Zompist Bboard Again

This sounds reasonable! In that case, is there any particular reason why you call -am an ‘imperfective’ rather than a ‘future’?

Miswrote. I meant "usually future events use the irrealis mood". Sorry about that.

What exactly is the usage range of these three categories? Without any further explanation, ‘perfective’, ‘imperfective’ and ‘irrealis’ are all very vague terms. I rewrote it: Verbs are inflected for either the perfective aspect, the imperfective aspect, and the irrealis mood. The perfective is mar...

I miswrote my stress system. What I meant was this: Stress is on the penultimate syllable unless it doesn’t end in a consonant. Then it ends the antepenultimate. Sorry about that.

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Mon Apr 03, 2023 7:25 pm I do not know about only having long *e and *o perhaps other long vowels would arise later or perhaps they are the diphthongs *ai and *au. Also is the second *r meant to be a uvular trill/approximate?

The second r was a typo. Sorry.

The following is all I have so far for the reference grammar of my language, the Ancient Tongue (it’s not actually called the Ancient Tongue, it’s just a working title). Phonology Consonants Voiceless Stops: /p t k/ Aspirated Stops: /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ Voiceless Stops: /b d g/ Fricatives: /s h/ Nasal: /m n/ ...

What do you guys think about my syntax so far: Sentence Order: SOV Noun Phrase Order: Nouns precede numerals, adjectives, relative clauses, in that order, while demonstratives precede nouns. Negatives are marked with prepositional phrases. Relative clauses: Relative clauses are introduced using rela...

Not yet. Just placeholder names, but I will.

Hi!

I thought I’d just make a thread to use for all the times I post things about my various conlangs instead of making a new thread each time.

Anyways,

conlangernoob

I just worked out a neat three-way alignment split: Pronouns and proper nouns use a nominative-accusative alignment, humans and other animates use a realis-irrealis split between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive, respectively, and inanimates use ergative-absolutive alignment.

Here is a set of sound changes I'm planning from Proto-Lang #1 to one of the descendent languages. All the sound changes are attested but I'm not sure how realistic it is. ɡ / h / V_V eu / eo / s / θ / #_r i / ə / _# {f, s, x} / {v, z, ɣ} / v / θ / _{a,e,i} ɣ / k / _i b / w / V_V ɣ / ∅ / V_u ɣ / ∅ /...

If they're protolangs, why are they reconstructed like that? They don't need to have realistic phonologies. PIE doesn't. Well, perhaps conlangernoob simply wants the protolangs to have realistic phonologies? It might be a simple aesthetic preference. True! My goal for my Proto-Langs is not to be a ...

Thanks for all the replies! I will add /j/ to Proto-Lang 2, and then everything will be fine, right? By the way, the old vowel system thread will be very useful, thank’s a lot. The general idea I get from reading the replies is that, aside from the lack of /j/ is Proto-Lang 2, everything is fine, if...

Hi! I’ve just finished the phonologies of the three main Proto-Langs in my world from which my future conlangs will be derived. These languages are intended to be naming languages which I might flesh out later. I’m just posting this in case anyone notices any MAJOR MAJOR mistakes before I move on to...

Thanks! This is really helpful.

Four dumb questions: In general, how many sound changes does a language go through every, say, 1,000 years? Also, how much variation is there? Also, do some types of sound change occur more than others? Finally, how many years does it take between a sound change to begin and a sound change to finish...

Two questions:
How do length distinctions evolve in vowels?
How do voiced distinctions evolve in consonants from a Proto-Language for which voicing is not phonemic?

What about one system of non-phonemic stress to evolving into another? I don't know if this is the general answer, but in language families that show diversity in fixed accent placement, I get the impression the cause is often due to language contact. I.e. those families where the daughter language...

What about one system of non-phonemic stress to evolving into another?

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but how does non-phonemic stress evolve?

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I revised the phonology to clear some of the inconsistencies and also made the word medial clusters a little more rule based. Here it is: Consonants: Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal p b t d k g m n f s x h r l y w Vowels: a, e, i, o, u. No diphthongs j is writt...