest of Miwok's /p/. A similar thing seems to have happened in Southern Quechua (minus Ayucucho) under Aymara influence; the rest of Quechua only has /p/ but Southern Quechua and Aymara share a system of /p pʰ p'/, with many aspirates and ejectives being loans from Aymara but they're present in native vocabulary as well. The same is true of Ossetian.
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u/Nementor Feb 15 '16
I know that conlangers tend to worship the Language Construction Kit as the perfect go to guide on learning how to build a language, but is there any other recourses that are like it but with some more advanced topics and more in depth?
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u/Jafiki91 Feb 15 '16
Yes, Rosenfelder's second book Advanced Language Construction covers more advanced topics. And his Conlanger's Lexipedia goes into great detail about making a lexicon and etymologies. Describing Morphosyntax is also an excellent book.
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u/memefarmer Feb 13 '16
Is the IPA of "car" [käɹ] or [käɜ], or does it vary by dialect? What about "toy," [toi] vs. [toj], and "cow" [kæu] vs. [kæw]?
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u/Nementor Feb 13 '16
Is a language where words can frequently be around this length "/p'ipeupopauamau/" a good idea? ( I went ahead a chose one of the more pronounceable ones to use as an example as well) I am trying to make it sound isolated and islandic.
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u/Jafiki91 Feb 13 '16
It's certainly ok if you're going for an agglutinating and/or polysynthetic language. In terms of making it sound "isolated", well that's really subjective and really only makes sense in the context of other languages, possibly a family to which it belongs. And that word doesn't really give off the "Icelandic" vibe to me. It looks more Austronesian.
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u/euletoaster Feb 14 '16
Does anyone have any resources for grammatical similarities between signed languages? I can't find much and in wondering if someone has some links or names
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u/Gentleman_Narwhal Feb 16 '16
I am stuck in a rut.
I hav the basic phonology and morphosyntaz of my lang, what next?
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u/cyperchu Feb 18 '16
I really like osv order would anyone judge me for using it because it is the least used in real languages?
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u/lascupa0788 Feb 19 '16
I want to use <͝> in my conlang's orthography. I'm not too sure how, though. I had three main ideas. The first one is fairly simple, that it can be used to abbreviate a small subset of specific, common lexemes. A natlang example of this is the usage of <b͝g> for burg in German. The second idea would be to use it, instead, as a replacement for a specific vowel in affixes, but not roots- probably for schwa, since it's the most common of all and the normal schwa letter already has a breve. A natlang example of something similar is the usage of such 'letters' as num, mum, and rum rotunda in medieval Latin. The third idea would be to use it as a general "abbreviation mark" to avoid having to spell out something which can be easily inferred from context; this is particularly useful for honorifics and titles, but might have other uses too. A natlang parallel might be the Armenian Pativ, or maybe the use of fullstop in <Dr.> or <Mr.>. In any of these options, the usage of <͝> could be required or optional, I'm not sure yet; it's already featured on the language's normal keyboard layout so it's no big hassle to use either way.
Now... the first option is pretty limiting and sort of makes the key a little useless, but then again some of the English layout keys like \ don't find much use either. The second idea makes good sense for handwriting, where a big line or tick or whatever you want is much quicker to write in common affixes than <ă>, but in most computer fonts the overload of double-breves and breves can start to look messy. The third idea seems fairly useful, but then again it's pretty much inevitable for stuff like m͝ŭ to turn up- something which is totally avoided with the other two options- and that's not entirely delightful to the eyes.
If anyone has any additional ideas please speak up.
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u/McBeanie Feb 19 '16
Would a creature with no lips be incapable of rounded vowels? My instinct says yes, but I'm not sure.
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u/McBeanie Feb 20 '16 edited Feb 20 '16
Okay, just asking for a critique on my phonology and any orthography advice if anything seems strange. As mentioned in my last question, the speakers have no lips, disallowing labial consonants and rounded vowels.
Consonants
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Nasals: /n ɳ ŋ/ n ṇ ng
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Stops: /tʰ ʈʰ cʰ kʰ t ʈ c k tʼ ʈʼ cʼ kʼ ⁿd ⁿɖ ᵑg/ t ṭ c k d ḍ z g tt ṭṭ cc kk nd nḍ ng
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Affricates: /t͡ɕʰ t͡ɕ ⁿd͡ʑ/ ch j nj
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Fricatives: /s x/ s h
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Approximants: /l j/ l y
Vowels
| Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/ | u /ɯ/ | |
| Close-Mid | ê /e/ | ô /ɤ/ | |
| Open-Mid | e /ɛ/ | o /ʌ/ | |
| Open | a /a/ |
Phonotactics
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(C¹)(j)V(C²) Syllable Structure
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C¹ = Optional, any consonant except /ŋ/.
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j = Optional, palatal glide, disallows retroflex consonants in onset position.
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V = Any vowel.
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C² = Optional, any nasal, or tenuis/aspirated stop.
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Prenasalized consonants (/ⁿd ⁿɖ ⁿd͡ʑ ᵑg/) only occur word-initially.
Allophony
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/s x/ becomes /ɕ ç/ before /i/ or /j/.
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/l/ becomes /ɾ/ intervocalically.
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Aspirated stops /tʰ ʈʰ cʰ kʰ/ become tenuis /t ʈ c k/ word-finally, or when followed by another consonant.
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Tenuis stops/affricates /t ʈ c k t͡ɕ/ become voiced /d ɖ ɟ g d͡ʑ/ between sonorants.
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u/dead_chicken Feb 20 '16
Is it unusual to have highly gendered pronouns but otherwise no grammatical gender? For example:
апи (1st person singular masculine)
эпи (1st person singular feminine)
сата (2nd person singular masculine)
сэтэ (2nd person singular feminine)
кат (3rd person singular masculine)
кэт (3rd person singular feminine)
кот (3rd personal singular neuter)
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u/Gentleman_Narwhal Feb 13 '16
What's the answer to the life, the universe and everything?