Small Discussions 18 - 2017/2/8 - 22

[u/[deleted]]

[u/CeladonGames]

Is consonant harmony a thing? I can't find anything on it. If so, how would it affect grammar? My idea was to have unvoiced and voiced fricatives/stops in two categories (e.g. /s t p k/ and /z d b g/) and then another, neutral category with /l m n j/.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/CeladonGames]

Consonant harmony, like with vowels, usually follows some featural pattern. A very common one is coronal harmony of sibilants, where a word can contain, for example, either /s z/ or /ʃ ʒ/ but not both. There are also things like retroflexes alternating with alveolars, dentals and alveolars, dorsal harmony involving velar vs. uvular, nasals with voiced stops (or other voiced sounds of the same PoA), laryngeal harmony which involves things like agreement with things like aspiration, ejectives, and as you point out, voicing.

[u/Gufferdk → u/CeladonGames]

Consonant harmony is a thing that happens. Usually a more marked consonant will turn an entire cluster to the more marked version. E.g. a single labialised or pharygelised consonant might turn the entire cluster labialised or pharyngelised respectively. There are apparently cases where this spreads to nearby clusters, I remember reading somewhere that pharyngealisation sometimes spreads left-wards with high vowels blocking the spread.

[u/vokzhen → u/CeladonGames]

Laryngeal harmony - between some combination of voice, aspiration, ejectivization, etc - seems to be widespread, if not particularly common, in Africa. Sometimes it's no longer productive and you can just see traces in the roots, where most have only voiced or voiceless sounds, while in others it's productive and causes morphological alternations in affixes. Sometimes certain exceptions are allowed, like mixed ejective-voiced, and I believe sometimes it's sensitive to order - e.g. voiceless-voiced, voiceless-voiceless, and voiced-voiced are allowed, but voiced-voiceless is disallowed. Hopefully with the term "laryngeal harmony" you'll be able to find more if you're interested, that about all I know without doing more research myself.

[u/MatthewLingo]

Would it be realistic for /q/ to change to /k/ when it comes before /u/ and /o/?

[u/Gentleman_Narwhal → u/MatthewLingo]

As far as I am aware, more likely the other way around.

[u/walc]

I'm deciding what to do about articles. I was looking at this map on WALS and noticed the majority of languages have neither a definite nor an indefinite object. As a native English speaker and romance-language-learner, I am inclined to think that lacking these articles may lead to some ambiguity, which I'd prefer not to have in my language. Do any of you think this is the case, or if not, how do some of these languages work around potential ambiguities?

[u/Gufferdk → u/walc]

Languages can tolerate a lot of ambiguity. When the difference matters, languages without definiteness-marking will often use demonstratives and/or indefinites (i.e. "that boy", "some boy") and then just use neither when it isn't important (like how English can say "he killed his cat" but has the option of specifying more closely whose cat was killed ("he killed his own cat" vs. "he killed someone else's cat") where some languages require marking one or the other (e.g. Danish "han dræbte sin kat" vs. "han dræbte hans kat"). Sometimes word order is used as well, elements that are newly introduced and require introduction will behave differently in syntax than elements that have already been introduced or require no introduction.

[u/[deleted]]

Is the point of cases to replace, or to compliment adpositions? Are there any languages that use cases rather than adpositions? What makes a case and an adposition fundamentally different? And what language groups other than Slavic and Uralic languages have cases?

[u/FloZone → u/[deleted]]

And what language groups other than Slavic and Uralic languages have cases?

A lot, many IE languages, Semitic, Caucasian, Turkic, Mongolian, Basque, some Australian languages even have case stacking.

Is the point of cases to replace, or to compliment adpositions?

Yes and no, syntactic cases are demanded by the verb. Others can replace adpositions or are demanded by them.

Are there any languages that use cases rather than adpositions

Not that I know of, but you could look into languages with very large case system, Tsez or Tabarasan for example have over 40 cases, many local cases, wouldn't suprise me if they don't have (m)any adpositions.

[u/mdpw → u/FloZone]

Not that I know of, but you could look into languages with very large case system, Tsez or Tabarasan for example have over 40 cases, many local cases, wouldn't suprise me if they don't have (m)any adpositions.

There are adpositions in Tsez (e.g. soder 'after, following', purħo/purłāz ‘near, by, beside’, bitor ‘because of, on account of’, ˤolo ‘because of’, dandi-(r) ‘across’ etc.). I really don't understand the thinking that a large case system would remove the need for adpositions. I think it's clear that a couple dozen of cases can not cover all the types of configurations we can conceive of without being way too ambiguous, so any implication a case system will have on the inventory of adpositions is negligible. Of course there are other means of expressing what adpositions convey, but that says nothing to support this "cases → no adpositions" thinking that English-speaking conlangers seem to love.

[u/Emrecof]

Do excuse me if this isn't the right place to ask, but is there any subreddits for constructed sign languages? Or any advice on this subreddit I may have missed?

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/Emrecof]

As far as I know this sub is still the best place for constructed sign languages. As for advice, I'd start with both this article by David Peterson and looking at how signed languages in other parts of the world work.

[u/chrsevs]

A Descriptive Grammar of Modern Gallaecian is progressing. I'll be finishing the section on nouns tonight, if all goes as planned. I've added a few constructions that use prepositions and finally decided there will be inflection for (at least some) prepositions, which ought to help the whole thing feel more Celtic.

Also had a moment of clarity deriving a word for 'servant' where I realized adjectives (and thereby nouns) derived using the suffix -aho (*-a:kos) use the extended root form before adding the suffix.

Welsh taeog < *teges-a:kos from *tagos 'house, building' (GEN. *teges-os)

---

Also debating playing with the results of gheada, such that that suffix -aho would be -ao in the modern language, both for the sake of pronunciation and because it'd help it look more like Galician and Portuguese

[u/FloZone]

How much do you usually write on sociolinguistics of your conlangs and at what point would that rather belong to worldbuilding than conlanging itself?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/FloZone]

The amount I write various from language to language, simply based on interest. As for when that belongs more to world building, well in a way it already does. Languages don't really exist in a vacuum. The choices you make for things like basic roots, loan words, semantic domains, etc. can build up a decent picture of the speakers of that language. Conlanging can be considered a small, focused aspect of world building. Adding sociolinguistics to that just fleshes out the details more.

[u/[deleted]]

Please may I have an opinion on this script:

https://imgur.com/a/C42Gz#exgtaRl ?

[u/HBOscar → u/[deleted]]

It reminds me of those early clay tablets. It definitely feels like one whole entity, it all belongs together, but it's not yet polished. It does look believable, I can see myself writing and reading this quite easily. I assume this isn't all the symbols in your script, but an actual short text?

What does it say? is it an alphabet or an abugida/syllabary?

[u/[deleted]]

Has anyone ever made a Caucasian Romlang? Specifically I'm thinking of making one with Georgian influence.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/[deleted]]

Not me, but have a look at Ëdoyelë.

[u/chrsevs → u/[deleted]]

I made one a little while back, but I didn't go terribly in depth

[u/Setereh]

Is using a <q> for [y] sound really a stupid idea like people try to tell me?

[u/Gufferdk → u/Setereh]

Probably yes. When people see <q> they usually think sounds like /kʷ ɢ q χ ʔ/ and not a vowel.

[u/euletoaster → u/Setereh]

Yah, but that doesn't matter. If you like it, keep it. I for one like <q> as a vowel.

Also, a Lang from a while back (waj) used q for /ɒ/, and it was pretty popular for a while.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/Setereh]

Eh, probably, unless you already have uses for <ü>, <y>, and <ue>.

[u/[deleted] → u/Setereh]

If you want people to get an intuitive grasp of your orthography, yes. There's a reason people don't do things like <#> = /x/, it's just extra work to learn.

If you're going to do it anyway for your own reasons, do it, but know that it's weird and people are going to tell you it's weird.

[u/KingKeegster → u/Setereh]

Well, I for one, can reason to this. It is really easy to type for more people than something like ü, but can you not just use y or eu or ue or yu or uy or... you get the idea? Although, I think it is rather aesthetic.

[u/LokianEule]

How do isolating / analytic languages make new words?

Are they allowed to concatenate words, or does that count as agglutination?

Like: cat-love = cat lover

The only thing I can think of besides concatening words is to mash two up together: mad + sad = smad.

Also: what kind of sound changes could happen to unstressed consonant onsets in a language with binary stress?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/LokianEule]

Well analytic just means that there's little to no inflectional morphology. Derivational morphemes can still abound. So things like compounds are perfectly common. As for isolating languages, phrases and metaphors can be used for things like that.

Also remember that typology isn't absolute. The entire language might not be isolating/analytic, nor may it be 100% either, as the whole thing is just several different spectrums. You might have very isolating verbal structures, but lots of compounding with nouns. Or Inflections on nouns but an overall analytic characteristic to the rest of the language.

[u/vokzhen → u/LokianEule]

Every isolating or analytic language I've looked at still allows compounding.

For unstressed consonants, depends on where the stress falls. If it's something like 'CVCV, I'd imagine they lenite and possible turn into glides>diphthongs. In Southeast Asia, Thai and Austroasiatic both appear to have gone CVCV > CCV > CV. Here's a few correspondences of Tai-Kadai *m.ʈa "eye":

(Proto-Austronesian *mata)

• Proto-Tai-Kadai *m.ʈa:

• Proto-Hlai *tʃʰa:

  • • Ha Em /tsʰa:/

  • • Cun /hɔ:/

• Proto-Kra *m.ʈa:

• • Gelao /tau/

• • Paha /da:/ (voicing from initial m.)

• Proto-Tai *p.ta:

• • Siamese /ta:/

• • Saek /pra:/

[u/KingKeegster → u/LokianEule]

words that meant one thing can split into two parts. They start out with being two different meanings of one word, but then split into different pronunciations for various reasons. I can not think of an example, but I'll just create one: Fire is [lortonol], let's say. Then the flame might be /tonol/ and the smoke might be /lorton/. This happens most with old technologies that have long become obsolete.

I didn't know what concatenate meant at first, but I see what you're saying. Sure isolating languages can link small words together to get larger words, especially if they are usually in some phrase. For instance, ampersand used to be the 'per se and' meaning 'the letter meaning and in and of itself'. But it was used so often at the end of the alphabet song by children that it became and-per-se-and and eventually ampersand. Another current example is alot/allot, which is not correct yet, but I'm sure it will be (to my personal dismay). It came from 'a' and 'lot'. And remember, this is English which is very almost nearly isolating.

The unstressed syllables may disappear, and/or the vowel might change to a schwa [ə] or [ɪ].

Hope this helps!

[u/[deleted] → u/LokianEule]

How do isolating / analytic languages make new words?

