Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts
It's too early for a proper thread on Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts, but there are some basic things that might be complete nonsense, so I figure I'll put something up and maybe get a needed reality check.
That'll come in following posts. I'll mostly reserve this post for a table of contents and such, on the assumption that someday I'll want a proper thread for this language.
Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts is spoken by hunter gathers who live mostly in small bands, mostly without fixed settlements. There's some overlap with Akiatu territory. Relations are mostly peaceful, and focus on gift exchanges, rituals, storytelling, and fun. This is most often grounded in allegiances worked out between particular Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts bands and particular Akiatu clans, generally after identifying two ancestral figures, one from each lineage's narrative traditions. Another important dimension to their interactions is the general recognition that Akiatu shamans are more powerful than their Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts counterparts (so their services are often in demand).
A small number of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts settle in Akiatu villages, and a small number of Akiatu join Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts bands. This is often but not always for sex-related reasons.
Like the Akiatu language, Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts is OV, but it'll be far more consistently head-final than Akiatu is (think relative clauses preceding the noun and articles following). It also has a lot more going on both phonologically and morphologically. It has a big phonological inventory, and some peculiar suprasegmentals. It'll be head-marking and moderately fusional. Transitive verbs will require an auxiliary so that both subjects and objects can be cross-referenced. Tense will be more grammaticalised than aspect, its markers also encoding a realis/irrealis distinction that'll do a lot of work. There'll be multiple nonfinite verb forms. Noun classifiers will be used to support numbers and relative clauses, and also as articles.
Or anyway, those are bits of the current plan. But like I said, there might be nonsense in the foundations.
Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (some initial ideas)
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akam chinjir
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Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (some initial ideas)
Last edited by akam chinjir on Mon Nov 26, 2018 5:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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akam chinjir
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- Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:58 pm
Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
Phonology
This won't be complete, but I want to include enough to give some context to the points I'm least sure about. (You can skip to the end to see the particular issues that right now strike me as most up in the air.) And anyway, it's long enough even if it's not complete.
In case you're interested, significant bits of this were directly inspired by the Mayan language Mam, via the grammar by Nora England.
There'll be three main parts to this post: the segmental inventory, vowels and syncope, and suprasegmentals. It's the suprasegmentals I'm least sure about, though lots of it is a bit outside my comfort zone.
The segmental inventory
The phonemes:
All that's using the IPA, except that I've skipped the ligature diacritic for digraphs (e.g., ts instead of t͡s).
Some of those phonemes might end up being analysed away, as sequences rather than individual phonemes. The morphophonology will often invite this analysis, with a morphologically produced /t/ + /s/ (for example) ending up indistinguishable from what the table above calls ts. Syllable boundaries will lead to exceptions, though, maybe frequent ones; syllabification isn't yet nailed down.
I'll probably end up with an orthography that departs with the IPA in some ways, and I'll be soliciting suggestions about that at the end of the post.
It's natural to think of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts ejectives and glottalised nasals as sharing a feature, maybe [+glottal], because within an onset or a coda this feature will move so that it is realised next to the vowel (maybe most saliently by a bit of creak on the vowel itself). This means, for example, that mat' would end up not with an ejective but with a preglottalised stop. Aspiration works the same way, so that mˀkatʰ would end up being more like mk'aʰt, with an ejective and a preaspirated stop.
The glottal stop will be predictable in onsetless syllables but will be contrastive otherwise, either colouring a preceding vowel or merging with a following consonant. For example, a glottal-stop-final verb like tɬeaʔ will convert the first person subject marker -tsɨ to -ts'ɨ, yielding tɬets'ɨ (the stem's unstressed vowel has also deleted).
The only phonetic detail I feel sure of is that p' will usually end up as the implosive [ɓ] rather than an actual ejective.
Vowels, stress, and syncope
There's a verb (I don't know yet what it means) whose stem alternates between ŋʷet and ŋʷat; another that's either piw or pwa; and a third that's always fkɨt. When emphasised, these can instead be ŋʷeʔət or ŋʷəʔat, piwə or pəwa, or fəkɨt; or even ŋʷeʔat, piwa, and fekɨt. What to say about cases of these sorts (which are legion)?
One thing you can say is that some verbs have two stems, and you can insert epenthetic vowels for the purposes of emphasis. (Like English "strange" can become something like [stəˈrejndʒ], for example.)
Another thing you can say is that the underlying forms of these verbs are ŋʷeat, piwa, and fekɨt, and that unstressed vowels delete. (The first two would have stress on the first syllable, the other one on the second syllable.)
I'm going to adopt the second sort of description here, though it's got its problems. It allows me to say that Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts syllables are maximally CVC, which is nice. It also allows a nifty explanation of the alternations mentioned above: most words have stress on the root's initial syllable, but there are lexical exceptions like fekɨt; and some suffixes attract stress to the syllable that precedes them.
