burke's presently untitled lang scratchpad

[burke]

[MACRO EDIT] Said I'd link the PDF up top so it could be easily seen, here ya go! https://github.com/jsburke/Conlangs/blo ... nzonaa.pdf

Hey all,

I was more of a lurker in the last board, and found my way over here just in time. A bit more active in facebook conlangs. I've been sketching out (sort of also recycling) a new conlang, and I like the scratchpads here so I figured why not bash around in one. I've historically used conlangs as an augment to natlang learning, but the spaces that can be explored in conlangs offers a flavor that I haven't been able to get out of my head for ages.

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## Phonologie De La Langue
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The Phonology draws heavily from Navajo and Japanese, with a couple intentional gaps and additions for fun (i.e.: I really like velar nasals for some reason, didn't want to include glottalized nasals). I decided to add in /b/ and /f/ to counteract some of the athabascanness since they tend to be labialphobic (though I don't like /f/ so it will likely be limited use in the lexical corpus). I debated adding a uvular ejective a la Georgian, but that felt too clunky.

The 4-vowel route was also tempered by Navajo and a lot of north America in general. I also in general really like the system. It was a toss up with this one or dropping /i/ to /e/ and moving the present <e> to schwa. I think I can get a little more fun variation out of the present system though.

CONSONANTS

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[tenuis]     p  t  t͡s  t͡ʃ  t͡ɬ  k  kʷ
[voiced]     b  d
[ejective]      t' t͡s' t͡ʃ' t͡ɬ' k' kʷ'
[fricative]  f     s    ʃ    ɬ    x  xʷ
[nasal]      m  n                 ŋ  ŋʷ
[liquid]                j    l r     w

VOWELS

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  i
         o
    ɛ
      a

ROMANIZATION

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[tenuis]     p  t  z  c  tl  k  kw
[voiced]     b  d
[ejective]      t' z' c' tl' k' kw'
[fricative]  f     s  x  lh  h  hw
[nasal]      m  n            g  gw
[liquid]              j  l r     w

[vowels]  a, e, o, i

N.B.:If anyone can point out a nicer way to table these, it would be appreciated

SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND TIMING

The syllable structure is simple theft of Japanese (no shame) : (C)V(N/Q) in a lazy way

N - is a homorganic coda nasal. Its POA matches the following consonant. For the liquids, this is [n]. Word finally it is the velar nasal, and in that position represented as <g>, all other places it is <n>
Q - is a lazy way of saying we can geminate the following consonant. However, there are restrictions here. The voiced, ejective, and liquid consonants cannot be doubled. Orhographically, we double the consonant as in <atto>

The timing is moraic (surprise) like Japanese, such that CV, V, N, and Q all take roughly 1 time unit.

When there are vowel clusters, there is not variation in qualities of the vowels.

SOUND VARIATIONS: ROUND ONE

The sounds do shift around a little bit. At this point I've only got a few sound shifts that I want to keep. Feel free to poke holes in me here please. I'll also be using my Romanization as much as possible since it makes my keyboarding easier.

The first major sound alteration is <o> shifting to [u]. This happens after <w> and any labiovelar consonant. This change in quality lasts for the duration of the <o>, such that <woo> is rendered [u.u], kwooo is [ku.u.u], and so on. This does not occur across other vowels, so <hwao> is [xwa.o] and <kwoao> would be [ku.a.o].

<e> is also subject to similar shifts, but after both palatal and labialized consonants. Immediately following a palatal series consonant (in the column of <j>, <x>, and <c>), <e> raises to [e]. Immediately after a <w> series consonant, <e> shifts to [ɤ]. The interactions in the syllable for these changes are the same as the one for <o> described above.

I'm debating having the ejective consonants induce creaky voice in some way, but I'm not really sold on doing this at the moment.

Finally, <s> shifts to the sound of <x> before <i>. While no <si> syllables exist naturally in roots in the language, the two sounds may come together via concatenation of certain parts of speech.

