What can we do about the phonology hurdle?

[bradrn]

I personally find Phonology to be one of the less interesting part of language and I find it tedious to come up with extremely detailed "descriptions" of phonetics of a language that isn't actually spoken by anyone. For most of my recent languages, I keep the phonology chapter very simple and move on to what I find more interesting. That's not to say interesting things can't be done with phonology (and in particular, as some of you have pointed out, the intersection of phonology and other aspects of grammar) but I'm super invested in coming up with cool ways to treat cross reference, indexing, case alignment, phrase structure, algorithmically determined word order, differential object marking, hierarchical index marking etc. etc. Just a lot more meat on the bones, and more thought provoking (to me!) than descriptions of very particular tongue movements I may or may not be capable of.

This is, I think, a good encapsulation of the attitude I find frustrating: that phonology is just consonants, vowels, syllable structure and allophony, and grammar is where all the interesting stuff is. And I’ll admit to finding grammar intensely interesting — I can spend literally months reading about the intricacies of verb serialisation or split intransitivity — but there are just so many more interesting things that can be done with phonology. For one thing, unless you make a language with no morphophonology whatsoever (which is basically unattested on Earth), morphology is intensely dependent on phonology: stuff like infixes and mutation are impossible to specify without going back to the phonology, and that in turn has consequences elsewhere. (e.g. One reason we know that Nias has the intensely rare marked-absolutive alignment is the exact pattern of initial consonant mutation in the absolutive.) Or you can have stuff like syncope or harmony rules or tone sandhi, which can mess up morphology in all sorts of fascinating ways. I personally find it really thought provoking to see how messed-up I can make my morphology, which ends up with things like e.g. Hlʉ̂ verb alternation between singular and plural objects (actually an infix fused with syllable nucleus), or the unholy mix of syncope, lenition and mutation in Wēchizaŋkəŋ.

Note that I didn't say phonology was not interesting, just less interesting. A more succinct view of what I was saying is that I find con-phonetics super boring. And as I did say, where phonology interersects with morphology and syntax – that stuff is super interesting.

Ah, I agree much more with this phrasing.

[hwhatting]

[Note that I didn't say phonology was not interesting, just less interesting. A more succinct view of what I was saying is that I find con-phonetics super boring. And as I did say, where phonology interersects with morphology and syntax – that stuff is super interesting.

That's basically my position as well.

[Travis B.]

I personally have little taste of detailing allophony, but I rely on phonology significantly in diachrony, and in the case of Laqar its complex morphology is intimately married to its phonology, both diachronic and synchronic.

[fusijui]

I tend to feel similarly about sociolinguistics, for example, but don't posit it as a problem, or wish other people just appreciated better how misguided or ill-informed they are.

The hobby changes, too; for years, decades, mention of 'the phonology problem' would have been understood as the ~95% of all conlang projects that consisted of just phonologies, often insanely elaborate, baroque, microscopically detailed ones. I think that's less of a thing lately. And I think we have a lot more diversity in the kinds, styles, approaches to conlangs than just ten years ago. So, personally, I kind of recoil from suggestions to re-center phonology in this hobby.

[Ketsuban]

The hobby changes, too; for years, decades, mention of 'the phonology problem' would have been understood as the ~95% of all conlang projects that consisted of just phonologies, often insanely elaborate, baroque, microscopically detailed ones. I think that's less of a thing lately.

I agree, but with an asterisk - it's not that the 95% don't exist anymore, it's just that this board has low enough traffic that nobody is left who might feel like posting something like that, thus cutting it off a step earlier at "I have some phonological information but don't know how to extend that downwards into a proper language, which is discouraging" rather than "I posted what I have on the forum and got no responses, which is discouraging".

And I think we have a lot more diversity in the kinds, styles, approaches to conlangs than just ten years ago. So, personally, I kind of recoil from suggestions to re-center phonology in this hobby.

Can you elaborate on this point a little? I sort of see what you mean with regard to things like the conlangs presented as reconstructed from archaeological evidence with realistic lacunae and inference from orthographic choices - I tried to do something like that recently with Morsiθ, though the sound changes I came up with to make it were terrible so I am never elaborating on that work past what I did to give Janko some numbers when they PMed me, and if I revisit the idea of applying Banks and Torres Islands vowel proliferation to a protolanguage I'll do it purely to Japonic and spend some quality time with my copy of Frellesvig instead of trying to be clever - but it seems to me that you still need to approach that from the standpoint of having some sounds, which means phonology.