The main disadvantage of this approach is that the posited underlying forms are often underdetermined by the surface forms. Underlying fekit never gets stress on its first syllable, so we don't really know what that vowel should be. In cases like that I'll take the orthographically simplest route and choose e.
A bit more detail. Assuming these underlying forms, one syllable in the root, usually the first, will get primary stress; then every second syllable before or after that will have secondary stress. It's the vowels with neither primary nor secondary stress that delete. Vowels with secondary stress centralise: they go to ɨ, ə, or a, depending on height.
Again you get underdetermined underlying vowels in syllables that never receive primary stress. This is the case for example with vowels in affixes, which (so far at least) can never get primary stress. Take the first person subject marker, which surfaces either as ts or as tsɨ: is the underlying vowel i, ɨ, or u? As above, I'll side with simple orthography, and assume i.
For a simple example, take the free first person pronoun, tsʰī, and its plural, tsʰēk. There's reason to suppose that underlying these forms we have tsʰie[+long] (see below for suprasegmental vowel length) together with a suffix -k that attracts stress to the syllable preceding it. Without the suffix, the i is stressed and therefore hosts the [+long] feature, while the e drops, yielding tsʰī. With the suffix, stress, along with the vowel length, moves to the e while the i drops, yielding tsʰēk.
For a sneakier example, take the morpheme (or whatever) that I'll write as E. It's a vowel, but it also attracts stress to the previous syllable, which means that it itself is unstressed and therefore deletes. Thus piwa + E + sa (sa cross-references a first person object) gives you pwasa.
Like I said above, you could probably do all of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts morphophonology just by talking about allomorphs, without positing unifying underlying forms. In fact I'm inclined to say that in the fictional present newly borrowed words no longer undergo this process. We'll see.
Suprasegmentals
I just gave an example involving a suprasegmental feature, [+long]. Let's go over how that works, before talking about creak and tone.
The [+long] feature is generally supplied by the root or some affix, though they can also end up floating. A word is [+long] if one or more of its components is, and if a word is [+long] then its stressed vowel surfaces long.
So vowel length is a thing, but it's not happily represented by doubling the vowel. When I'm feeling a bit fancy I'll superscript the feature specification, as in tsʰie[+long]. More often I'll use a macron, as in tsʰī. (But I'll ask for advice about this part of the orthography below.)
Another example. There's a plural morpheme that shows up on some pronouns that might be represented as -Em[+long]. This takes the third person feminine and masculine pronouns, underlyingly nea and tuwa, and yields nām and twām, respectively: stress goes to the stem-final syllable, which becomes long. (Their singular forms, with stem-initial stress, are ne and tuw.)
Actually the singular surface form of the masculine pronoun warrants a comment. It's tuw, and I'd rather not claim that there's a phonetic distinction between this and a hypothetical tū---so this is a case where a phonetic long vowel does result from a sequence of phonemes.
There's another suprasegmental feature that works about the same way as [+long]: a word gets it if any of its components have it, and if a word has it, then its realised on the word's stressed syllable. For the moment I'll call this feature [+creak], because of the creaky voice it yields. That's to say, for example, the 2s pronoun is wòe[+creak], which ends up as wo̰ (with the grave accent marking stress); its plural form is woèm[+creak,+long], or wḛm.
Oh! A complication: if a word is marked both [+long] and as [+creak], then the result is just as if it were marked only [+creak]; that's why you get wḛm rather than a hypothetical wḛ̄m. (The vowel may actually end up phonetically long, I'm not sure about that yet.)
Now, both ejectives and glottalised nasals tend to cause creak at the edges of an adjacent vowel. I'm going to say that if a vowel is surrounded by such consonants and therefore has creak coming at it from both ends, it's phonetically indistinguishable from one that's itself genuinely [+creak]. So (as with tuw and vowel length) you again get phoneme sequences duplicating a suprasegmental.
And then there's [+high] (referring to tone, not vowel height). It works somewhat differently.
With [+long], the feature gets realised on the stressed vowel, and if that's already [+long] then nothing changes. And similarly with [+creak].
[+high] will also go to the stressed vowel, unless either of two conditions obtains:
That leaves the question of how [+high] interacts with [+creak]. The idea I pulled out of my ass some time back was that a [+high, +creak] vowel gets realised as nasalised. That would mean, for example, that if the 2s pronoun wo̰ somehow acquired a floating high tone, then it would end up as wõ. (A nice visual pun: the high tone raising the tilde from below the vowel to above it.)
Except---that's stupid, right? (Right?) If it's cool or fun I might stick with it, but I'd rather not go with something stupid.