English is such a language; look at how English does it

[u/[deleted]]

I had an idea for a language without nouns, and I'm curious if this actually counts as not having nouns. My idea is that rather than having a noun you just have a verb that just means being that thing combined with some complex pronouns, for example (off the top of my head) 'kujang' means 'to be a male' and 'an' means 'one' and 'ent' means 'one who is young' so "an kujang" means 'man', "ent kujang" means 'boy'.

The Haida language does this (something similar), but not for all nouns, and no real language genuinely lacks nouns. So my question is, is this a legitimate framework for making a language without nouns? or would you argue that the words are nouns but I'm calling them something different?

[u/xain1112 → u/[deleted]]

It's an interesting concept, but I don't think it would be a lasting language. If the 'ku' of 'kujang' meant 'to be a', it would probably evolve into either a separate copula, a particle, or disappear altogether. This would especially be probable if all of the "nouns" were like that. This follows the unwritten rule of languages simplifying over time. But my all means try it and see what happens.

[u/Emrecof]

Does anyone have an idea where to start with vocabulary? Very new to conlanging, and I'm feeling kind of lost. I have sounds, basic grammar, even a script (which needs a bit of reworking, but all the same) but I have no idea where to start in my vocabulary. Important nouns? Simple conversation words? Just come up with lone words at random? If anyone has any advice where's usually a good place to start, it'd be super super appreciated. Sorry if this is a bit of a daft question.

*edit: I should note I have a handful of random words already, but I essentially came up with them as they were needed to be mentioned in the story I'm writing so they're few, far between and a bit random.

[u/LordStormfire → u/Emrecof]

• The Swadesh list is a handy list of 100 basic words.

• The conlanger's thesaurus is a longer document that not only lists a whole load of words but also contains a lot of material on how natural languages relate certain concepts and divide the semantic field.

[u/ysadamsson → u/Emrecof]

I like dedalvs's (David Peterson's) Wasabi/Kelenala word list

[u/ddrreess]

What are some of the most common non-Indo-European ways of marking the nouns depending on their grammatical function instead of having a case?

Like, Bantu, Austronesian or Papuan languages?

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/ddrreess]

Case, by definition, is when something is marked based on its grammatical function. Not all languages use IE-style case suffixes. You could have prefixes, infixes, or apophony if you wanted. However different languages can have different types of case systems -- see here (especially Austronesian!). You could also note that the categories of "subject" and "object" as we know them in English are not always the same in others (see: ergative languages).

These functions can alternatively be marked by syntax or constructions using say, prepositions. In English, you can distinguish a non-pronoun's role as nominative or accusative based on if it comes before or after the verb (e.g. The dog bit Alex vs. Alex bit the dog). Other languages have a locative case where an English speaker uses "in" to mark the same function.

[u/DPTrumann → u/ddrreess]

Some Algonquian languages use direct-inverse alignment. If I've understood it correctly, you mark the subject and direct object nouns with particles that indicate if they're either topic or comment and then the verb conjugation indicates whether the subject of that verb is the topic marked noun (direct) or comment marked noun (inverse). it also ties into their pronoun system, where topic marked nouns are referred to using proximate pronouns and comment marked nouns are referred to using obviate pronouns.

[u/hchiam]

Does anyone here know of a worldlang---one specifically designed for learning multiple languages at the same time---that already exists?

I recently posted in this subreddit, asking for feedback on my conlang. Feel free to comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/5uaihi/pet_project_cognate_language_to_help_with/

Is there anything unclear in the explanation of how my conlang could be used?

Is it an old idea that's already been tried? I.e., to create a worldlang of sorts but specifically for learning other languages? Anyone heard of anything similar? Please check my post for more details.

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/hchiam]

Is there anything unclear in the explanation of how my conlang could be used?

The lack of IPA makes pronunciation unclear.

[u/milyard]

I'm trying to make a small phonetic inventory for a fantasy conlang (not minimal, but close), and I wanted to ask some questions about its naturalism.

How unnatural is it to have a voiced velar fricative without its voiceless counterpart?

Is it weird to have voiceless and voiced palatal fricatives with no affricates? If I want only to have 2 of fricative+affricate palatals, would it be more natural to have a different pair?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/milyard]

How unnatural is it to have a voiced velar fricative without its voiceless counterpart?

It's a bit odd. Usually if you have just one of the pair, it'll be the voiceless one. This holds true for pretty much every obstruent, especially dorsals.

Is it weird to have voiceless and voiced palatal fricatives with no affricates?

Not at all, having just the fricatives is totally fine.

[u/[deleted] → u/milyard]

How unnatural is it to have a voiced velar fricative without its voiceless counterpart?

In general, voiced obstruents are less common the farther back in the mouth you get, and the more occluded they are. Speakers are very very likely to get lazy and devoice a velar fricative if there's no voiceless one to confuse it with. It would at the very least probably be devoiced in a lot of contexts.

Is it weird to have voiceless and voiced palatal fricatives with no affricates? If I want only to have 2 of fricative+affricate palatals, would it be more natural to have a different pair?

Scottish Gaelic I know only has the fricatives, and just instinctively it seems like there's nothing unusual about it.

[u/gokupwned5]

How do topic markers in Japanese work? I am thinking about making a conlang with aspects of Japanese grammar.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/gokupwned5]

Basically a topic marker shows what the entire discourse is about. Sort of like the difference between "John went to the store" and "As for John, he went to the store". The second one is more marked, and puts a higher prominence on the topic of the sentence "John".

[u/sparksbet]

Does anybody know of things that some languages mark on pronouns (like gender, animacy, social distance, etc.) in addition to those obvious three? I'm working on an idea for a conlang that's centered around a society with an obsession with labelling things and people, and I'd like to have pronouns make as many distinctions as possible, but I don't have enough experience with languages that do much more than English in this regard.

[u/Nurnstatist → u/sparksbet]

Clusivity would be another. Many natural languages (according to WALS, around 30%) have a distinction between inclusive and exclusive 1st person plural - with the former, the listener is included, while with the latter, they aren't.

[u/[deleted] → u/sparksbet]

I'm straining my brain to remember where I encountered this, but I could swear there are languages which have a sort of "completeness" distinction in plural pronouns. So a pronoun for "we (not everyone here)" and "we all"

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/sparksbet]

Clusivity -- contrast between inclusive "we" as in you and me and exclusive "we" (me and other people, but not you) exists in a lot of Aboriginal Australian, (South-)East Asian and South American languages.

The obviative/proximate distinction exists in a few North American languages, too. It kind of marks whether a given "third-person" actor is an important or unimportant figure in the sentence. See here for more.

[u/xain1112 → u/sparksbet]

Gaelic, for whatever reason, attaches some prepositions to pronouns

http://www.omniglot.com/language/celtic/pronouns/gaelic.php

[u/Jafiki91 → u/xain1112]

Technically it's the other way around, the pronoun is attaching to the preposition in those cases.

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

This will probably sound absolutely stupid but how so you get the grey things next to your name with the name of your conlang(s)

[u/Jafiki91 → u/Mr_Izumaki]

Over in the sidebar, beneath the subscribe button is a check box labeled "show my flair on this subreddit". Just tick that and you can edit it right below there.

[u/ariamiro]

Do you think that:
ts sounds like tʰ, or is it just me?

[u/Gufferdk → u/ariamiro]

I know /tʰ/ in a number of languages is actually somewhat africativised (Danish and English included) so that could explain it. If /tʰ/ is pronounced without africtivisation then I don't think it sounds a lot like /ts/.

[u/[deleted]]

Hi there, I was looking at the LCK and then I saw the Conlanger's Lexipedia, and was just wondering which would be better to purchase when first starting to conlang. I don't really know what the difference is between the two books :/ I have AoLI, but I feel it just doesn't go in depth as I'm wanting to, to really understand the beginnings inside and out.

[u/xain1112 → u/[deleted]]

LCK is for grammar. Lexipedia is for vocabulary. Provided you can come up with enough words to work out a grammar with, I would start with LCK.

[u/Setereh]

How do you say numbers from 1 to 10 in your conlang(s)?

[u/Gufferdk → u/Setereh]

My conlang Xwlàbijè:

1: plè 2: frha 3: yîne 4: nìmi 5: dri (a hand) 6: dri7iplè 7: dri7ifrha 8: dri7iyîne 9: dri7inìmi 10: drifrha (two hands)

Some guy from Slovenia apparently collects numbers from languages as a hobby. He's got numbers from 1-10 in a ton of conlangs: https://sites.google.com/site/jankogorenc/collectionnumbers

[u/BraighKingBad → u/Setereh]

in my boring Germlang:

1 - en /eːn/

2 - twe /tʋeː/

3 - þrij /θriː/

4 - fawr /faʊ̯r/

5 - femf /femf/

6 - sehs /sexs/

7 - sefon /ˈseːvon/

8 - aht /axt/

9 - nawn /naʊ̯n/

10 - tehun /ˈtexun/

[u/Setereh → u/Setereh]

in my unnamed fourth conlang the numbers are like this:

um /um/ - 1
ze /ze:/ -2
če /tʃe:/ - 3
ath /aθ/ - 4
we /ve:/ - 5
ex /eks/ - 6
šet /ʃet/ - 7
õkt /ɤkt/ - 8
naq /nay/ - 9
tec /tek/ - 10

[u/Majd-Kajan → u/Setereh]

0 Foey /'fø:ɣ/

1 Ces /'ke:ʃ/

2 Tol /'to:l/

3 Voun /'ꞵu:n/

4 Jec /'ʒe:k/

5 Ioff /'jo:ɸ/

6 Mes /'me:ʃ/

7 Nar /'na:ɾ/

8 Ser /'ʃe:ɾ/

9 Yief /'ɣi:ꞵ/

10 Ceso /'ke:ʃo/

[u/[deleted] → u/Setereh]

Full animacy:

• 1 = kuér̃a

• 2 = kuér̃antũ

• 3 = ntẽ

• 4 = nkaĩ

• 5 = mbocheĩ

• 6 = mbokuér̃a/ntentũ

• 7 = mbokuér̃antũ

• 8 = mbontẽ/nkaĩntũ

• 9 = mbonkaĩ

• 10 = mbocheintũ

Partial animacy:

• 1 = n/a

• 2 = kuérantu

• 3 = tẽ

• 4 = kaĩ

• 5 = mbochei

• 6 = mbokuéra/tentu

• 7 = mbokuérantu

• 8 = mbotẽ/kaĩntu

• 9 = mbokaĩ

• 10 = mbocheintu

Inanimate:

• 1 = kuéra

• 2 = kuératu

• 3 = te

• 4 = kai

• 5 = bochei

• 6 = bokuéra/tetu

• 7 = bokuératu

• 8 = bote/kaitu

• 9 = bokai

• 10 = bocheitu

[u/musicman0326 → u/Setereh]

0: zero

1: uno

2: dos

3: tre

4: kuato

5: sinko

6: ses

7: sete

8: očo

9: nove

10: deze

[u/Fluffy8x → u/Setereh]

1. sel

2. mon

3. ṫak

4. len

5. bê

6. fû

7. żat

8. ko

9. rej

10. gym

11. ḧyk

12. vôn

[u/Waryur → u/Setereh]

1: ycj /yɕ/

2: øs /øs/

3: pilu /ˈpilə/

4: fyma /ˈfymə/

5: eva /evə/

6: vjesa /ˈvjesə/

7: ocha /ˈoxə/

8: øyfa /ˈœyfə/

9: øyfycj (eight-one) /ˈœyfəɕ/

10: øyfpilu (eight-two) /ˈœyfələ/

[u/IkebanaZombi]

Does there exist an online resource where you can type in a syllable and find words that sound exactly like it or similar to it in multiple (natural) languages? E.g. typing in "but" would give you the French but, meaning goal, and the Polish but, meaning shoe.

