Zompist Bboard Again

If by "without backing preexisting velars" you mean any shift of *k > q, then I can't see too many pathways to get uvulars. A couple come to mind: *h > χ (> q) *r > ʁ (> q) If conditional backing of velars is ok, then there are a lot more options. Many "Altaic" languages have uvu...

I realized I did the sound changes wrong for "one", should be ʃen, so that takes care of one instance. I really like your idea of axta influencing *ʃɯxtan to become ʃaxtan. For two, tʃiwa would violate the vowel harmony rules of the language, so I’ll leave that one as is.

Got the sound changes working for an IE lang I’ve been messing with. Now onto the hard part, the morphology... Some example words (stress always on initial syllable): xetʃe "father", me:tʃe "mother", bɯratʃa "brother", sɯwasa "sister", duktʃa "daughter&qu...

Not an expert by any means but I‘ve taken an interest in Uralic linguistics recently and it seems like people are increasingly skeptical of even PIE > PU loans, at least on the Uralicist side. I think the consensus is that PU is a considerably younger language than PIE and therefore the timelines do...

I don't have a ton to say, but I really like the "vibe" you've captured here. Something about the phonotactics feels vaguely Native American, without being strongly reminiscent of any one specific family. I particularly like the gender/number system. I seem to include singulatives in every...

Phonology for a language I'm tentatively calling Kvanasc̣a: /p t ts tɬ ʈʂ ʈꞎ tʃ k q ʔ/ /p' t' ts' tɬ' ʈʂ' ʈꞎ' tʃ' k' q'/ /s ɬ ʂ ꞎ ʃ x χ h/ /ʋ r l ɻ ɭ y/ /ʋ' r' l' ɻ' ɭ' y'/ /m n ɳ ɲ ŋ/ /m' n' ɳ' ɲ' ŋ'/ /i ĩ ɛ ɛ̃ u ũ/ ("light" vowels) /ɪ ɪ̃ a ã ʊ ʊ̃/ ("dark" vowels) /ə ə̃/ (neutra...

Control is a really cool feature that I don't see used in conlangs too often. Maybe check out Salish for inspiration?

If a language has kʷ but lacks p, what are some conditioned shifts that could lead to a change of kʷ > p? Obviously, just a universal shift would be totally plausible, and I want to do that in some daughter languages, but are some environments more likely to shift than others? From looking around a...

Determiners and demonstratives Proto-Plateau determiners and demonstrative encode features of deixis (deictic vs non-deictic), presence (present vs absent), and case (direct vs oblique). The direct case introduces subjects of intransitive verbs, agents and objects of transitive verbs, and the head ...

If a language has kʷ but lacks p, what are some conditioned shifts that could lead to a change of kʷ > p? Obviously, just a universal shift would be totally plausible, and I want to do that in some daughter languages, but are some environments more likely to shift than others?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Apr 23, 2025 3:36 pm Nice! And I assume you mean "one of three classes" above.

I did, good catch. Originally the special dual form was going to represent a fourth class, but I decided to analyze it (for now) as a special exception to the regular rules. I might change my mind again, who knows.

Thank you guys for the compliments, means a lot to me that people are showing an interest! I stopped working on this for a while because I was overwhelmed with figuring out what I wanted to the morphosyntax, but I'm getting a rough idea of where I want to take it. Decided to start with little pieces...

*Me, taking notes of this conversation* I was never certain about the origins of ejectives which made me quite uncertain about how frequent ejectives should be and whether there could be multiple non-geminate ejectives in close proximity to each other (either directly adjacent, or a syllable or two...

i'm quite new to conlanging (if no one could tell), but if you tried to tell the 13 yo me who didn't know about conlanging that this proto-plateau lang wasn't a natlang and instead was a conlang, I would look at you and question if I knew more than you about conlanging. this has to be one of the mo...

Decided to add a bit more irregularity into the weakening/hardening stuff. Now, Proto-Plateau *s weakens to *r in some roots and *y in others. I'm hypothesizing that this is due to a merger of pre-Proto-Plateau **s and **š. In other words, roots with original **š have *y in the weakened form, while ...

Thanks all for the interest! I will post some more thoughts about the morphophonology later today most likely, and continue refining my ideas about the morphology, which is a little bit kitchen-sinky at the moment. Also need to work out stress... As for the triggering of hardening/weakening, I'm sor...

I personally like phonologies that have unusual/unexpected "gaps", since this happens in natural language all the time. It also gives you the opportunity to do some historical conlinguistics if you want, to figure out what kind of splits and mergers could create the gaps found in modern Az...

Decided to write out some ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a few months now. This is a conlang family set in a region similar to the Interior Plateau area of western North America. It is a relatively dry zone between an extremely large mountain range to the north and a smaller ran...

Developed the beginnings of a phonology for a language I'm creatively calling "Proto-Plateau", ancestor of a relatively shallow language family (2-3000 years old) that will split into Proto-Highland and Proto-Lowland. The language was spoken by highly mobile hunter-gatherers, evidenced by...

Developed the beginnings of a phonology for a language I'm creatively calling "Proto-Plateau", ancestor of a relatively shallow language family (2-3000 years old) that will split into Proto-Highland and Proto-Lowland. The language was spoken by highly mobile hunter-gatherers, evidenced by ...