I do know that [+creak, +high] won't just be high tone on a creaky vowel, and I don't want the two features simply to cancel each other out. But so far other than the maybe stupid nasalisation idea I don't have any thoughts what to do.
(Orthographic issue: I seem to be beset with fonts that don't nicely distinguish tildes from macrons, so I may just stick with wó̰ regardless, or use the ogonek to represent nasalisation.)
Anyway, those are the main points of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts phonology, as it currently exists. Have at me.
Particular questions
There are some things I'd particularly like feedback on, if you happen to have any thoughts.
This won't be complete, but I want to include enough to give some context to the points I'm least sure about. (You can skip to the end to see the particular issues that right now strike me as most up in the air.) And anyway, it's long enough even if it's not complete.
In case you're interested, significant bits of this were directly inspired by the Mayan language Mam, via the grammar by Nora England.
There'll be three main parts to this post: the segmental inventory, vowels and syncope, and suprasegmentals. It's the suprasegmentals I'm least sure about, though lots of it is a bit outside my comfort zone.
The segmental inventory
The phonemes:
Code: Select all
p t ts tɬ k kʷ
pʰ tʰ tsʰ tɬʰ kʰ kʷʰ
p' t' ts' tɬ' k' kʷ' ʔ
f s ɬ xʷ
m n ɲ ŋʷ
mˀ nˀ ɲˀ ŋʷˀ
r l ɫʷ
j w
ȷ̃ w̃
i ɨ u
e ə o
a
Some of those phonemes might end up being analysed away, as sequences rather than individual phonemes. The morphophonology will often invite this analysis, with a morphologically produced /t/ + /s/ (for example) ending up indistinguishable from what the table above calls ts. Syllable boundaries will lead to exceptions, though, maybe frequent ones; syllabification isn't yet nailed down.
I'll probably end up with an orthography that departs with the IPA in some ways, and I'll be soliciting suggestions about that at the end of the post.
It's natural to think of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts ejectives and glottalised nasals as sharing a feature, maybe [+glottal], because within an onset or a coda this feature will move so that it is realised next to the vowel (maybe most saliently by a bit of creak on the vowel itself). This means, for example, that mat' would end up not with an ejective but with a preglottalised stop. Aspiration works the same way, so that mˀkatʰ would end up being more like mk'aʰt, with an ejective and a preaspirated stop.
The glottal stop will be predictable in onsetless syllables but will be contrastive otherwise, either colouring a preceding vowel or merging with a following consonant. For example, a glottal-stop-final verb like tɬeaʔ will convert the first person subject marker -tsɨ to -ts'ɨ, yielding tɬets'ɨ (the stem's unstressed vowel has also deleted).
The only phonetic detail I feel sure of is that p' will usually end up as the implosive [ɓ] rather than an actual ejective.
Vowels, stress, and syncope
There's a verb (I don't know yet what it means) whose stem alternates between ŋʷet and ŋʷat; another that's either piw or pwa; and a third that's always fkɨt. When emphasised, these can instead be ŋʷeʔət or ŋʷəʔat, piwə or pəwa, or fəkɨt; or even ŋʷeʔat, piwa, and fekɨt. What to say about cases of these sorts (which are legion)?
One thing you can say is that some verbs have two stems, and you can insert epenthetic vowels for the purposes of emphasis. (Like English "strange" can become something like [stəˈrejndʒ], for example.)
Another thing you can say is that the underlying forms of these verbs are ŋʷeat, piwa, and fekɨt, and that unstressed vowels delete. (The first two would have stress on the first syllable, the other one on the second syllable.)
I'm going to adopt the second sort of description here, though it's got its problems. It allows me to say that Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts syllables are maximally CVC, which is nice. It also allows a nifty explanation of the alternations mentioned above: most words have stress on the root's initial syllable, but there are lexical exceptions like fekɨt; and some suffixes attract stress to the syllable that precedes them.
The main disadvantage of this approach is that the posited underlying forms are often underdetermined by the surface forms. Underlying fekit never gets stress on its first syllable, so we don't really know what that vowel should be. In cases like that I'll take the orthographically simplest route and choose e.
A bit more detail. Assuming these underlying forms, one syllable in the root, usually the first, will get primary stress; then every second syllable before or after that will have secondary stress. It's the vowels with neither primary nor secondary stress that delete. Vowels with secondary stress centralise: they go to ɨ, ə, or a, depending on height.
Again you get underdetermined underlying vowels in syllables that never receive primary stress. This is the case for example with vowels in affixes, which (so far at least) can never get primary stress. Take the first person subject marker, which surfaces either as ts or as tsɨ: is the underlying vowel i, ɨ, or u? As above, I'll side with simple orthography, and assume i.