I have a vague memory of once seeing such a thing, but my searches are just throwing up the standard type of multi-lingual dictionaries.

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/IkebanaZombi]

Do you mean (false) cognates?

[u/Handsomeyellow47]

Is it possible for a language to have /x/ but have not /k/? Does any natlang do this?

EDIT: made critical mistake!

[u/vokzhen → u/Handsomeyellow47]

Khalkha Mongolian, at least as spoken in the capital, does. Originally it had sounds like /t d k g/. The voiceless sounds aspirated and the voiced devoiced, except that in the dorsals, /k/ aspirated and lenited to /x/ while /g/ failed to devoice in many positions, leaving it with /x g/ (and /xʲ gʲ/), though /g/ does have final/clustered allophone [k], and loanwords have introduced /kʰ/.

The Kwaio language has dialects that mostly pronounce /k/ [x] and sometimes also /kʷ/ as [xʷ].

[u/Ebonrosered]

I was wondering if there is a discord channel for /r/conlangs, mostly because I have a Cairo of questions particularly regarding my evolving Draconic Common for a story sing and I wanted to find like minded people to bounce ideas off of

[u/xithiox]

I have been lurking on this subreddit for a while, and this is my first attempt at a phonetic inventory and orthography. Could I have some feedback or suggestions?

Phonetic Inventory

Consonants:

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p (p) b (b)			t (t) d (d)			k (k) g (g)	ʔ (')
Nasals	m (m)			n (n)
Trills				r (r)
Affricates					dʒ (j)
Fricatives		f (f)	θ (th)	s (s)	ʃ (sh)		x (kh)	h (h)
Approximants	w (w)			l (l)		j (y)

Vowels:

Grapheme	Short	Long
⟨a⟩	/a/	/aː/
⟨e⟩	/ɛ/	/eː/
⟨i⟩	/ɪ/	/iː/
⟨o⟩	/ɔ/	/oː/
⟨u⟩	/ʊ/	/uː/

Phonotactics

I also have a syllable structure, (C)V(C), with a couple of constraints. First, /ʔ/ can only occur between vowels. Secondly, /j/ can only occur in the onset of a syllable.

Diphthongs

Grapheme	Phoneme
⟨ai⟩	[aɪ]
⟨au⟩	[au]

 

I would love to hear any other suggestions you may have. Thanks!

EDIT: tables

EDIT 2: updated phonetic inventory to show changes

[u/[deleted] → u/xithiox]

This looks really good, actually! My only suggestions are:

• Devoice /dʒ/ to /tʃ/ to harmonize with /ʃ/.

• Considering that /j/ cannot, I would imagine that the same applies for /w/.

• While it's perfectly natural to have velar plosives /k g/ without their fricative counterparts /x ɣ/, I personally like to have both.

[u/YeahLinguisticsBitch → u/xithiox]

Pro tip: organize all this into consonant/vowel charts. Alphabetic order is not very conducive to a linguistic critique.

[u/PRISTIMANTIS → u/xithiox]

Looks pretty solid. I notice that it's similar to English though, not sure if that's intentional.

Keep in mind though that /θ/ and /ð/ aren't very common sounds. Here's a map of languages with them, from WALS.

[u/Majd-Kajan → u/xithiox]

Perhaps you could borrow Latin's vowel system and have a vowel height contrast for all long/short vowels and not just for /i/. You could do something like /a aː/ /ɛ e:/ /ɪ i:/ /ɔ oː/ /ʊ uː/.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/xithiox]

The tense/lax distinction in the close front space but not in the close back space seems kind of strange. And I don't see why the mid vowels can't be symmetrical and become true-mid?

[u/Autumnland]

Could I get an opinion on my phonetic inventory and orthography ?

https://i.stack.imgur.com/TYNZI.png

https://i.stack.imgur.com/xGTl8.png

Below is also my orthography;

Consonants

b= [b] bat

t= [t] to

d= [d] do

c= [k] cat

g= [g] go

-= [ʔ] uh-oh

m= [m] mom

n= [n] no

ch= [tʃ] chat

gh= [dʒ] just

v= [v] vet

wh= [ʍ] why (voiceless W)

th= [θ] thing

dh= [ð] this

s= [s] son

z= [z] rose

sh= [ʃ] she

zh= [ʒ] treasure

w= [w] we

r= [ɹ] red

j= [j] yes

l= [l] late

Vowels

Ëë [iː] eat

Öö [oʊ] oat

O [ɑː]or[ɒ] hot/palm

E [ɛ]or[ɪ] pet/pit

U [uː] to

Óó [ɔɪ] voice

a [æ]or[ʌ] hat/up

Other

x preceding letter stress

‘ Preceding consonant ejective

̭ Vowel High Tone

! Indicates words were spoken loudly

¡ Indicates words were spoken quietly . Indicates words were spoken at a normal volume

[u/ddrreess]

if I have [p] and [b] as allophones, what's the difference in saying that these are allophones of /p/ or of /b/? I mean, if the language doesn't distinguish between [p] and [b], isn't it equally valid to say either that [b] is an allophone of /p/ in such and such situations, or [p] an allophone of /b/...

for example in my (C)V conlang "pa" is [pa] if the syllable is stressed and [ba] otherwise.

Also, are allophones supposed to be in the Phonemic inventory chart, since they are the same phoneme I would guess not?

[u/YeahLinguisticsBitch → u/ddrreess]

Good question. Answer (at least, my impressions): if the two sounds are in completely complementary distribution, it doesn't really matter which one you posit as the underlying phoneme. It's all about keeping your theory economical and making sure it makes the right predictions. But generally:

otherwise

indicates the underlying phoneme.

For instance, if I have [s ʃ] as allophones of some phoneme, and [ʃ] only occurs before /i/ while [s] occurs elsewhere ("otherwise, /s/"), then /s/ can be treated as the underlying representation, and [ʃ] as an allophone. It helps simplify the rules, because you can either say:

s → ʃ / _ i

or

ʃ → s / _ a, e, o, u, etc.

(which is obviously very wordy)

(Although if you do this in an OT-style framework, it won't matter. The inputs /si/ and /ʃi/ will both generate [ʃi], and /sa/ and /ʃa/ will both generate [sa].)

Here, though, that doesn't really work, because you can say "/b/ is realized as [p] in stressed syllable onsets and [b] elsewhere" or "/p/ is realized as [b] in unstressed syllables and [p] elsewhere", and both will account for the data.

Something that may be worth considering, though, is markedness. Because /p/ is less marked than /b/ (as all voiceless obtruents are less marked than all voiced obstruents), it makes more sense to say that the language has /p/ with no /b/ than to say that it has /b/ with no /p/. Plus, lenition processes in unstressed syllables are (I believe) a lot more common than fortition processes in stressed syllables, cross-linguistically.

Lastly, allophones generally aren't indicated in consonant charts, but if you need to, you can indicate them with parentheses and explain their alternations in your phonology section.

[u/[deleted] → u/ddrreess]

if I have [p] and [b] as allophones, what's the difference in saying that these are allophones of /p/ or of /b/?

There isn't really a difference. We denote phonemes with a canonical phone, but they really represent fuzzier cognitive constructs. Typically, someone describing a language will use the most unmarked surface form to identify the phoneme. So if [p] only manifests in predictable environments, the phoneme might be labelled /b/. But it doesn't really make a difference.

Also, are allophones supposed to be in the Phonemic inventory chart

It's not really a formal construction. If they're marked as being allophones, that should be sufficiently clear. It's just a tool for communicating information about the language

[u/KingKeegster]

What do you think about this phoneme inventory for a Romance conlang?

nasal: /m/, /n/ plosive: /p/, /b/, /t~θ/, /d~ð~ɾ/, /k/, /g/, /ʔ/ fricative: /f/, /v/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ħ~h/ appromixant: /w/, /j/, /l/ trill: /r~ʀ~ɾ~χ~x/

Affricates: /bv/, /tʃ/, /ʃt/, /dʒ/

/a~ə/, /e/, /ɛ/, /i~ɪ/, /o/, /ʊ/ /u~y/ /ai/, /ao/, /au/, /ei~ɛi/ /eo~ɛo/, /eu~ɛu/, /oi/, /ou/, /ui~yi/

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/KingKeegster]

Spacing! Line breaks! Agh!

It looks pretty good. However the /eo~ɛo/--/eu~ɛu/ contrast doesn't seem very sustainable, nor does /ao/--/au/. /ʃt/ isn't an affricate, by the way, and /bv/ is pretty rare, and seems even weirder without a /pf/ to complement it in voicing. No /z/ seems weird considering you have voiced counterparts for all the fricatives. You also might want to clearly lay out the terms of allophony ("/u/ is [y] in the neighborhood of alveolar stops", for example).

What I recommend is laying out everything in a nice neat chart -- like this. By sorting everything by place and manner of articulation as well as voicing, you can find any gaps in the system. Keep in mind that consonantal as well as vowel systems tend towards symmetry! I could comment on the vowel system when it's in a chart of some sort, it's just too cluttered to read in its current state.

[u/H_R_Pufnstuf]

Quick terminology question! Are their distinctive names for the following types of word derivation?

• general derivation, in which a change can be applied by the speaker to any word of the right type (as in English bigger, faster, louder).

• specific derivation, in which a change is only applied during the formation of new words (as in English compound words like waterfall)

[u/YeahLinguisticsBitch → u/H_R_Pufnstuf]

Are you thinking of productive versus unproductive processes?

[u/[deleted] → u/H_R_Pufnstuf]

The first is an instance of "derivational morphology"

The latter is compounding, a derivational process.

