Conlang Random Thread

[Emily]

finally settled on an orthography

Nice! What's the reason for <w> instead of <v> for /v/?

well for one there's no <v> in the gothic alphabet :p and i didn't want to deal with making new characters (otherwise i'd probably have done some diacritics)

[Otto Kretschmer]

Rounin

I just wanted to compare it with Japanese. Outwardly it looks simian.

[jal]

"Today I ate Fried Rice with meat for dinner"

It's not the translation challenge thread, but let's have a go:

Dis de mi it Fway Rays an fles wen ifning it.


JAL

[Emily]

question about germanic adjective declension:

my plan with adjectives in the modern gothic project is to keep strong vs weak adjective declension, but to not have any articles (i'm finding conflicting information about the status of articles in gothic, but as far as i can tell it seems like they were basically starting to develop but hadn't yet become entrenched by the time the extant texts were written). so, at least for nouns without determiners in front of them, the indication of whether a noun was definite or indefinite would come from whether it had a weak or strong adjective (and possibly also syntactical clues, since obviously not every noun phrase is going to have an adjective in it). to me this feels like an interesting direction to go: it diverges from the normal germanic path of developing definite and indefinite articles, while still using a distinctly germanic feature in a way that has some historical support but isn't found in the modern germanic languages of today (at least not in the same way). it would also bring gothic a little closer to its neighboring east slavic languages, which don't have articles either

someone who took a look at my quick write-up on anthologi.ca, however, suggested that that seemed unrealistic, and now i'm not really sure about it. the general conversation we had is below (edited for clarity and relevance):

More: show

THEM: I'm not sure how a weak declension indicates definiteness - how does that come about?
ME: that's from the original gothic, one of the uses of weak adjective declension was to indicate definiteness since they didn't have definite articles (or only had rudimentary ones, depending on who you ask) so the idea with my conlang is to commit to that
THEM: interesting! I guess it must have absorbed a definite affix or something originally... not sure if proto-Germanic had one
ME: i don't think PG had one, most of the modern germanic languages developed their definite articles during their early written periods iirc. not really sure where weak/strong declension came from though tbh
THEM: the reason I ask is that declensions are a phonological, not a grammatical phenomenon, so they wouldn't on their own determine any distinction like that
ME: not sure what you mean by them being a phonological phenomenon
THEM: I mean a declension class is a phonological regularity of inflection, so it comes about for historical sound change reasons, but while it is the way grammatical info appears, it is not itself a grammatical thing. So it would be strange if declension A expressed grammatical feature X and declension B expressed grammatical feature Y and nothing else. Compare Latin, where the declensions are just different ways of inflecting nouns phonologically, but they all have the same cases, number, and meanings
ME: Well in German the strong and weak adjectives are used to distinguish definiteness, albeit in concert with determiners to communicate the same information. i guess i don't see that much of a leap to just not having the determiner present. but i should do more research into where strong/weak declension came from
THEM: Well I'd interpret that as the determiners distinguishing definiteness and the declensions expressing a kind of post-hoc agreement (because they seem to originate in absorbed pronominal demonstratives anyway, so the articles are kind of a re-introduction of marking). I can certainly imagine the determiners disappearing though, and then it might happen that way! I just mean the pattern would not originate in grammatical distinction so it'd be important to know where the distinction came from initially, and what grammatical info it contained

do they have a point? does this seem like an unusual thing for adjective declensions to do? i'm so confused lol

[Moose-tache]

Declension may arise due to phological processes, but once it's associated with a grammatical function, it can migrate to other functions. We know this had already happened with Germanic adjectives before the language family even broke up, because whatever the phonological process that created weak adjectives* was long gone and the different forms were being used for purposes not immediately based on whatever that process might have been.

* It kind of looks like the weak forms have a clitic -n, but who knows what that represents (the Slavic equivalent comes from the demonstrative jos, which means sense, but -n? What is that?).

Bottom line: if the weak declensions have already quit their original contextual origin to find new employment, your conlang can do the same without issue. The problem comes when people say things like "definiteness is marked by making the third vowel long" or something, which does not apply here.