For a simple example, take the free first person pronoun, tsʰī, and its plural, tsʰēk. There's reason to suppose that underlying these forms we have tsʰie[+long] (see below for suprasegmental vowel length) together with a suffix -k that attracts stress to the syllable preceding it. Without the suffix, the i is stressed and therefore hosts the [+long] feature, while the e drops, yielding tsʰī. With the suffix, stress, along with the vowel length, moves to the e while the i drops, yielding tsʰēk.
For a sneakier example, take the morpheme (or whatever) that I'll write as E. It's a vowel, but it also attracts stress to the previous syllable, which means that it itself is unstressed and therefore deletes. Thus piwa + E + sa (sa cross-references a first person object) gives you pwasa.
Like I said above, you could probably do all of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts morphophonology just by talking about allomorphs, without positing unifying underlying forms. In fact I'm inclined to say that in the fictional present newly borrowed words no longer undergo this process. We'll see.
Suprasegmentals
I just gave an example involving a suprasegmental feature, [+long]. Let's go over how that works, before talking about creak and tone.
The [+long] feature is generally supplied by the root or some affix, though they can also end up floating. A word is [+long] if one or more of its components is, and if a word is [+long] then its stressed vowel surfaces long.
So vowel length is a thing, but it's not happily represented by doubling the vowel. When I'm feeling a bit fancy I'll superscript the feature specification, as in tsʰie[+long]. More often I'll use a macron, as in tsʰī. (But I'll ask for advice about this part of the orthography below.)
Another example. There's a plural morpheme that shows up on some pronouns that might be represented as -Em[+long]. This takes the third person feminine and masculine pronouns, underlyingly nea and tuwa, and yields nām and twām, respectively: stress goes to the stem-final syllable, which becomes long. (Their singular forms, with stem-initial stress, are ne and tuw.)
Actually the singular surface form of the masculine pronoun warrants a comment. It's tuw, and I'd rather not claim that there's a phonetic distinction between this and a hypothetical tū---so this is a case where a phonetic long vowel does result from a sequence of phonemes.
There's another suprasegmental feature that works about the same way as [+long]: a word gets it if any of its components have it, and if a word has it, then its realised on the word's stressed syllable. For the moment I'll call this feature [+creak], because of the creaky voice it yields. That's to say, for example, the 2s pronoun is wòe[+creak], which ends up as wo̰ (with the grave accent marking stress); its plural form is woèm[+creak,+long], or wḛm.
Oh! A complication: if a word is marked both [+long] and as [+creak], then the result is just as if it were marked only [+creak]; that's why you get wḛm rather than a hypothetical wḛ̄m. (The vowel may actually end up phonetically long, I'm not sure about that yet.)
Now, both ejectives and glottalised nasals tend to cause creak at the edges of an adjacent vowel. I'm going to say that if a vowel is surrounded by such consonants and therefore has creak coming at it from both ends, it's phonetically indistinguishable from one that's itself genuinely [+creak]. So (as with tuw and vowel length) you again get phoneme sequences duplicating a suprasegmental.
And then there's [+high] (referring to tone, not vowel height). It works somewhat differently.
With [+long], the feature gets realised on the stressed vowel, and if that's already [+long] then nothing changes. And similarly with [+creak].
[+high] will also go to the stressed vowel, unless either of two conditions obtains:
- If the stressed vowel is creaky as a result of adjacent glottalic or glottalised consonansts, then the high tone will move to the right until it finds a suitable host or it falls off the end of the word (don't worry, it'll float). As an example, suppose you had a word surfacing as mˀamˀbə, and it acquired a floating high tone. The two glottalised nasals would make the a phonetically creaky, and it would resist the high tone, which would then come to rest on the final vowel. The result would be something like mˀa̰mˀbə́ (using the acute accent for high tone).
- If the stressed vowel is already [+high], in which case we must be dealing with a compound form of some kind, then the new [+high] feature will lodge on the morpheme that sponsors it, if it has a suitable vowel, and otherwise it will float. The word will now have two [+high] syllables. If no glottalic or glottalised consonant intervenes, then the two will spread, giving every intervening vowel a high tone. So there's another affix that marks some pronouns as plural, -Esi[+long,+high]. If you add it to (underlying) wɨat, the 1+2 dual pronoun, you get watsɨ[+long,+high], which is to say wātsɨ[+high] or wa̋tsɨ (with the double acute accent representing a vowel that is both high and long).
That leaves the question of how [+high] interacts with [+creak]. The idea I pulled out of my ass some time back was that a [+high, +creak] vowel gets realised as nasalised. That would mean, for example, that if the 2s pronoun wo̰ somehow acquired a floating high tone, then it would end up as wõ. (A nice visual pun: the high tone raising the tilde from below the vowel to above it.)
Except---that's stupid, right? (Right?) If it's cool or fun I might stick with it, but I'd rather not go with something stupid.