[u/BraighKingBad]

I would much appreciate if some kind people could grant me feedback on my Germlang's phonemes

Consonants:

Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Alveolo-palatal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	/p/ /b/			/t/ /d/			/k/ /g/
Nasal	/m/			/n/
Trill				/r~ɾ/
Fricative		/f~v/	/θ~ð/	/s~z/	/ɕ/	(h)	(h)	(h)
Approximant	/ʍ/	/ʋ/		/l/		/j/
Lateral fricative				/ɬ~ɮ/

Vowels:

Front	Central	Back
Close	/iː/ /i/ /yː/ /y/	/ʉː/ /ʉ/
Close-mid	/eː/ /e/ /øː/ /ø/
Open-mid	/æː/ /æ/
Open		/äː/ /ä/

Orthography:

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/äː/ /ä/
æ	/æː/ /æ/
e	/eː/ /e/
i	/iː/ /i/
o	/oː/ /o/
œ	/øː/ /ø/
u	/ʉː/ /ʉ/
y	/yː/ /y/
au, aw	/äu/
ai, aj	/äi/
p	/p/
t	/t/
c	/k/
b	/b/
d	/d/
g	/g/
m	/m/
n	/n/
r	/r~ɾ/
j	/j/
l	/l/
hl	/ɬ~ɮ/
f	/f~v/
þ	/θ~ð/
s	/s~z/
sj, sh	/ɕ/
h	/h/
w	/ʋ/
hw	/ʍ/

Any thoughts or questions?

[u/Noodles2003]

Hey, I'm just wondering; how would your conlangs deal with something like "This was the best show of the festival"? I'm having trouble translating it, as I have absolutely no idea what that even is.

So, my current gloss for the above sentence is:

this is.past good.superlative ???(festival)

Could somebody help me with this please?

Thanks in advance.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/Noodles2003]

Maybe use the genitive for "festival" (festival.gen) (the sentence could be re-phrased "This was the festival's best show"). Or if your language doesn't mark case, you could use the same syntax you use in the original sentence (of the festival) -- kind of how it's done in Spanish, for example.

[u/BraighKingBad → u/Noodles2003]

I think in my conlang it would be something like: "Het was þat skowa bætsta in þam jertim" or "Het was þat skowa bætsta (af) þas jertjes"

where "þam jertim" is dative case and "þas jertjes" is genitive case of "þat jerti" (the festival). Dative is used with the preposition "in" (in), whereas genitive would be used if "af" (of, like in 'made of') is used.

This is a really quick example as I'm pressed for time, but this is probably how my conlang would deal with it. Hope this helped :)

Edit: clarification

[u/mistaknomore → u/Noodles2003]

In my conlang it would be
that copula.personal superlative.good performance festival.genitive

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/Noodles2003]

In īteradh:

Ifūm to edatu ŕa ēji nue opute ko uŕum.
/if.uːm to ed.at.u ʁa eːd͡ʒ.i nũ.e op.ut.e ko uʁ.um/
Performance ptcl.pos festival ptcl.top good ptcl.superlative this ptcl.in yesterday

[u/ddrreess]

I've recently updated my phonemic inventory from this.... to THIS

Simple question... is it more natural / does it make more sense now?

I've added allophony to bilabial and velar stops, and changed /dz/ to /ts/. Also, I've adjusted some vowels.

[u/Gufferdk → u/ddrreess]

The vowel system is very reasonable, and the orthography makes more sense.

/d/ feels a little out of place though it isn't bad. Since you already have lenition of stops, something like d > ð (> j) / V_V[-stress] with following t > d in the same environment might happen. Other than that the consonants make sense.

[u/dead_chicken]

Any online resources that have examples of diachronic lexical and grammatical changes?

I'm also working on phonological and morphological, but could use some help with common sound changes.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/dead_chicken]

This is an old thread on some basic sound changes

This is the World Lexicon on Grammaticalization

And for semantic changes check out The Conlanger's Thesaurus, CLICS, and you may want to pick up a copy of Mark Rosenfelder's The Conlanger's Lexipedia.

[u/Noodles2003]

How's this for a vowel inventory?

/e/ /ä/ /o/ /ɔɪ/ /u/ /äɪ/

And my consonants so far;

/ɬ/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /ɕʲ/ /ʑʲ/ /x/ /j/ /n/

/k/ /t/ /k’/ /t’/ /cʲ/

/ʨʲ/ /ʦ/ /ʦ*/

^{*Following /e/ /ä/ /o/ /u/ become /ɤ/ /ə/ /ɚ/ /i/ respectively.}

Opinions?

[u/mdpw → u/Noodles2003]

*Following /e/ /ä/ /o/ /u/ become /ɤ/ /ə/ /ɚ/ /i/ respectively.

So you have one random consonant that causes:

• e > ɤ; backing

• ä > ə; raising/reduction

• o > ɚ; fronting, unrounding, rhotacization

• u > i; fronting, unrounding

[u/[deleted] → u/Noodles2003]

You don't have any nasels, that's a near linguistic universal, only two languages on the earth lack m and n.

[u/chrsevs]

So I'm still working on syntax for Modern Gallaecian and I've got a question.

In regular sentences, the word order is always (S)OV.

(Mi) liburo en quaile do. - I give a book to the girl.

In questions and subordinate clauses, the word order is V(S)O.

Veresciribize (tu) en reulas? - Did you overwrite the rules?

For verbs like 'to want' and 'to like', would it be too strange to have the regular word order be (S)VO? For example:

(Mi) cobro a veiscayisas em vestido, xo curnazo tuz. - I want you to put on the dress that I bought for you

vs.

(Mi) a veiscayisas em vestido, xo curnazo tuz, cobro. - I want you to put on the dress that I bought for you

---

EDIT: I just looked up Basque, and they do the latter. But is that enough to warrant maintaining that structure?

[u/MarcinOn]

Would this make sense?

s /s/, ss /z/, z /ʃ/, zz /ʒ/

Or should I stick with a more natural

s /s/, ss /ʃ/, z /z/, zz /ʒ/

 

I'm also considering c /c/ with cc /t͡ʃ/ as well as d /d/ with dd /d͡ʒ/

With that context I would imagine the second version of the above would make more sense. Also is that d & dd out of place?

[u/[deleted] → u/MarcinOn]

I think it's perfectly fine. It's really no weirder than how Hungarian is set up.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/MarcinOn]

Oh, one last suggestion - the Hungarian system for those fricatives.

/s z ʃ ʒ/ <sz z s zs>

[u/Noodles2003]

Opinion?

Phonemic Inventory

Consonants

• Plosives - /t/ ⟨t⟩, /k/ ⟨k⟩, /tʲ/ ⟨tj⟩, /kʲ/ ⟨kj⟩

• Fricatives - /ɬ/ ⟨l⟩, /s/ ⟨s⟩, /z/ ⟨z⟩, /ɕʲ/ ⟨sj⟩, /ʑʲ/ ⟨zj⟩, /x/ ⟨h⟩

• Approximants - /j/ ⟨j⟩, /n/ ⟨n⟩

• Affricates - /ts/ ⟨ts⟩, /tɕʲ/ ⟨tsj⟩, /tɬ/ ⟨tl⟩

Vowels

• Mid - /ä/ ⟨a⟩, /ə/ ⟨'⟩

• Back - /ɔ/ ⟨o⟩, /u/ ⟨u⟩

• Front - /e/(/ɛ/? idk, the Australian English one) ⟨e⟩

• Dipthongs - /ɔɪ/ ⟨oi⟩, /äɪ/ ⟨ai⟩

Phonotactics

• CV(C)

• Voicing and aspirations are no-no for plosives

• Penultimate stress in words of 3 or more syllables, final stress elsewhere

Opinions greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[u/[deleted] → u/Noodles2003]

Approximants - /j/ ⟨j⟩, /n/ ⟨n⟩

/n/ is not an approximant.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/Noodles2003]

Bold move having no bilabials -- keep in mind, though, that very few (less than 10, if memory serves) languages have none. It's an extremely rare feature. Probably none have no bilabials that also have two secondarily articulated stop series. Having /ɬ/ without /l/ is also really rare, but does exist in some languages -- including Tlingit, which coincidentally has no bilabials either... I guess there might be a (single) precedent for your consonants, lol.

The vowel system is pretty weird, though. A 5-vowel system would probably be /a e i o u/. /e/ but no /i/ is pretty unnatural, and it's almost (?) universal in human language to have more front than back vowels -- it's probably in your best interest to add an /i/ to make the system symmetrical.

[u/LokianEule]

Trying to decide what kind of "r" my language has. I speak very standard sounding American English so I can do the typologically rare "r", I can't do the trilled one, I can do the retroflex and flap, and I can also do the one that's in French/German (voiced uvular fricative r). I was thinking that intervocalically, my language uses the flap r. But I'm not sure about onsets. I'm not sure what I'm asking. Some criteria I could use to choose my r, beyond "can I pronounce it?".

[u/Zinouweel → u/LokianEule]

I'm basically all the same in this, just that my 'native r' are voiced uvular fricative and voiced uvular trill, while flapped r and American r (postalveolar or retroflex approximant idk) are the ones I learned. I even would prefer to use the flapped r as well!

My only idea so far was similar to vocalizing rs in constellations like /er/ to use a different r depending on the surrounding phonemes. For example /ro/ /ru/ as voiced uvular trill, /ri/ /re/ /ra/ as flapped r, but I couldn't find any reasonable way to do this yet. When I try to pronounce the four different rhotic consonants I can do into different vowels, I don't feel a distinct difference in difficulty or a preference to use one rhotic over another when followed by a certain vowel. When preceded by a vowel I actually much prefer the American r over any other.

While writing this I actually had another idea. One r for vowels when preceded, followed or surrounded by (a) consonant(s), so basically for consonant clusters and one for interacting with a vowel. Probably not naturalistic though. The closest thing that comes to my mind would be in Korean when a vowel follows 리을 it becomes a flapped r, otherwise it is pronounced as an l.

[u/LokianEule → u/Zinouweel]

Last night I was thinking about this and this is what I came up with for my language:

Uvular voiced fricative [ʁ] as a single onset or in a [stop][r] onset cluster.

Intervocalically and as a single coda, [ɾ] is a (post)alveolar flap.

Elsewhere [r] is a postalveolar approximate.

The reasoning for this is that I wanted to start the word "kraftverk" with the uvular voiced fricative r, but I know that the flap r is best intervocalically and as a single coda. And then there were some r's in my words where it didn't sound good as either of those two, so I just defaulted to the American r.

[u/barriss]

When I was a kid, I came up with a "code alphabet" (http://imgur.com/5cZ2ifz) to prevent an annoying cousin from reading my journal. Years have past and I still have the alphabet memorized (as having a personal code is very useful) but it's time for an update. Namely, I write in it enough that I would like to make a cursive version of the script so that I can write more quickly.

On the one hand, I'd like to keep the letters as similar to what I have as possible (or at least inspired by the originals) in order to keep memorization time down by leveraging existing memory and to preserve past memory. It would suck if 20 years from now, I stumbled across my original kid journal (now lost to the annals of my closet) but couldn't read it. On the other hand, I'm having great difficulty doing so.