PHONOLOGY RESTRICTIONS

Despite the large sound inventory, many restrictions apply to where certain sounds or patterns may appear. Notably, the voiced and ejective consonants are only attested at the very beginning of noun and verb roots, and the labiovelar series is rarely found outside of such a place as well, though they are attested elsewhere.

Various pre-clitics and particles lack coda reduplication (Q).

The syllable /fi/ is not attested. There is no linguistic reason for this. I simply do not like the sound at all.

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That wraps what I want to talk about for now. I think the next post here will be a grammar outline or a vocab dump or something else. It's a scratchpad, so I only have to keep scratching. Maybe I should name this...

[storyteller232]

I know its the biggest question you had and i can answer it easily. A good way to...table your phonology is to enter it into vulgarlang and screen cap the resulting tables. Thats how i did it and you can see what it looks like in my hansenese thread

[akam chinjir]

I actually like the code-block tables. It helps if you compose your posts in another program using a monospace font, so you can see how the columns will line up. You can also go back and edit the post to line things up correctly (you'd want to take some spaces out of the bottom three rows of your consonants table).

[burke]

Thanks for the tabling feed back. I think I'll stick with the code blocks, but I don't know how the spacing ought to be modified.

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## Minor Tweak
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I mentioned that <s> sounds like <x> before <i>. I forgot to mention that this applies for the whole column. so <z> and <z'> will become <c> and <c'> respectively in that setting too.

I've also decided that the /a/ vowel is going to be the most common vowel sound. I think I'm aiming circa 40% of vowels to be /a/

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## Documentation
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As noted, this scratchpad is not good for long term storage. I plan on setting up a pdf soon that I'll hoist on the original post.

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## Possession, Plurals, and Pronouns
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Today's focus will go to possessive structures, the plural, and personal pronouns, in this order. They'll build up a bit

A bit of quick nominal info in general. Nouns do not get marked for definiteness or gender, and we will hit plurals today.

## Possession

There exists two kinds of possession, which I'll call intrinsic and extrinsic. This pretty much lines up with inalienable and alienable, but I selected the different terminology since the Possessive particles will do over time in how things like nouns, "adjectives", NPs, and VPs, modify each other. The possessives generally act as attributives, so to speak.

Extrinsic possession denotes relationships that are not seen as permanent. Owning things like food or clothes, friendships, present location, emotions that can change (happy, sad), and so on are extrinsically related. The syntactic structure uses the z(a)- preclititc (I think this is the term I want) attaching at the front of the possessor NP, as follows

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za-A B
A's B
B of A

There are a few sound rules that apply to this. If it attaches to a word that begins with a consonant, it is za-. If it attaches before a vowel, the /a/ is dropped. Furthermore, if it occurs before an /i/ it will resolve as c-. Orthographically, no dashes will be used.

Examples

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zanasa hela
EX-snake hole
The snake's hole

Intrinsic possession notes relationships seen as permanent or innate. This includes things like family, body parts, temperment, hometown, and so on. The structure used here is placing the -wo- particle between the two phrases. In the romanization, I'll note this specific particle with u attaching to the beginning of the possessed because of the mutations it can cause in the second phrase.

If the second phrase begins with any vowel that is not /o/, this particles becomes [w-], though still romanized as u. If it attaches to a word beginning with /o/, it becomes a [u.u] sequence and will be romanized as <uu>

Examples

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Tomi uMaha
Tomi IN - Mother
Tomi's mom

These structures can stack with each other as follows, elaborated with bracketting

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zazaTomi uMaha nasa hela
EX (EX (Tomi IN Mother) snake) hole
The hole of the snake of Tomi's mom

I do note that the example is a little contrived, but wanted to do it for clarity.

## Plurals

Plurals in this language are possible for all nouns, but not obligatory. If a noun is understood to be plural by some other means (adjectives, numbers, context) then it likely will not be marked plural. Human nouns are more likely to be marked plural than non-human in general.

The Plural is denoted with the particle -i attaching to the end of the word in question. The one phonological oddity here is that if a word ends in /N/ it will drop the coda nasal and become [ni].