I do know that [+creak, +high] won't just be high tone on a creaky vowel, and I don't want the two features simply to cancel each other out. But so far other than the maybe stupid nasalisation idea I don't have any thoughts what to do.
(Orthographic issue: I seem to be beset with fonts that don't nicely distinguish tildes from macrons, so I may just stick with wó̰ regardless, or use the ogonek to represent nasalisation.)
Anyway, those are the main points of Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts phonology, as it currently exists. Have at me.
Particular questions
There are some things I'd particularly like feedback on, if you happen to have any thoughts.
- [+creak, +high] → [+nasal]. Fun? Stupid? Intriguing? Any good alternatives? And, is there a happier name for the [+creak] feature than [+creak]?
- Leaving that aside, does the behaviour of [+high] make sense? I feel like it should interact with consonants somehow, but am not really sure how. (There are languages in which voiced consonants block high tone movement, not sure about anything closer to what I've got here.)
- I also wonder whether, if I go with [+creak, +high] → [+nasal], I should let nasal and nasalised consonants interact somehow with [+creak]. (Like, do they tend to raise the pitch of an adjacent vowel while also lending it some nasality?)
- I'm actually liking v̰́ for [+creak, +high] the more I look at it, but I also have a soft spot for the ogonek. Does one of those options, or something else, seem clearly better?
- Is there a way to use y instead of ɨ even though it looks terrible with diacritics below it?
- Relatedly, I'd rather avoid using the apostrophe for ejectives, since it's nice to have it around to mark nonobvious syllable boundaries. Maybe ˀ, like the glottalised nasals? (Would it make any sense to mark both with a tilde, preferably below but above where there are descenders?)
Re: Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
I do much the same thing in Khulls with pharyngealization .... early on, pharyngealization was a suprasegmental feature like this, but later, all pharyngealized vowels became long.Oh! A complication: if a word is marked both [+long] and as [+creak], then the result is just as if it were marked only [+creak]; that's why you get wḛm rather than a hypothetical wḛ̄m. (The vowel may actually end up phonetically long, I'm not sure about that yet.)
I like the first idea (wõ) .Although, if it were my language, I would want all the diacritics on the top, especially if they never need to co-occur. I'd use circumflex for creaky voice because I seem to have somehow mentally acquired an association between the circumflex and a "harsh" sounding vowel (which is why I use it for pharyngealization).That would mean, for example, that if the 2s pronoun wo̰ somehow acquired a floating high tone, then it would end up as wõ. (A nice visual pun: the high tone raising the tilde from below the vowel to above it.)
I'm actually liking v̰́ for [+creak, +high] the more I look at it, but I also have a soft spot for the ogonek. Does one of those options, or something else, seem clearly better?
The ɨ's holding hands are cute. But, I prefer <y> as well. If you switch the diacritics to all on top, that problem will go away.Is there a way to use y instead of ɨ even though it looks terrible with diacritics below it?
How about acute accents .... e.g. ḿ ń ś (if you have those). to me the acute accent is "sharper", aesthetically, than a tilde, and also more closely resembles an apostophe which will make it easier for other people to remember.Relatedly, I'd rather avoid using the apostrophe for ejectives, since it's nice to have it around to mark nonobvious syllable boundaries. Maybe ˀ, like the glottalised nasals?
I cant say if this is attested, but I think it could probably descend from something that is. You might find ample study material in the Austro-Asiatic family, where languages such as Khmer have acquired creaky and breathy voice, and perhaps other suprasegmentals ("registers"), under the influence of nearby tonal languages. This suggests that registers may be a step on the path to acquiring tone. From here, and by comparison with Vietnamese, you could see which registers are more likely to develop into high tones vs low tones, and that might help you pick what to develop the high-tone creaky voice vowels into.[+creak, +high] → [+nasal]. Fun? Stupid? Intriguing? Any good alternatives?
if creaky voice is unmarked for length then it could be a sort of length of its own. so
am i right that you have six contrasting suprasegmentals for stressed syllables: 1) short&low, 2) long&low, 3) creaky; 4)short&high; 5)long&high; 6)nasal ?
one other thing i just thought of: are long vowels contrastive with sequences of two short vowels? i.e. does the name of the language have two short vowels, or one long?
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akam chinjir
- Posts: 769
- Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:58 pm
Re: Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
Thanks! That's very helpful.
Vietnamese's huyền, nặng, ngã tones look like a possible model for tone constrasts within a [+creak] or [+glottal] register. Actual creak seems to go with higher pitch there, and breathiness with low pitch, but my understanding of these things is that it could easily go either way. (Anyway from Mandarin and Johnny Cash I associate creak with low pitch.)