[hwhatting]

"THEM" say some very apodictic things without seeming to know too much about historical IE linguistics.
1) As you say, the strong vs. weak distinction involves definiteness. That partially goes back to PIE - see how in IE languages personal names (= definite individuals) based on adjectives often are n-stems = weak declension (Plato, Nero etc.), while the adjectives themselves are vocalic stems (=strong declension). Germanic just ran with that and systemised it.
2) It's probable that this is due to areal influence from Balto-Slavic, where a distinction between definite and indefinite adjectives exists that is actually based on inclusion of a deictic element, which "THEM" see as the only path.- the indefinite adjective has the simple o/a stem, while the definite adjective adds the pronoun -yo- (which is attested as relative pronoun in Indo-Iranian and also a building block of the relative pronoun in parts of Slavic). So you have a contrast of (Slavic example) dobra "good" (Nom.Sg.F. indef.) vs. dobraya (Nom.Sg.F. def.).
3) This system survives in contemporary Lithuanian; it doesn't work exactly as an article, but often in a sence of "specific item" vs. "non-specific item", e.g. juoda jūra ("indef") "a / the black sea (= a / the sea that is black)" vs. Juodoji jūra (def) "the Black Sea" (the specific geographical feature that is called that way).
4) In Slavic, that system is retained in the oldest attested languages; in the ones I know best, Russian and Polish, it has been repurposed or turned into a difference between inflection of word classes. In Russian, the former definite forms are called "long form" and the indefinite forms "short forms". Adjectives used as attributes only have the long forms (with a couple of exceptions - possessive adjectives use (only) the short forms, and there are a few short forms in frozen expressions). The distinction is maintained only in predicative position, where the short forms express that the quality is transitory or exists only in relation to the subject (ona - bol'na - "she is ill (now)" vs. ona - bol'naya "she is ill (constantly) / she is crazy"; shtany - dlinnye "the trousers are long (generally / objectively) vs. shtany - dliny - "the trousers are (too) long (for a specific person)". In Polish, the picture is complicated by the fact that some of the "long" (definite) endings have bee contracted (so Polish -a Nom.Sg. F. corresponds to both Proto-Slavic *-a and *-aya), but where the long and short forms can still be distinguished, the long forms are used for "regular" adjectives (both in attributive and predicative use), e.g. dobry "good", while the short forms are used for certain adjectives that have pronoun-like uses (e.g. pewien "a certain") and for modals that are mostly used predicatively (powinien "(is) oblige, must").
EDIT: I see now that Moose answered while I was on and off composing my response. As to the question where the n-stems come from, I have seen different proposals - one is that they're originally postposed instances of the adverb *en "inside"; another, that they go back to Nostratic / Boreal / Mitian (pick your macro-family of choice here), as /n/ shows up as a stem-forming element also in other Eurasian families (e.g. Turkic, Mongolic).

[keenir]

Rounin

I just wanted to compare it with Japanese. Outwardly it looks simian.

you mean similar, right?

[Otto Kretschmer]

Rounin

I just wanted to compare it with Japanese. Outwardly it looks simian.

you mean similar, right?

Uep. That was a joke

[Man in Space]

A few questions about Classical Ĝare n Tim Ar. First, the phonology, in its current state, is as follows:

/m n ŋ/ m n ĝ
/θ s x h/ d s ḫ h
/ɬ/ ł
/ɹ ʕ/ r g
/l/ l

/à è ø̀ ì ỳ ɤ̀ ò ɯ̀ ù/ a e ö i ü ë o ï u
/á é ǿ í ý ɤ́ ó ɯ́ ú/ á é ô í û ê ó î ú
/m̩ n̩ ŋ̩ l̩ ɹ̩/ m n ĝ l r

(C)V(C), unless V is one of the syllabic resonants, which cannot take codas

Question 1. Should I add clicks to CT? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. On the one hand, CT has been more or less like this for about fifteen years. On the other hand, I absolutely love clicks and think they're underutilized and sound cool.

The following sub-questions are only applicable if the answer to Question 1 is "yes":

Question 1a. Should bilabial clicks be added to CT? The only bilabial consonant in CT currently is /m/, and I have half a mind to keep it that way. However, I'd only have clicks at three places of articulation (+ lateral alveolars) if I did this.

Question 1b. Which click series should be included? I wouldn't include a voicing distinction amongst the clicks (to fit in with the rest of the language), but I'd be inclined to include nasalized versions of the clicks as well. So something like /kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/. But would ejectives make sense with this phonology, or aspirates (given how fast and loose /h/ can behave in CT)? And/or preglottalized clicks, perhaps? What about fricated ones?