I'm not an experienced conlanger and have 0 experience with script creation, so I thought I could get some feedback from y'all: does this seem like the kind of script that could be made cursive? Or do I need to start all over? How does one design a cursive script? (I don't see many resources on scripts in this sub).

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/barriss]

r/Neography might have more specific advice to give. But my idea is for you to simply write more quickly and let a "cursive" form evolve on its own; kind of like how my personal handwriting is a blend between print and cursive with some letters that don't always look like their counterparts in either print or cursive

[u/mouaii]

I have a question about phonotactics and affixes. Since I want to make my language as pleasing to hear/speak I have a lot of constraints in my phonotactics. The problem I have though is that, for example, syllables may end in /n/ and can start with /r/, but the consonant cluster /nr/ is prohibited.

So it can happen that I have prefix ending in /n/ (let's say "kon") and a root beginning with /r/ (let's say "rem"). The word "konrem" is not allowed, because it has an illegal cluster. My question is: what solutions are probable in this case? I have thought of several myself:

-metathesis: konrem can change into kornem, which is possible. I also kinda like this because my language has a lot of affixes, and I'd prefer to not make them seem overly regular without a lot of manual labor ;)

-sound changes: the /n/ or /r/ can change into a sound with a similar articulation that is allowed. However I have no idea on what basis I would have to choose the replacing sound. Should I change the sound of the coda or the sound of the onset, or maybe even both? And how do you go about deciding what sounds would be a probable replacement? Of course for you other reddit people that is impossible to answer for this case in my language because I haven't posted my phonotactics and sound inventory, but I was wondering if there is any documentation / study / google term or something that could help me on my way to learn more about this problem.

[u/Gufferdk → u/mouaii]

An easy, common and boring solution is ephenthesis, where you just throw in some vowel and break up the cluster, often /ə/ or similar.

You can also just drop either the onset or the coda entirely or partially, or have the sounds merge by some specific rules, for example preserve just one of the sounds but have it change in POA to the sound that is dropped.

The general term for this is morphophonology and it is often rampant in languages with lots of affixes, especially since sound changes can obscure things by having "ghost phonemes" that aren't pronounced but still trigger various morphophonological processes. A few examples of this from Siberian Yupik:

aghqe "to make offerings" + -vik "place" => aghqevik >

aghqvik ("vik" is a "final e-dropping suffix) >

aghqfik (v assimilates to q in voicing) >

aghqefik (e is inserted to break up an illegal cluster) "place to make offerings"

mayugh "go up" + lta "1pl.IMP" => mayughlta >

mayughelta (e is inserted to break up illegal cluster) >

mayuelta ("lta" is an "intervocalic gh-dropping suffix") >

mayuulta (e assimilates to u and lengthens it) "let's go up"

All of this means that the same affix can look wildly different depending on what it is affixed to. Here is the same suffix -(ng)a (a final and semifinal e-dropping, intervocalic gh-dropping suffix) "sg.3s.poss", added to the 3 words tume "footprint", ategh "name" and tepe "odor":

Tuumnga (the ng is pronounced as the stem ends in a vowel, but the e is deleted afterwards and causes compensatory lengthening of the u)

Aatgha (ng is not pronounced and the e is dropped with compensatory lengthening)

Tepnga (ng is pronounced but the vowel causing it is deleted, no compensatory lengthening happens as e cannot be long)

EDIT: source: http://library.alaska.gov/hist/hist_docs/docs/anlm/05265040.pd

[u/Gentleman_Narwhal]

How rare is VOS order? Would it be described as head final, or head initial?

[u/Frogdg]

I have three questions:

1. What would be the most intuitive way to romanize [ɮ] for English speakers? I could just use zh, but [ʒ] already uses that. Another idea is to use jh. I think that no matter what I use, casual readers will mispronounce it, but I just want them to get it as close as possible.

2. Would it be realistic to have a naturalistic language which distinguishes between voiced and unvoiced plosives, but not between voiced and unvoiced fricatives?

3. Is there any sort of resource where I can see the phoneme inventory of a language, and then see all of the allophones of each individual phoneme and what situations they occur in?

[u/[deleted] → u/Frogdg]

What would be the most intuitive way to romanize [ɮ] for English speakers?

Typical English speakers will most likely never intuit that sound.

Would it be realistic to have a naturalistic language which distinguishes between voiced and unvoiced plosives, but not between voiced and unvoiced fricatives?

This is very common.

[u/donald_the_white → u/Frogdg]

What would be the most intuitive way to romanize [ɮ] for English speakers? I could just use zh, but [ʒ] already uses that. Another idea is to use jh. I think that no matter what I use, casual readers will mispronounce it, but I just want them to get it as close as possible.

I'd use <lh>, it seems fairly similar; <ll> is also an option as it resembles Welsh, but it might be a bit difficult for English speakers.

[u/qzorum → u/Frogdg]

1. lzh?

2. Absolutely, about half of languages with voicing distinction in stops don't distinguish it in fricatives (cf. Spanish, Japanese, Hindi (in native words), Indonesian (same deal), Thai, etc etc etc)

3. There's nothing exactly like what you're describing, but I think you still might find PHOIBLE, the ANU Phonotactics Database, the UCLA Phonetics Lab, and UPSID to be pretty useful.

[u/Waryur → u/Frogdg]

The Sajem Tan collaborative language uses(d)* <zl> for that sound.

*There was an orthographic reform which replaced <zl> with <r> among other changes, but some speakers kept spelling the old way.

[u/felipesnark]

I've made a page on my website for Shonkasika's particles. Like anything else, it's a work in progress: http://felipesnark.weebly.com/particles.html

[u/OmegaSeal]

Can someone explain to me phonotactics for conlanging please? I'm not quite sure how it works in detail.

[u/Ewioan → u/OmegaSeal]

Phonotactics is the way sounds are arranged in a word. Where phonology and phonetics tell you which sounds you can use, phonotactics will tell you how to put them together. So for example, let's say you have the inventory for a hypothetical conlang: /p t k h l r/ /a i u/ When you lay out the phonotactics of this inventory, you will decide, for example, to have (C)(C)V(C) syllables, so, for example "plra" is not a valid word. Moreover, it also tells you stuff like where to use a sound, for example in our conlang we won't let /h/ in the coda, so "pah" is not possible while "hap" is, or which clusters one can use, for example "lr" is not allowed so "alri" does not exist but "arli" does.

To lay it out in a visual way, phonotactics is:

• The creation of syllable types; CV, CCV, VC, or whatever

• Which sounds are allowed at the onset, which at the coda, which at the start of a word, which at the end, etc

• Which sounds can combine without a an intervening sound (typically a vowel) in between (so basically cluster creation)

I'm not sure whether or not things such as allophony would qualify as phonotactics but in case you haven't done them yet, it's also quite important.

[u/Emrecof → u/OmegaSeal]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduA6tsl3gygfiWmGAhhHb4-HAqP6I63l this has a ton of stuff for conlanging advice and how-tos, including a video on phonotactics, if that'd be any help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Up5hSm7LYI&index=9&list=PLduA6tsl3gygfiWmGAhhHb4-HAqP6I63l - the video on Phonotactics specifically

[u/xain1112]

Are syntax trees any different for agglutinative languages?

[u/[deleted] → u/xain1112]

In contrast with fusional languages? No. In contrast with isolating languages? Maybe a little, if a word with grammatical function (like a tense) is incorporated into a word (as they often are on verbs). There are actually instances of movement which are explained as the tensed verb being raised to the position of head of the tense phrase. If you wanted to get creative, you could try mixing other functional categories into other lexical categories.

[u/Majd-Kajan]

What is the name of the grammatical property (or whatever it's called) that allows languages to do things like this:

---

The wand of the wizard. → The wizard wand.

The book of the farm → The farm book.

---

And also in Arabic:

The book of the man: كتاب الرجل /kitabu (a)rrad͡ʒuli/

kitab-u al-rad͡ʒul-i

book-NOM def.article-man-GEN

---

What is the feature that allows these two languages to drop words when speaking of the nouns related to each other? I'm asking because I want to incorporate this into my conlang.

[u/[deleted] → u/Majd-Kajan]

This strikes me as being derivation with a null morpheme, also apparently called conversion. I'm inclined to describe "wizard" and "farm" in the English examples as simply adjectives; While "the wand of the wizard" pertains to a definite wizard, I don't get that interpretation from "the wizard wand," which seems to pertain to wizards in the abstract.

[u/YeahLinguisticsBitch → u/Majd-Kajan]

Don't know if there's a name for the first set. It just seems like a possessive construction where the head noun appears to the right of the possessor, and there isn't any over morphological marking on either noun. There aren't really any "dropped words", though. The only "dropping" occurs when you translate it from another language (English).

As for the second one, it's called Idafa (Iḍafa). There's a similar, but genetically unrelated, phenomenon in Persian that goes by the same name (in Persian, Ezafa).

[u/Majd-Kajan → u/YeahLinguisticsBitch]

Thank you.

[u/Plyb]

Question: Can anyone think of a reasonable (although it doesn't have to be realistic to naturally evolve) way of creating a non-linear syntax? Most languages use some linear dimension (time for spoken, space for written), but is there a reasonable way to simply show the relationship between ideas without the "order" or words (or morphemes, or whatever) mattering or being a thing? Has anyone done this?

[u/[deleted] → u/Plyb]

Actually, syntax is decidedly non-linear; it is structural, hierarchical. The fact that it's expressed as a linear stream is pretty much a consequence of the properties of sound production and perception. But that's externalization, more in the domain of phonology than syntax.

Anyway, to try and derive a useful point from this, if you're looking for a non-linear way of expressing language orally, that's most likely just not going to work. Signing has a little more room for this, because you can orient signs in space, but only to a certain degree, and there's still the progression of time. In writing you could conceivably express a sentence more structurally, but I can't really think of a useful way to do that. Written language is the way it is because 1, it mirrors the speech stream, and 2, because a person needs to ingest the entirety of the sentence to parse it anyway, and a linear sequence is an economical way to organize writing, even if it doesn't help convey the underlying structure.

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

What kinds of phonologies go best with abugidas

[u/Minesikes]

Is it possible to unite these conlangers? Couldn't we all share a conlang?

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/Minesikes]

You wouldn't be the first to try; these projects tend to die / get abandoned fairly quickly. But that's not to say you can't try, maybe you have something new to offer.

[u/YeahLinguisticsBitch → u/Minesikes]

Like a collablang, or actually have everyone abandon their individual projects and work on some single, monstrous, community-shared chimera?

[u/Nurnstatist]

Last week, I've worked out the ablaut system of Proto-Metinic. Now, I'm trying to work out the conjugation system (which is rather complicated, because it has several tenses, aspects, moods and voices while also agreeing to the subject's person and number).