The rub is that this won't get me nasalisation, which isn't a big problem, but I want /ȷ̃/ and /w̃/, and it seems weird to have them without any vowel nasalisation. (Though Yakut seems to have /ȷ̃/ without nasal vowels, and maybe allophony is enough. Or maybe a concurrent system of nasal harmony.)
Currently I think if I go with a diacritic above the vowel to show [+creak], it'll be the grave accent (based on its use to show low tone). I could also use it on the glottalised nasals. The tilde below and the subdot are currently also in the running, and it'll probably be the subdot for ejectives (with ḅ instead of p̣, on the grounds that it's actually an implosive).
I may also go back to doubling vowels to show length; it's not phonologically apt, but it's prettier, especially in this Courier I'm using. (Maybe I'll change my mind again if it ever becomes time to make PDFs.)
Thanks again!
I was very vaguely thinking in terms of a register tone system, though only vaguely, and (looking back) it's clear I would've benefited from looking up details on (for example) Vietnamese. So that was a very useful pointer.Pabappa wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:56 pm You might find ample study material in the Austro-Asiatic family, where languages such as Khmer have acquired creaky and breathy voice, and perhaps other suprasegmentals ("registers"), under the influence of nearby tonal languages. This suggests that registers may be a step on the path to acquiring tone. From here, and by comparison with Vietnamese, you could see which registers are more likely to develop into high tones vs low tones, and that might help you pick what to develop the high-tone creaky voice vowels into.
Vietnamese's huyền, nặng, ngã tones look like a possible model for tone constrasts within a [+creak] or [+glottal] register. Actual creak seems to go with higher pitch there, and breathiness with low pitch, but my understanding of these things is that it could easily go either way. (Anyway from Mandarin and Johnny Cash I associate creak with low pitch.)
The rub is that this won't get me nasalisation, which isn't a big problem, but I want /ȷ̃/ and /w̃/, and it seems weird to have them without any vowel nasalisation. (Though Yakut seems to have /ȷ̃/ without nasal vowels, and maybe allophony is enough. Or maybe a concurrent system of nasal harmony.)
Yes, that's right.so am i right that you have six contrasting suprasegmentals for stressed syllables: 1) short&low, 2) long&low, 3) creaky; 4)short&high; 5)long&high; 6)nasal ?
They are, though probably in any real case one of the vowels will delete because unstressed. If ever a vowel sequence manages to surface, you'll get hiatus, and an epenthetic glottal stop. So, yeah, the vowel in Mɨɨrts is long, and in the orthography I used in the previous post it would be Mɨ̄rts.one other thing i just thought of: are long vowels contrastive with sequences of two short vowels? i.e. does the name of the language have two short vowels, or one long?
I'm happy with diacritics below, I just don't want them to change place depending on the vowel, and I don't want stacking, either with other diacritics or with ascenders or descenders (or, in this Courier I'm using, with the tittle on the ɨ).Although, if it were my language, I would want all the diacritics on the top, especially if they never need to co-occur.
I've so far just used the circumflex for -ATR vowels in systems with ATR harmony. Which is not so huge a step from pharyngealisation, I suppose?I'd use circumflex for creaky voice because I seem to have somehow mentally acquired an association between the circumflex and a "harsh" sounding vowel (which is why I use it for pharyngealization).
Currently I think if I go with a diacritic above the vowel to show [+creak], it'll be the grave accent (based on its use to show low tone). I could also use it on the glottalised nasals. The tilde below and the subdot are currently also in the running, and it'll probably be the subdot for ejectives (with ḅ instead of p̣, on the grounds that it's actually an implosive).
I may also go back to doubling vowels to show length; it's not phonologically apt, but it's prettier, especially in this Courier I'm using. (Maybe I'll change my mind again if it ever becomes time to make PDFs.)
Thanks again!
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akam chinjir
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Re: Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
New idea: use h to signal the lower register (borrowing this from the Yale romanisation of Cantonese), and also after a nasal to signal glottalisation. Then [+creak, +high] can be just áh, for example. And the only diacritic on vowels will be the high-tone acute (and maybe an occasional breve or something when stress is ambiguous).
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akam chinjir
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Re: Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
Orthography
I've settled on an orthography, at least for now. Phonological details are the same as in the initial post, except that after the exchange with Pabappa I got a bit more sensible about what happens when you combine high tone with creaky register. (Which is not to say I've decided what you get, just that it won't be nasalisation. Working hypothesis: breathy voice.)
Orthographs are in angle brackets. I've supplied IPA when that differs, aiming at the phoneme's most characteristic allophone (not that there'll be much allophonic variation).
I've settled on an orthography, at least for now. Phonological details are the same as in the initial post, except that after the exchange with Pabappa I got a bit more sensible about what happens when you combine high tone with creaky register. (Which is not to say I've decided what you get, just that it won't be nasalisation. Working hypothesis: breathy voice.)