Question 1c. How should the clicks be romanized? The font family I am fond of using, TT Marxiana, doesn't support clicks (or the velar nasal), so I'd have to find alternate means. My inclination is to romanize in one of the following manners:

/kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/ b mb z nz j nj q nq
/kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/ k@ n@ k| n| k|| n|| k! n! k# n#

The first option reminds me of Xhosa, but doesn't get across the unusual nature of clicks (IMO anyway). The second looks egregious (especially the @ and #), but otherwise gets things across in a clear—and font-supported—manner.

Question 2. Should I axe the syllabic resonants? I don't like them much, but they do have some applicability vis-à-vis genitives and measure-words.

[bradrn]

Question 1. Should I add clicks to CT? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. On the one hand, CT has been more or less like this for about fifteen years. On the other hand, I absolutely love clicks and think they're underutilized and sound cool.

No, I like CT the way it is. However, by all means give it clicky ancestors and/or relatives!

For those ones, assuming their non-click phonology is more or less the same as CT:

Question 1a. Should bilabial clicks be added to CT? The only bilabial consonant in CT currently is /m/, and I have half a mind to keep it that way. However, I'd only have clicks at three places of articulation (+ lateral alveolars) if I did this.

Clicks at three places of articulation is perfectly normal — bilabial clicks are actually pretty rare (attested only in Taa–ǃKwi and ǂʼAmkoe).

Question 1b. Which click series should be included? I wouldn't include a voicing distinction amongst the clicks (to fit in with the rest of the language), but I'd be inclined to include nasalized versions of the clicks as well. So something like /kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/. But would ejectives make sense with this phonology, or aspirates (given how fast and loose /h/ can behave in CT)? And/or preglottalized clicks, perhaps? What about fricated ones?

I’d keep it simple. Ejectives probably don’t make sense here, though aspirates do. Preglottalised clicks are pretty common also, due to ease of production. Fricated clicks could also work. You might also want to consider uvular clicks, as found in e.g. ǃXóõ. I think I’d tend towards something like a three-way tenuis/aspirated/nasal distinction.

Question 1c. How should the clicks be romanized? The font family I am fond of using, TT Marxiana, doesn't support clicks (or the velar nasal), so I'd have to find alternate means. My inclination is to romanize in one of the following manners:

/kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/ b mb z nz j nj q nq
/kʘ ŋʘ kǀ ŋǀ kǃ ŋǃ kǁ ŋǁ kǂ ŋǂ/ k@ n@ k| n| k|| n|| k! n! k# n#

The first option reminds me of Xhosa, but doesn't get across the unusual nature of clicks (IMO anyway). The second looks egregious (especially the @ and #), but otherwise gets things across in a clear—and font-supported—manner.

The standard typewriter convention is ⟨/ // ! ≠⟩ for /ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ/ respectively. (Apparently ⟨=⟩ has also been used for /ǂ/, at least according to Wikipedia, though I’ve never seen it.) Bantu languages have standardised on ⟨c x q⟩ for the first three; ⟨ç⟩ seems most popular for the fourth, though Tindall apparently used ⟨v⟩, as do I in my keyboard layout. Wikipedia says Linguasphere uses ⟨c' l' q' t'⟩, which seems like a nice alternative if you want to distinguish them from the rest of the alphabet.

I think I’d romanise the alternatives as follows in each system:

/kǀ kǀʰ ᵑǀ ǀˀ ǀq ǀx ǀkʼ/
⟨/ /h n/ /' /q /x /k'⟩
⟨c ch nc c' cq cr ck⟩
⟨c' c'h nc' qc' c'q c'x c'k⟩

Question 2. Should I axe the syllabic resonants? I don't like them much, but they do have some applicability vis-à-vis genitives and measure-words.

I don’t think so; why not keep them.

[foxcatdog]

Serial Verb Constructions
Serial verb constructions I imagine would be a good addition to Proto Elenyiwa. So….