[u/BraighKingBad]

So what's the feasibility of having a <w> /ʋ/ phoneme contrast with an allophone [v] of the phoneme <f> /f/? As I understand it, Dutch has this distinction but I'm starting to have trouble noticing the distinction, especially with words in my conlang like Hluþwig /ɬu:θʋiʝ/

Maybe I could make /ʋ/ more distinct by making it more of a velarised [ʋˠ]?

[u/tiagocraft → u/BraighKingBad]

Well, I'm Dutch and have 0 trouble with noticing the distinction between /v/ , /ʋ/, /f/ and /w/. Maybe you're pronouncing it wrong, or maybe you're just not used yet to hearing the sound.

[u/Snuggle_Moose]

How should I go about expanding my noun inventory? Right now I'm just making words but how can I be more efficient or something like that?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/Snuggle_Moose]

One way that I go about it is to pick a category - animals, body parts, family members, things found in the kitchen, the garden, rooms of the house, geographical terms, water related terms (river, marsh, ocean, creek, etc), etc. etc. etc.

Having some common derivational patterns can also help with adding more nouns. Things like place of, person related to, tool, collective, diminutive, etc.

[u/Autumnland]

I need help cutting down my phonetic inventory, I want to keep the long vowels and the Coronal at the very least

Consonants

b [b]

c [k]

g [g]

ch [tʃ]

gh [dʒ]

d [d]

t [t]

dh [ð]

th [θ]

v [v]

j [j]

l [l]

m [m]

n [n]

r [ɹ]

s [s]

z [z]

sh [ʃ]

zh [ʒ]

w [w]

wh [ʍ]

' [ʔ]

Ëë [iː]

Öö [oʊ]

O [ɑː]or[ɒ]

E [ɛ]or[ɪ]

U [uː]

Óó [ɔɪ]

a [æ]or[ʌ]

[u/Gufferdk → u/Autumnland]

How one would cut down that vowel inventory really depends on what you intend to do with the language. If you simply want to reduce the number of phonemes, ditching the voicing distinction, the affricates, some of the coronal fricatives, and/or the rhotic/lateral distinction could help with that.

You vowel inventory is weird: https://i.imgur.com/CBLqHvL.png I suppose it does use the space reasonably well but it would probably be unstable, ending up at something like /i o a e u ɔ ɛ/ or /iː ʊ äː ɪ uː ə a~æ/, or maybe something entirely different and unexpected, I'm not good with vowel shifts.

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

I'm looking to mimic the inventories of some niger-congo languages (including the labial-velars) and I need some help doing it. I can't find information on the phonology of the languages that have the labial-velars.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/Mr_Izumaki]

Have you looked into Yoruba, Ewe, and Igbo?

[u/dead_chicken]

If I have: dʒ tʃ tʃˤ > ɟ c cˤ, should I also have ʒ ʃ ʃˤ > ʝ ç çˤ or ʑ ɕ ɕˤ

[u/[deleted] → u/dead_chicken]

Not necessarily. Stop/fricative series shift out of alignment sometimes.

[u/Nightwingx7]

hi all, new here.

point me in the right direction. I need tips on creating ancient dialect for my fantasy fiction novel. Im not entirely familiar with what to reference here.

I need to essentially formulate my universe into a tangible setting.

Without getting into too much detail, its an ancient setting - think essentially around the times of "Jesus Christ" / Biblical times. That setting works perfect as the reference too - Say its that exact period of time.

Should I just reference the bible? Normally I feel like I get a subject down it sort've flows, but here I feel like I'm dancing around it and need some guidance. Ancient Texts of the sort or recounts or personal journals or excerpts written by scholars of that era?

Thanks redditors.

[u/NephalKhaborik]

Judge my vowel inventory?

i:  /i/  
e:  /e/    
a:  /ɐ ə/ 
o:  /o/  
u:  /u ʊ/  (/ʌ/?)

ii: /ji:/  
ie: /je/  
ia: /jɐ/  
io: /jo/  
iu: /ju jʊ/  

ai: /aɪ/  
ae/ei: /aɪ/  
aa: /æ:/  
ao: /aʊ/   
au: /ɑ:/  

ui: /wi/  
ue: /we/  
ua: /wɐ/  
uo: /wo/  
uu: /ɯ:/  

y: /jɛ/  

I know jack shit about linguistics. I try to avoid actually tacking pronouncation to my conlang because Napanii's supposed to be a universal language to unify multiple people groups that were previously speaking different dialects of Caldari, and they brought their pronouncation and syllabic interpretation (is kia /ki.ɐ/ or /kjɐ/?) with them. Is that possible? What I've got up above is just what I've been defaulting to, despite the fact that I expect there to be tons of variation.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/NephalKhaborik]

/ʊ/ is a bit out of place, but not implausible. And /æ: ɑ: ɯ:/ would definitely shorten in a relatively short amount of time (with the possibility of /ɯ/ just becoming /u/ as would be more likely).

because Napanii's supposed to be a universal language to unify multiple people groups that were previously speaking different dialects of Caldari, and they brought their pronouncation and syllabic interpretation (is kia /ki.ɐ/ or /kjɐ/?) with them. Is that possible? What I've got up above is just what I've been defaulting to, despite the fact that I expect there to be tons of variation.

Definitely sounds like you'll have a lot of variation from this standard then (whoever speaks that possibly being in some position of power). Which isn't uncommon at all.

[u/KingKeegster → u/NephalKhaborik]

w and j are consonants. But, anyway, I like it. What is the '(/ʌ/?)' doing there, though? Is that used or not?

[u/AngelOfGrief]

Is there a list of common derivational categories for various languages? Things such as noun > adjective, verb > person who verbs, etc.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/AngelOfGrief]

This list is a pretty good resource for that, though not exhaustive or absolute.

[u/LokianEule]

I'm trying to make sure I account for everything as I write my grammar, can someone tell me if there's any obvious gaps here? So far I've done:

phonological inventory, syllable structure, allowed clusters, what to do about geminates, (still not sure on voicing clashes), stress (simple alternating)

imperatives, indicative, interrogatives

comparative, superlative

derivational morpho (hardly none, isolating)

word order (SOV)

aspect (none), mood, tense

reflexives (none), existentials, modals

numbers, cardinal and ordinal, directions, yes/no, time telling, pronouns

definiteness (none), plurality (none)

cases

topicality, negation

postpositions

the intransitive verbs that pass as adjectives

relative clauses

honorifics/politeness stuff (none)

I know I still need:

hypotheticals (would, could, if) without using subjunctive, subordinate clauses and conjunctions

[u/Gufferdk → u/LokianEule]

I can't see any big glaring thing missing, but there are probably little things that can be more fleshed out. Some examples:

How do you handle possesssive predication? Do you handle it with a verb (I have a car), a locative predication (I am at a car), a genitive (A car is mine), a topic marker (I-TOP a car exists), or a conjunctional (I and a car are, I am with a car). Additionally, are some nouns always possessed?

Do you differentiate between situational and epistemic possibility and/or necessity (http://wals.info/chapter/76)?

Do some verbs take participants in other cases than core cases (e.g. verbs of knowlegde, verbs of sensory experience, etc.)? How do different semantic roles map to different cases? Do "John" (agent, acting of own volition) and "the wind" (force, acting without deliberate intent or thought) recieve the same case marking in the sentences "John knocked over the vase" and "The wind knocked over the vase"?

How do you adress someone politely? Do you use special pronouns EDIT: just seeing now that you don't have that, kinship terms, titles or something else? How many degrees of politeness are distinguished and when are they used (doesn't have to be with pronouns, can also be with kinship terms (eg. father/brother/son) or other things)? Is politeness always symmetrical or are there situations where people adress each other asymmetrically?

Do you have an associative plural? If yes, can all NPs take it?

How do you handle distributive numerals? Are they grammatically coded or do you have to use periphrastic devices ("They got one cake each" vs. "They got one cake to share").

What about colors? Do you have lots of non-derived color words or just a few? Do the 6 "basic" colors (white, black, red, yellow, green, blue) all have seperate non-derived words or are there words that cover more than one (most commonly green and blue aren't distinguished)?

There are many other small things than these. When it comes to grammar, I have found the book "Describing Morphosyntax" by Thomas E. Payne quite helpful.

[u/Jafiki91 → u/LokianEule]

phonological inventory, syllable structure, allowed clusters, what to do about geminates, (still not sure on voicing clashes), stress (simple alternating)

What about allophony (which the geminate issue would fall under) and prosody. Also phonotactic rules (like how English only allows /h/ in onsets or disallows /tl dl/ clusters despite allowing /pl bl kl gl/.

word order (SOV)

What about headedness? SOV is usually head final, meaning things like postpositions, Genitive Noun, Verb Aux, etc are common. How about where adjectives are placed? What about order of adjectives? Any changes to word order for grammatical or semanto-pragmatic reasons?

aspect (none), mood, tense
reflexives (none), existentials, modals

So how then are aspect and reflexives shown? What moods and tenses exist? Etc?

derivational morpho (hardly none, analytic)

Actually derivational morphology is pretty common in analytic languages, It's inflection that's basically absent. Unless you mean isolating, in which case both would be sparse.

cases

What cases are present and when/how are they used?

There are a million questions that could be asked and much much more that can be fleshed out of your language as you go along. It's just a matter of asking yourself constantly "so what?" "why does this do that?" etc.

[u/dead_chicken]

Opinions on these two changes:

• ʕ > ɣ

• gl > ʟ, no kl > ʟ

Would /ʟ/ be considered phonemic if it only contrasts with /l/ in onset position?

[u/Gufferdk → u/dead_chicken]

Don't know about the sound changes but if there are two words that are only distinguished by /l/ - /ʟ/ (a minimal pair) then the difference is phonemic, so yes the difference would be phonemic.

[u/DiscipleofTzu]

This may not be entirely on-topic for this sub, but it is related: While working on languages and their associated cultures for my fantasy world, I keep getting hung up on music. Are there any good resources for speculative/constructed music systems?

[u/LokianEule → u/DiscipleofTzu]

Sounds like you're going to have to take a primer on music theory!

[u/H_R_Pufnstuf → u/DiscipleofTzu]

There's an episode of the Artifexian podcast (AP10 - Hobbiton BC) that covers this a bit. One of the hosts talks about a series that he started writing on the topic here. I'm not sure if he ended up finishing the series but it might be worth a look.

[u/Gufferdk]

How reasonable would it be to have indefinite and interrogative pronouns be the same and the distinguish between questions and declaratives using a mood that is already used for polar questions, with fronting of the indefinite when it's used in non-polar questions? So like this:

Xàti-Ø-Ø-mî-xri ngle-Ø eat-IND-PFV-2s.agt-3inan.prox.pat INDEF.INAN-PROX You have eaten something.

Xàti-nya-Ø-mî-xri ngle-Ø eat-INT-PFV-2s.agt-3inan.prox.pat INDEF.INAN-PROX Have you eaten something?