Orthographs are in angle brackets. I've supplied IPA when that differs, aiming at the phoneme's most characteristic allophone (not that there'll be much allophonic variation).
- Consonants
b /p/ d /t/ z /ts/ ž /tɬ/ g /k/ gw /kʷ/ p /pʰ/ t /tʰ/ c /tsʰ/ č /tɬʰ/ k /kʰ/ kw /kʷʰ/ ḅ /p'/ ṭ /t'/ c̣ /ts'/ č̣ /tɬ'/ ḳ /k'/ ḳw /kʷ'/ ḥ /ʔ/ f s š /ɬ/ xw /xʷ/ m n ŋ /ɲ/ ŋw /ŋʷ/ mh /mˀ/ nh /nˀ/ ŋh /ɲˀ/ ŋhw /ŋʷˀ/ r l lw /ɫʷ/ j w ȷ̃ w̃ - Vowels
i y /ɨ/ u e e /ə/ o a /a/ - Suprasegmentals
- Long vowels: written doubled
- Creaky register: <h> after the vowel
- High tone: an acute accent above the vowel
- Main stress, when ambiguous: something else (a breve, grave, dot... haven't decided) above the vowel
- The <b> vs <p> distinction involves aspiration rather than voicing (and similarly at other POAs).
- Glottalic plosives get a subdot, glottalisation of both nasals and vowels is signaled by a following h.
- The hacek distinguishes the lateral series from the sibilant series.
- I'm using <ŋ> in both <ŋ> /ɲ/ and <ŋw> /ŋʷ/. Given that /ɲ/ + /w/ will always yield /ŋʷ/, this seems a reasonable choice. I'm also considering /ṅ/ for both.
- <e> can represent both /e/ and /ə/. /ə/ is actually marginal: it never occurs in main-stressed syllables, and so always represents a reduction; I count it as a phoneme because a fuller underlying vowel is not always synchronically recoverable. Anyway in unstressed syllables <e> is [ə], which may represent underlying /e/ or /o/, or may just be /ə/. It's not clear to me that using <ə> would make this clearer.
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akam chinjir
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Re: Kwa̰ Mɨɨrts (a phonology sketch in search of a reality check)
Some initial ideas
I'm just going to start with a sentence, and take it apart. (Anything I say in this post might change tomorrow.)
Here's the sentence: íhmne čegšed Imne sang.
I don't know anything about Imne yet, though I'm pretty sure it's a man, and I guess he sings.
I'm thinking of the verb root as underlyingly čegi, with the past tense marker še and the 3s subject marker dy. The surface form is produced by:
Let's try negation:
Some things to notice:
Yeah, there's a distinct series of irrealis bound pronouns, and when they are used to encode the subject in a negated verb, they go inside the negation marker. The significance is going to be to put the subject inside the scope of the negation. I haven't yet sorted out what exactly that'll come to in this case, though the English translation gives one rough idea.
Transitive verbs add a complication: the verb complex requires a marker to cross-reference the object, but it cannot be hosted by the same stem as the tense/mood and subject markers. So you need an auxiliary, the most basic of which is √fo do. The result can look like this:
Comments:
Well, and the free pronouns (these are all surface forms):
Also, I left the high tone off some instance of the negation marker ká, now all fixed (I hope).
I'm just going to start with a sentence, and take it apart. (Anything I say in this post might change tomorrow.)
Here's the sentence: íhmne čegšed Imne sang.
I don't know anything about Imne yet, though I'm pretty sure it's a man, and I guess he sings.
I'm thinking of the verb root as underlyingly čegi, with the past tense marker še and the 3s subject marker dy. The surface form is produced by:
- juxtaposition → čegišedy
- deletion of unstressed vowels → čegšed
- centering of secondarily stressed vowels → čegš[ə]d
Let's try negation:
Code: Select all
íhmne žkíšygdy
√íhmne čegi-E-šy-ká-dy
Imne sing-IRR-PAST.IRR-NEG-3s
Imne didn't sing
- The tricksy affix E is an unrecoverable vowel that shifts stress to the preceding syllable. (It's unrecoverable because in that immediately posttonic position it'll always delete.)
- With stress now on its second syllable, √čegi becomes čgi [tɬʰki]; after the aspiration shifts to be next to the vowel, you get žki [tɬkʰi].
- Besides the E, the irrealis is also marked on the past tense marker, which becomes šy (instead of še).
- I'm just this moment deciding that the negation marker ká [kʰá] becomes gá [ká] if there's already an aspirated plosive in the word; I'm not yet sure if this will be a morpheme-specific thing or a general sort of dissimulation.
- The high tone supplied by the negation marker ends up on the stem's stressed vowel, as is normal.