1.sg get-1.2 move-1.2-in coin-OBL-pl
“I get coins to enter”

3.sg.f get-A.I coin-OBL-pl buy-A.I thing-ACC-pl
“She gets coins to buy stuff”

More interesting is a construction from mandarin where the object of the first verb is the subject of the next. In this case the second verb appears in its intransitive form i.e the unmarked.

cat pounce-A.A die mouse-OBL
“The cat pounces on the mouse killing it”
“The cat pounces, the mouse dies”

Also see…
cat pounce-A.A die mouse-ACC
“The cat pounces at the mouse and the mouse dies (probably of fright)”

Note the contrast between the first and second sentences is in defiance of the normal Accusative=Telic Oblique=Atelic construction but is seen in many daughters co-occuring with the normal construction because the Oblique has a more locative meaning than the accusative compare english “the cat pounces on the mouse” vs “the cat pounces the mouse”. Whether this interpretation is due to an ancestral state in the proto language or due to association with the Obliques frequent usage with prepositions is unknown. Also note in some daughters the differing cases in the below examples would be because the directional element on the verb is less prominent.

1.sg.fs call-1.2.F move-to 3.sg.M-OBL
“I call and he comes”

1.sg.fs call-1.2.F move-continous-to 3.sg.m-ACC
“I call and he is coming”

1.sg.fs call-1.2.f move-discontinuous-to 3.sg.m-ACC
“I call and he will be coming”

But…

1.sg.fs call-1.2.f 3.sg.m-OBL move-subordinate-to 1.sg.fs-ACC
“I call and he comes to me”

The added object demands a subordinate clause.

I imagine the second construct survives a bit longer in the daughter language compared to the first due to verb fronting so…

get-1.2 move-QUAL-in 1.sg coin-DAT~LAT-pl
“I get coins to enter” but it’s more like “I get entering coins”

But…

pounce-A.A cat die mouse-ACC
“The cat pounces, the mouse dies”

In later stages of this language due to possible reinterpretation of the bare verb form it may become…

pounce-A.A cat die-A.A mouse
“The cat pounces and kills the mouse”

Alternatively the second verb just appears in a newly innovated infinitive.
Btw in this daughter the previous Oblique has replaced the Accusative and the Lative the Dative in most cases but i’m not sure if it has a new Lative yet.

[jal]

This reminds me I have yet to formally describe the serial verb construction in Sajiwan. It's not as elaborate as some of the examples in the post above, but replaces cases where English uses present participles or when English uses "and":

Im swayk pon mi lef wok - He hit me and left / He hit me while leaving
Im lef wok swayk pon mi - He left hitting me / When he left he hit me


JAL

[masako]

https://tinyurl.com/mrxppx7p [PDF file]

So, I was given the go ahead to show at least some basics of the language. Sorry I can't post more, but feel free to ask about anything in the above document.

https://twitter.com/Dedalvs/status/1511 ... jkXHQ&s=19

So, David decided to give a short class based on the document above, enjoy!

[Moose-tache]

Wait, I thought you made this. What does DJP have to do with it?

EDIT: ignore me. Somehow I missed the explanation on previous pages. Still great work, Masako.

[bradrn]

Wait, I thought you made this. What does DJP have to do with it?

Very cool, masako. I'll assume you did all the good bits and David did the rest.

I happily admit that the general syntax was all him, but the verbal instrumentals were mine, and that's only important because it makes up the bulk of lexicon. I did work on a few things that haven't made it on screen, and likely won't; an octal numbering system, and a triaxial coordinate system, to name a few. Not sure what inspired me, *cough* ALC *cough* TCL *cough*

[quinterbeck]

https://tinyurl.com/mrxppx7p [PDF file]

So, I was given the go ahead to show at least some basics of the language. Sorry I can't post more, but feel free to ask about anything in the above document.

Thanks for sharing! And congrats on having your work on screen! (since I haven't yet said so)

There's quite a lot of bracketed phones in there, what exactly is that signifying? Are they all non-phonemic? I'm interested in how they're arising if so. (I suppose that the romanisation distinguishes them all for the purpose of being accessible for actors etc, then?)

Have to say I really love the abundance of voiceless velarized release in this inventory

[park bom]

i have try to create 5 coins:
Zentias & Draches

[Man in Space]

They look nice. Well done!

[Zju]

Out of the loop and don't find anything on the last few pages - what is masako's conlang about?

[Man in Space]

Out of the loop and don't find anything on the last few pages - what is masako's conlang about?

It’s a commission for the new HALO series.