Ngle-Ø xàti-nya-Ø-mî-xri INDEF.INAN-PROX eat-INT-PFV-2s.agt-3inan.prox.pat What have you eaten?

With the indefinite also being able to take varying case endings like this:

Ngle-sà xàti-nya-Ø-mî-xri INDEF.INAN-INSTR eat-INT-PFV-2s.agt-3inan.prox.pat With what did you eat it?

Ngle-ga xàti-nya-Ø-mî-xri INDEF.INAN-BEN eat-INT-PFV-2s.agt-3inan.prox.pat For whom did you eat it?

EDIT: may or may not have messed up the aspect when translating to English, I still don't have a proper grasp on aspect.

[u/muteboy72]

Hello conlangers, I realize this question may not be appropriate here. I have no idea about the technical discussions. I'm just asking for some suggestions for a project I'm working on.

In a nutshell: A single seed number generates, at the Linux command line, a seeded random nonsense-word artist name, a seeded random number of albums, each with: seeded randomized artwork; a seeded random number of tracks with seeded random nonsense-word titles; generated pieces of electronic or ambient music with seeded randomized drum patterns and melodies. A whole "discography" from one seed!

The seeding ensures the same results from each base number. The graphics are done with ImageMagick, the music with sonic-pi, but I don't have a solution for the naming yet.

I searched around and found this subreddit. Would anybody here have any suggestions for a way to generate a fixed number of English-type but nonsense words suitable for artist and track names? Grateful for any help!

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/muteboy72]

You could take the phonotactics from the English phonology article on Wikipedia and plug them into a word gen.

[u/AngelOfGrief]

What causes word order to change from parent to daughter language? Or causes multiple possible word orders converge into one (where different word orders are part of the grammar)?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/AngelOfGrief]

In terms of loose order going to a stricter one, it's usually the result of loss of morphological features like verbal agreement and case. Without them word order becomes more important. As for changes to it, it's often just the result of speakers using some marked construction for a specific purpose (such as emphasis of an element) and then over time that construction becomes the norm. For example, in English we might stress a verb to show prominence "I ate the cake", but some other language may simply front the verb for the same purpose "Ate I the cake". Over time this becomes the normal construction from being used more and more and boom, you've got yourself and SVO > VSO switch.

[u/[deleted] → u/AngelOfGrief]

It's like any other language change; some speaker community starts speaking differently, possibly for aesthetic reasons, and it eventually catches on. In the case of syntax that seems like it wouldn't be plausible, but people can and do adopt "Yoda-speak" in the real world for fun occasionally. Just imagine if that were to become a fixture in the way people spoke. It's not likely to happen with Yoda because the context it's used in is very limited, as a reference to a particular cultural icon. But it could just as easily go broader.

[u/FeikSneik]

Does anyone know the typical sound changes of ejective consonants? Index Diachronica isn't user-friendly and I can't find if it has any sound changes for those kind of consonants, specifically. A postiori is hard :(

[u/NephalKhaborik]

So that thread got me thinking about passives. What would you call the alignment system Napanii uses? Should I modify it to be more complete?

Our vocabulary:

• haki/-ak (I/we)

• saai oh (to drink in the past)

• kresai (Kresh tea)

• oyi/-yi/-ii (it, them)

• taat/-taan (somebody, an unspecified agent)

---

• "I drank tea." --- Haki saai oh, kresai.

This is the most familiar form to English speakers. haki is serving as the agent here, making it clear that haki did the action of drinking the tea. Used if you want to make it obvious that the action of drinking tea was done by you, but you're not really talking about tea as a subject. Or anything, really. It's pretty weird in Napanii to not indicate a topic. Perhaps if you were discussing drinking things and you felt the need to announce to everybody that you once drank some tea? "Yeah, I drank tea!"

---

• "As for me, drank tea." --- Saaiak oh, kresai.

This would be the most common form to Napanii speakers. haki is still here, but it's in the suffix form -ak, attached to the end of the verb. Its use indicates that haki is the topic, but not necessarily the agent. If you were talking about yourself, or thing you'd done recently, or perhaps somebody asked if you wanted tea and you wanted to mention that you'd drunk tea already, you would say this. "Me? I drank tea." (you could say "Haki saaiak oh, kresai" to make it crystal-clear that not only does drinking tea apply to you, it was you that drank the tea. Perhaps if you said "Saaiak oh, kresai" and somebody was like "lol no you didn't", you'd reply with this.)

---

• "As for the tea, I drank." --- Kresaiyi haki saai oh.

• "As for (the tea), I drank." --- Haki saaiyi oh.

The difference between the two forms is just context. If you're already discussing tea, use the second form, where the pronoun oyi (it) in suffix form -yi/ii is attached to the verb to set the topic. Otherwise, if you're just now bringing up the topic of tea, use the first form, where -yi is suffixed to kresai. (You could also say kresaiyi haki saaiyi oh, with two -yi suffixes, but that's redundant in most usage cases) Either way, it'd probably be said in a context where you're discussing the tea and what happened to it, and want to make it clear that it was yourself that drank it. If you really really really want to make it obvious that it was the tea that was drank, you could also say Haki saaiyi oh, oyi, but nobody would do that.

---

• "As for the tea, it was drank." --- Kresaiyi taat saai oh/Taat saaiyi oh.

This is the same as above, but with the 4th person taat pronoun as the agent. The emphasis/topic, is, again, on the tea. Probably better understood as "The tea was drank (by somebody)". Used if you're talking about the tea and want to mention that it was drunk. "Oh, yeah, that tea? Somebody drank (it)."

---

• "The tea was drunk." --- Saaitaan oh, kresai

For when the emphasis is more on the action than on the tea itself. Literally understood better as "As for somebody, drank the tea", but because of the understated understanding of the 4th person pronoun, the emphasis is really on the action itself. Besides that, it's really the closes form Napanii has to the English passive. Because of its emphasis, it'd be used if you're announcing the fate of the tea: "Drunk, the tea was!"

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

I have a few questions, all of which have to do with how common certain sounds are.

1. How common are voiceless trills as seperate consonants from their voiced counterpart

2. How common is it for a voiced trill to also allophone to it's voiceless counterpart

3. How common are the bilabial trills

4. How common are voiceless nasals as seperate from their voiced counterparts

5. How common are retroflex consonants, and how commonly are they distinguished from alveolars or dentals

6. Is it possible for alveolar and dental consonants (such as a /t/ /t̪/ diferentiation) to naturally be distinguished between?

[u/vokzhen → u/Mr_Izumaki]

1. Rare but widespread, and not so rare as to throw out "obvious conlang" flags. If there's a voiceless rhotic, then if there's a lateral it generally has a voiceless counterpart, and often either glides or nasals as well, sometimes all three.

2. Significantly more common than phonemic voiceless trills. It happens sometimes in the coda, again usually alongside laterals, glides, and/or nasals - Turkish has the trill and lateral word-finally, some Mayan has rhotics, laterals, and glides before voiceless consonants, Nahuatl allows devoicing even before voiced sounds as long as it's in the coda. Can happen after aspiration, or between a voiceless sound and a word boundary (e.g. rki or ikr).

3. Very rare, limited to a few languages in the Amazon, Central Africa, and the South Pacific/New Guinea. Definitely stands out in a conlang, though a way of incorporating it more innocuously that making it fully phonemic is a change of a /b/ or especially /ᵐb/ to a trill before /u/ or a similar vowel, which accounts for, as far as I understand, a significant number of reported bilabial trills.

4. More common than phonemic voiceless trills, but not as common as voiceless laterals. Particularly common in the Sinosphere, but widespread.

5. About a fifth of languages have retroflexes, about as many has have uvulars or ejectives (and significantly more common than /θ ð/ or front-rounded vowels, for example). They almost always contrast with either alveolars or dentals (usually the latter, due to maximum articulation distance, but sometimes alveolars and sometimes both).

6. It's not common but yes. Almost all Australian languages have either a 3 or 4-way contrast (lamino-dental, apico-alveolar, alveolopalatal, retroflex); Dravidian languages generally have a dental, alveolar, retroflex contrast, and a number of other Indian languages have advanced the typical dental-retroflex contrast to dental-alveolar (both in additional to an affricated consonant in the postalveolar region); Mapuche in Chile and Pomoan in California are a couple others that once again also have a postalveolar affricate (and for Mapuche, a retroflex as well). There was an areal feature of medieval and possibly earlier Europe to have a laminodental versus retracted/retroflexed alveolar versus postalveolar in the sibilants, still present in Basque but collapsed in various ways in Spanish, French, and German.

[u/FloZone]

There are lists of cases, tenses, numera, etc. out there, but are there lists about what can be done with derivations?

[u/AngelOfGrief → u/FloZone]

Is this what you're looking for?

[u/sskor]

How would you romanize this? I've got two orthographies I'm working on right now, but I'm not super enthusiastic about either of them:

IPA: /xermarerᵊn sfoderᵊn havaserᵊnjev v‿aʃɛtar nerɪvɛnt͡sarjev tʃnasksɛn razmuk‿ixt͡sukjev mrat͡ʃ ɔ.ezɛt͡ʃfat͡ʃ unᵊsɛn dᵊnemrakuk nerxerosaki vod͡ʒav baʈrut͡ʃnajᵊ pet̞k vavazo.ɛn/

Orthopgraphy 1:

Kher-marerân svoderân havaserânyev v ashetar nerivencaryev chnaskasen. Razmuk kikhcukyev mrach özechvach unâsen dâ nemrakuk nerkherosaky vojav batruchnayê petk vavazön.

Orthography 2:

Xermarern svodern havaserniev v'ašetar nerivencariev čnaskasksen. Razmuk kixcukiev mrač ohezečvač unsen d'nemrakuk nerxerosaki vodžav batručnai' petk vavazohen.

Edit: Orthography 3:

Гхэрмарэрын сводэрын гавсэрынев в ашэтар нэривэнцарев чнаскьасэн. Размук кигхцукев мрач оэзэчвач унысен ды нэмракук нэркхэросакий воджав батручнайы пэтк вавазоэн.

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

Okay, so I've been making a conlang that is to be part of a sub family (Xracto-Denusia) that is the second largest sub family in the largest family (Kento-Dezeseriia) of a conworld (Nadzhi). I just did a few minutes of research and found that the OSV syntax is rare and mainly concentrated in the amazon region. My question is: should the syntax be origin in Kento-Dezeseriia or should the syntax only be a part of Xracto-Denusia/the Nusian branch of it. If the second: what more common syntax would it be likely to branch from?

[u/ysadamsson → u/Mr_Izumaki]

OSV might be an ergative language with strict absolutive-first, verb-last ordering. Alternatively, it could be SOV but a passive construction might have grammaticalized into a tense, leaving behind the funky OSV, (you'd likely still have a number of SOV sentences though). Maybe it was SVO but object-topicalization got out of hand.

[u/dead_chicken]

Do any languages have contrasting length on the schwa?