Code: Select all
íhmne žkíšylak
√íhmne čegi-E-šy-lea-ká
Imne sing-IRR-PAST.IRR-3s.IRR-NEG
It's not that Imne sang
Transitive verbs add a complication: the verb complex requires a marker to cross-reference the object, but it cannot be hosted by the same stem as the tense/mood and subject markers. So you need an auxiliary, the most basic of which is √fo do. The result can look like this:
Code: Select all
íhmne góre yŋŋa mtii fošdy
√íhmne góre yn-ŋea maati-E-∅ fo-še-dy
Imne bat ACC-CLF take-TR-3 AUX-PAST-3s
Imne caught a bat
- Nothing at all weird happens with fo; it takes TAM and subject marking just like an intransitive verb.
- The main verb stem gets a suffix E, indistinguishable from the main irrealis marker.
- A third-person object gets a null morpheme, or the absence of a morpheme, however you like to think about such things. It's not distinguished for number. A plural object is distinguished, if at all, by using the plural subject marker on the auxiliary. But that's a topic for another time.
- The markers for first- and second-person objects are the same in form as the singular possessive markers, which is maybe significant, if you think of the stem+E form of the verb as a sort of participle.
- The actual object takes the accusative postposition yn.
- Kwah Myyrc has classifiers for nouns. One of their uses, exemplified here, is as a sort of article. What it indicates will depend a bit on context; here it's specificity and indefiniteness.
- The classifier/article actually gets attached to the postposition. (I'm not yet sure how exactly that'll work, but I like it.) In the absence of an explicit object, the postposition can instead be inflected with an object marker, though for a third person object that won't amount to anything.
Code: Select all
íhmne góre ge mtiile fóšykdy
√íhmne góre gea maati-E-lea fo-E-šy-ká-dy
Imne bat PRT take-TR-3.IRR do-IRR-PAST.IRR-NEG-3s
Imne didn't catch a bat
- fo again inflects just like an intransitive verb.
- Maybe unsurprisingly, the verb stem takes the irrealis bound pronoun (which is the same in form as the one you'd find marking an irrealis third person singular subject).
- The object takes a different postposition, the partitive √gea.
- There's no article; in the scope of negation, an article would imply definiteness.
- You could put the subject in the scope of negation, as above, using fošylak.
Well, and the free pronouns (these are all surface forms):
| Person/Gender | Singular | Dual | Plural |
| 1 | cii | céésy | ceeg, siim |
| 1+2 | --- | wyd | wáázy |
| 2 | woh | wéhsy | wehm |
| 3c | jan | ȷ̃oosy | ̃og |
| 3f | tal | žáásy | žaam |
| 3m | duw | dwáásy | dwaam |
- I haven't yet decided how far-reaching the gender distinctions will be. It might be pronoun-only and purely semantic.
- "c" is for "common." Insofar as the gender distinctions are semantic, this will be a neither-or-both category. Applied to humans, it'll be suitable for mixed groups and shamans and infants, for example.
- The dual forms will be used only for pairs that are somehow semantically natural; the 1+2 (first person inclusive) dual automatically counts, but the others do not.
- There's also a pronoun pair maaj/amjéésy whose exact significance I've gone and forgotton, but it'll relate somehow to natural groupings.
- And there's a generic pronoun wéégsý, which triggers 1+2 agreement on the verb.
| Person/Number | Subject | Possessive | Irrealis |
| 1s | -zy | -sy | -sea |
| 1d | -zysy | -sysy | -seasy |
| 1p | -zyge | -syge | -seam |
| 1+2d | -wysy | -wysy | -weasy |
| 1+2p | -wyge | -wyge | -weam |
| 2s | -my | -my | wa'a |
| 2d | -mysy | -mysy | -wa'asy |
| 2p | -myge | -myge | -wa'am |
| 3s | -(e)dy | -(e)n | -lea |
| 3d | -(e)dysy | -(e)nsy | -leasy |
| 3p | -(e)dyge | -(e)ŋgwe | -leam |
- That's even more regular than I remembered. We'll see.
- The initial e in the third person forms surfaces following an underlying vowel.
- The apostrophes distinguish an underlying sequence of vowels from a long vowel. That means that one of them will always survive and one will always delete. Maybe this is a bit of a cheat.
| Tense | Realis | Irrealis |
| Distant past | -meah | --- |
| Past | -še | -Ešy |
| Nonpast | ∅ | -E |
| Future | --- | -Ewyny |
- E is that unrecoverable vowel that attracts stress to the preceding syllable.
- The distant past doesn't have an irrealis form, which implies that verbs in the distanct past cannot be negated. I'll try to make this make semantic sense.
- The future can only be irrealis, which makes obvious semantic sense. (But there'll also be at least one analytic future that doesn't require irrealis forms.)
Also, I left the high tone off some instance of the negation marker ká, now all fixed (I hope).