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nasai
snake PL.
snakes

zanasa helai
EX snake hole PL
snake holes

## Personal pronouns

For this I'll use a simple table

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         [Singular]    [Plural]
[1st]     bao             bai
[2nd]     se              sii
[3px]     nag             nani
[3ov]     toe             tei

I'm still tossing this around a little bit sound wise. I like the -i suffixing mutation sort of deal, but I may revamp this whole thing.

Of note, there are obviative pronouns. These simply refer back to previously mentioned nouns that were not previously seen as the focus of dialogue. Normally, we will see the obviative pronoun used only in the position of the subject of a sentence. It will usually refer back to prior direct or indirect objects, possessor nouns, or nouns in oblique sort of structures.

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Comments, questions, criticisms, fire away. Sorry there isn't much to fire away at since I haven't really elaborated a basic sentence yet

[burke]

Jumping back in, first things first, I started making a PDF for this. I put a link to it at the OP, and I'll link it here too:

https://github.com/jsburke/Conlangs/blo ... nzonaa.pdf

I'll be updating and polishing that as I go. I may post things here first, or I may update the PDF first. However, all that said, the PDF is considered canonical (since it will be more permanent). It's present state is both scant and a bit ugly. I've got some formatting to do clearly to make it not ugly, got tofix my toc, and need to get the good stuff in there. But that will come with time

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## Sentences for Nominal Equivalence
## Quality Attribution, and Static Location
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## Also General Lang Notes
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Today, I'll finally complete a friggin sentence. I will cover three varieties of basic sentences. One where we say one noun is another (Cats are animals), nominal relation. Another where we describe an attribute of a subject (Cats are small), English adjectival predicates. And finally one that describes location (The cat is in the box), static locations.

## General notes

Two important details will pop up here. First, Banzonaa is default an SV language. We'll see it depart from this in many cases soon enough (mainly to VSO), but the go to is SVO.

Banzonaa parts of speech: There are two major parts of speech, nouns and verbs. There are also particles that we've seen, and I have yet to formulate a response to adverbs, time, and so on, but the major ones will be Noun and verb.

Unlike many conlangs in this way, adjectives and prepositions (in the English sense) will fold into Nouns rather than verbs the vast majority of the time. Adjectives will be owned or attributed somehow, and prepositions will be managed by relational nouns.

## X is Y sentences

These sentences link two nouns using the copula ya

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mejoi      ya     z'ooi
cat-PLUR  COP. animal-PLUR
cats are animals

ya is not strictly needed when pronouns are used

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nag lhaa
he   child
he's a child

When sentences of this kind are negated, the negative particle ma may be used alone. It is mandatory in this sense however.


bao ma maha
1st NOT mother
I am not a mother


ma ya is permitted, and often used to intensify a negation, where one of the two is drawn out a bit longer than usual.

## Quality attribution

When English would use an adjectival predicate or languages like Chinese or Japanese a stative verb, Banzonaa instead uses ei (to have, to own) and a noun describing the quality.

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mejoi ei xoro
cats have smallness
Cats are small

Of note, when negated, ma + ei normally will contract into mai

Ei is required always in this sense, even with pronoun subjects

## Location

This one, I'm still sorting out a bit. I may use postural verbs (to stand, to sit, to lie, to lean, etc) full time as locative verbs, or I may only use one

The basic formula is SUBJ LOC-VERB [NOUN-] RELATIONAL-NOUN to show where someone or something is.

Regardless, a basic verb to relay the idea of location will be tl'ei, which will also mean to sit

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axwei tl'ei ragaa ube
stars sit  sky INT-inside
Stars are in the sky

Here we see not only the verb, but the use of a relational noun be here meaning inside. The relational noun is intrinsically owned, since the inside part is not temporary in reagrd to the sky.

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Thats what I have for this train wreck fire today

[Pabappa]

Nice to meet you. With the link in the first post now I notice your initials are the same as a different jsburke who used to post on the old ZBB ten years ago. Your styles are different and I don't think anyone would confuse you two but you might find that name here and there associated with conlangs.