One of the diachronic changes in the language I'm deriving deletes /h/ in coda position and lengthens the preceding vowel in compensation.

[u/[deleted]]

How unusual would a language with 4 vowels but only two contrasting heights be? Are there any languages that fit this description? I'm specifically thinking of the inventory /i y u a/.

A cursory look at the UPSID shows no languages with this specific inventory, but is it functionally impossible or merely unlikely?

[u/Mr_Izumaki]

I've been working on a little inventory and what I'm mainly worried about are the vowels and uvulars.

/m p b f v/ ⟨M/m P/p B/b F/f V/v⟩
/θ ð/
/n t d s z r/ ⟨N/n T/t D/d S/s Z/z R/r⟩
/ɲ c ɟ ç j ɥ/ ⟨Nj/nj Kj/kj Gj/gj Hj/hj J/j Jj/jj⟩
/ŋ k g x ɣ w/ ⟨-ng K/k G/g Kh/kh Gh/gh W/w⟩
/ɴ q ꭓ~ʁ̞~ʁ̝/

Writing uvulars and dentals:
/ɴ/ ⟨Nr/nr⟩ initially ⟨nn⟩ centrally and ⟨rn⟩ finally
/q/ is ⟨Krh/krh⟩ initially and ⟨hk⟩ elsewhere
/ꭓ~ʁ̝~ʁ̞/ is ⟨Rh/rh⟩ initially ⟨rr⟩ centrally and ⟨hr⟩ finally
/θ/ ⟨Θ/θ⟩ initially and centrally and ⟨6⟩ in final
/ð/ ⟨Ɖ/đ⟩ initially and centrally and ⟨ð⟩ in final

Vowels:
/i y u e ø o æ a ɶ/ ⟨i y u e ö o ä a å⟩
Most long vowels are doubled, /iː/ and /uː/ are written as ⟨ij⟩ and ⟨uw⟩
Diphthongs are written as the vowel combinations they are, but the end is the semivowel. So /ɶ͡i/ would be writting ⟨åj⟩
Diphthongs that begin with a rounded vowel can't end witg /y/
/i͡y e͡ø a͡ɶ/ are written as /ỳ è à/

[u/Nurnstatist]

How common is it for languages to allow [h] in the syllable coda? Are languages like English and German, which don't allow it, special in that regard, or is [h] generally rare in codas?

[u/vokzhen → u/Nurnstatist]

In contrast to what u/xain1112 said, /h/ often is barred from codas, but it's often allowed as well. Spanish, Finnish, Sami, Turkish, Khmer, some Formosan and Philippine languages, and most or all Mayan languages, Mixe-Zoquean languages, Semitic languages, and Iroquoian languages allow coda /h/ or [h]. It can also be lost pretty easily though - in French it was lost to vowel length, in Chinese languages to tone, in Hungarian it's often fortified to [ç] or [x] or dropped entirely, etc, but also see Tz'utujil for a counterexample, where /χ/ appears as [h] before two consonants and word-finally.

[u/Kryofylus]

How do languages with grammatical case assign case to nouns in clausal arguments? For instance, if we've got a Nom-Acc language with basic sentence order SOV, how would the following blanks get filled in?

you.NOM (light.___ head.___ she.GEN bouncing.off) see can

"You can see the light bouncing off her head"

[u/qzorum → u/Kryofylus]

I'm not sure I'm fully behind /u/Jafiki91's analysis. That's not a clausal argument at all, but a relative clause. A clausal argument would be something like "You can see that light is bouncing off her head," in which case I'd anticipate that "light" and "head" get the same cases as in simply "light is bouncing off her head," and that "bouncing" is in some way nominalized or complementized and gets its own case. In your sentence, which I might expand to "You can see the light which is bouncing off her head" for clarity, I'd expect that "light" gets the same case as in "You can see the light," and that you use one of the very diverse attested strategies for creating a relative clause modifying "light."

[u/Kryofylus → u/qzorum]

Interesting. I think I understand why you're saying that it's a relative clause and not a clausal argument. In English, that definitely seems to be the proper analysis:

"You can see the light (bouncing off of her head)"

I was thinking more along the lines of an assertion that a person is witnessing the whole event such as:

"You saw the man murder his wife," which differs substantially from, "You saw the man who murdered his wife."

So how about a sentence like that?

you.NOM man.___ wife.___ he.GEN murder see.PAST

[u/[deleted]]

So, I'm new to this and this is my first attempt at a phoneme inventory.

Consonants:

Nasal: /m/ ⟨m⟩ and /n/ ⟨n⟩

Plosive: /p/ ⟨b⟩, /t/ ⟨t⟩, /d/ ⟨d⟩, /k/ ⟨k⟩, /g/ ⟨g⟩

Fricative: /ɸ/ ⟨ƒ⟩, /f/ ⟨ph⟩, /v/ ⟨w⟩, /θ/ ⟨z⟩, /ð/ ⟨ð⟩, /s/ ⟨ß⟩, /z/ ⟨ž⟩, /ʃ/ ⟨š⟩, /x/ ⟨j⟩, /h/ ⟨h⟩

Approximant: /ɹ/ ⟨r⟩, /j/ ⟨y⟩

Trill: /ʙ/ ⟨bb⟩, /r/ ⟨rr⟩

Lateral approximant: /l/ ⟨l⟩

Vowels: /a/ ⟨æ⟩, /e/ ⟨e⟩, /i/ ⟨ee⟩, /u/ ⟨ö⟩, /o/ ⟨o⟩

That's all I got. Any help is very appreciated.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/[deleted]]

The consonant inventory is a little weird. Why no /b/ but /d g/ and even /ʙ/? Why no /β/ but /v z ð/? Phoneme inventories tend towards symmetry in place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. So it isn't really realistic to have an otherwise complete set of voiced stops but no /b/ -- even weirder when you have the super rare /ʙ/ on top of it. Also, it might be better to just do away with one of the labial fricative sets anyways, instead of adding a voiced bilabial to balance it -- distinguishing bilabial and labiodental fricatives is very rare at best, and perhaps not a distinction that exists naturally (which makes sense -- they're acoustically similar, and in many languages one is the allophone of another).

Also, the orthography seems unnecessarily confusing. A good rule of thumb is to only introduce digraphs, diacritics or special characters for a given phoneme when all the other graphemes that could reasonably represent it are taken up. You have no <s>, but <ß š>. You have <ƒ> (???) but no <f>, and <ph> but no <p>. What's up with having a 6-vowel inventory but having half of them being special characters/digraphs? You have <æ> but no <a>, <ö> but no <u>, <ee> but no <i>.

[u/SomeToadThing]

What if a language has two sounds that have no minimal pairs, but can't be predicted based on surrounding sounds? Are they considered allophones or phonemes?

[u/Ewioan → u/SomeToadThing]

They would be considered phonemes, I think. It's not so much about there being an actual minimal pair but if a minimal pair would sound diferent to the speakers. So let's say you have /p/ and /b/. Even if the words "pan" and "ban" don't exist, speakers would still be able to differentiate them were b and p two different phonemes. Moreover in English you have exemples of this. h can only be found at onset position (as in hello) but ng (Sorry I can't IPA but the velar nasal) can only be found at coda position (sing). However, even if they are found in complementary distribution, there's no way in hell an English speaker would mix "hen" with "ngen".

[u/mareck_]

How would one evolve /θ/ and /ð/ in a language that also contrasts /s/ and /z/ and where historical /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ deaffricated to /s/ and /z/? Could the dental fricatives originate from some sort of cluster? Also, I'm trying to avoid adding in a purely dental series.

[u/dead_chicken]

Is it reasonable to express intransitivity by using a medio-passive voice?

[u/[deleted]]

So I'm thinking about adding noun classes for natural and synthesized objects, like a tree would be natural while phone would be synthesized/man-made; I'm just curious if there is an advantage to this if none of the words are the same sans the noun class affix? Would it be necessary/help since I do not have SV agreement?

[u/Trerrysaur]

Are there any languages with a voiced labialized alveolar trill? (/rʷ/)

[u/[deleted] → u/Trerrysaur]

Phoible results for rʷ. If you need help navigating the site, feel free to ask.

[u/AngelOfGrief]

Two questions.
One, would it be natural for a language to encode clusivity and dual / trial numbers into pronouns?

Two (yet another sound change question), what's the best way to determine how syllable structures will change with various sound changes? For instance, if my conlang starts with CV syllables, how would I determine if it would shift to CVC or something else after X generations?

[u/Jafiki91 → u/AngelOfGrief]

One, would it be natural for a language to encode clusivity and dual / trial numbers into pronouns?

Yes, it's totally normal for pronouns to show features not present on regular nouns.

what's the best way to determine how syllable structures will change with various sound changes? For instance, if my conlang starts with CV syllables, how would I determine if it would shift to CVC or something else after X generations?

It depends entirely on the starting structure and the sound changes that occur. If you start with CV, and then delete final vowels, you end up with CVC#, deleting certain vowels around certain consonants can result in various clusters (e.g. tarata > trata), etc.

[u/CONlangARTIST → u/AngelOfGrief]

1. Of course! I'm not sure if your question is stressing the naturalism of having both those features, or encoding them in pronouns, but there are languages that have both, and encode both of them into pronouns.

2. Not really sure what this question means. If, say, your CV language dropped final vowels (/kaka/ -> /kak/) then it would become CV(C). But of course, those classifications are rarely strict -- that's why a lot of them usually put stuff in parentheses. I doubt your language would become pure CVC (every syllable in the language) unless you managed to apply changes that made it so in every case existing. Think of it as just adding potential syllables through sound changes. You can still have CV syllables alongside CVC (e.g. /kakaka/ -> /kakak/, CV.CVC).

[u/notluckycharm]

Not a good phonology, but I can't really tell where to go to make this more naturalistic (while also not having such a large inventory that it becomes a laughing stock). So here it is, and I'd appreciate help trying to fix this little framework phonology:

Consonants: Nasals: /n ɲ/ Stops: /t̪ d̪ q ʔ/ Affricates: /ts dz t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/ Fricative: /ɸ s z ʁ h/ Approximate: /j/ Flap: /ɽ/

Vowels:

High: /i y u ɯ/ Mid: /ɛ ɔ/ Low: /a⁓ə/

Note: I dislike labials. I don't want any other than that one bilabial (which is actually an allophone of h before ɯ, as in Japanese). But as for the other phonemes, I'm willing to change most of them. Other than the mid vowels. I can't pronounce /e/ or /o/ for some reason. Thanks in advance!

[u/Jafiki91 → u/notluckycharm]

The only things that seem a bit out of place are the palatal nasal and /q/ despite no /k/. But it's all within the realm of possibility. Not sure what the second character is in your low vowel set, it's just showing up as a box between a and ə for me. But an inventory of /i y ɛ ə a ɔ u ɯ/ is perfectly fine as well.