SAE phonology and grammar tests

[HazelFiver]

Lots to respond to here. Nice to see interest in this.

I almost agree about conjunction, too, though wonder if it's worth also distinguishing "A with B" from the SAE pattern.

If you use "with" instead of "and", the answer to that question should be no. Maybe my chosen wording isn't clear enough.

And I feel like "relative pronoun" could use a bit of unpacking, since the definition Haspelmath (and WALS) uses is a bit finicky, and IIRC on the old board plenty of people counted their languages as having relative pronouns when they just had a clause-initial particle (like English "that," not like English "who").

It specifically says inflected relative pronouns, so if you have something you think is a relative pronoun but it doesn't inflect, you should say no.

And maybe worth mentioning that (at least on the old tests) scores on the grammar test were usually significantly lower than on the phonology test---on the phonology test if you got below about 70, you were pretty un-SAE, but not really on the grammar test.

I've noticed that. Very few natlangs were run through the grammar test (as opposed to the phonology test), and none of those with the most recent version on that thread, though, so it's harder to tell what the scores for it mean. FWIW I tried it with English, French, German and Welsh and got 90, 95, 100 and 57 respectively, which might tell us something considering that the first three are SAE and the last isn't. Or it might mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

Edit: Oh, also, on #7 on the grammar test: word equivalent to "than" in comparisons of inequality instead of a preposition (e.g. English "bigger than an elephant")---that makes it sound like "than"-particles and prepositions are the only two possibilities, but there are other ones.

Oops. This used to say "particle comparatives in comparisons of inequality", and some people found this confusing, but you're right -- I did a bad job of clarifying. I've removed "instead of a preposition". I hope it's still obvious what's meant.

And #14 no marking of arguments other than the subject on the verb: as worded you get points if you've got no arguments marked on the verb, but I doubt that's intended. marking of the subject but of no other arguments on the verb, maybe?

I don't know if this was intended, but now that you mention it I suppose it does seem a bit unfair to languages with no verbal person marking. According to WALS, marking both A and P is most common worldwide, but the second most common option is no marking. Swedish doesn't mark person, but AFAIK the other SAE languages do, and no marking is surely more common outside Europe.

#10 in the second part only one converb (non-finite subordinate verb), preference for finite subordinate clauses maybe should have one and only one; I'm not sure how I'd weight the two parts of the condition if I had exactly one nonfinite subordinate verb form but used it all over the place.

Probably should get half points. I didn't add this possibility to the code because no half-points options were defined in the original. Some of those would be good.

It was me who originally wrote that phonology test, but I did so off the top of my head without any research or planning, and I've always meant to go back and do it properly. I even got as far as researching a bunch of the questions - comparing suggested generalities against both SAE and non-SAE languages to see which were really distinctive - but I only got a bit of the way through and got bored. I do intend to go back and finish it, but...

Ah, you're right. I've credited you.

a 0 in grammar

I think that's a record.

I have a complex noun class system in some conlangs that includes masculine and feminine but also others, so what would I check for that?

I would say this is definitely not SAE, since SAE languages have at most masculine, feminine and neuter. In the original thread before this question was added, Cedh suggested "Two to four grammatical genders for nouns, causing agreement in pronouns, determiners and adjectives, with a basic distinction masculine vs. feminine being made (half marks if gender is only marked on pronouns)". For some reason, the wording "grammatical sex marking" was adopted instead, which is less clear. My version still doesn't account for the type of use case you mention. Something like Cedh's proposal would be better (do any SAE languages have four genders? I thought they stopped at three -- also not sure about agreement).

This got rather lengthy -- oops.

[HazelFiver]

BTW my current conlang scores 57 on the phonology test and 16 on the grammar test. I have three other phonologies floating around that aren't attached to fleshed-out languages, and they get 55-56, 1-1.5, and 86. The second two were designed to "game" the test while still being naturalistic (the 86 one was meant to be 90, but I was using the wrong version), and the first is a redone phonology for my first ever conlang, which is about ten years old and would need a lot of work to be usable, as I never got very far with it. "55-56" and "1-1.5" are because I don't know if you check 3 if you have voicing on plosives but not fricatives or if double articulation counts as a POA.

So, about the phonology test. More lengthiness incoming...

38. FCV syllables allowed (F = fricative), where C is not a glide or a liquid. [but only half mark if C cannot be a member of a particular series (eg nasal, voiced, ejective, fricative etc) or POA]
43. Sonority hierarchy violation in consonant clusters allowed only for fricatives (stops -> fricatives -> liquids -> approximants)

These are obviously getting at sibilant + plosive clusters. No SAE language allows non-sibilant fricative + plosive onsets such as /ft/, and I don't know if sibilant + nasal is particularly SAE as unlike sibilant + plosive it's not a violation of the sonority hierarchy. There's also nothing non-SAE about disallowing voiced plosives in this type of onset. English does it, French and German do it, other Germanic languages probably do too... from the perspective of native speakers of English and the "nucleus" SAE languages, sibilant + voiced plosive is more foreign. Losing half a point for that doesn't make sense.

Somewhat tangentially, I think SAE languages also prefer sibilant + plosive onsets to (non-affricate) plosive + fricative, to the point of disallowing the latter or only including some such clusters and only in loanwords, e.g. English reduces /ps/ from Greek-derived words to /s/.

I suggest changing these to:

38. Sequences of sibilant + plosive and sibilant + nasal allowed as onsets [half mark if only one of these]
43. Sonority hierarchy violation in consonant clusters allowed only for sibilants (stops -> fricatives -> liquids -> approximants)

40. CCV syllables allowed but SSV or SSCV syllables not allowed (not including geminates)

Slavic languages are considered peripherally SAE in Haspelmath's paper, and they allow SSV. However, they require the second plosive to be coronal, so they have /pt bd kt gd/ but not */pk bg/. The IE preference for coronals was noted by someone on the phonology test thread, and this is a manifestation of that. I suggest changing this to:

40. CCV syllables allowed but SSV or SSCV syllables not allowed (not including geminates) [half mark if the second S must be coronal]

This would also be more consistent because another question seems designed to single out Slavic languages, and that is:

44. One syllabic consonant, a rhotic [half mark if lateral or both]

English, French and standard German don't have any phonemic syllabic consonants at all. I don't think the other core SAE languages do either. The ones with syllabic /r/ and /l/ are Slavic (not all of them, even -- take Russian for example). Since as I said Slavic languages are farther away from SAE than other members of that group, they should score lower for this, not higher. The test also gives the same score to languages with no syllabic consonants and languages with many of them, even though the latter is decidedly non-SAE while the former is not. I suggest changing this to:

44. No syllabic consonants [half mark if only syllabic sonorants]

It might also be nice to have something like "CCCV syllables allowed but CCCCV syllables not allowed". I think onset length for (non-Slavic) SAE languages stops at CCC. The "86" phonology has basically the syllable structure of Salish or Georgian, and it loses no points for having unlimited consonant cluster length, scoring much higher for syllable structure alone than it would if it were at the other end of the spectrum. I don't think you should be able to do what I did there.

46. No non-glottal POA with only one MOA, and that MOA isn't fricative [not counting /w/ as labial-velar or whatever]

As written, this condition is nearly the opposite of 8, "At least one non-glottal POA with at least one fricative but no stops". For 46 to be true, either there must not be any non-glottal POA with only one MOA, or there must only be non-glottal POAs with one MOA if that MOA is not fricative. For both 8 and 46 to be true, the POA(s) specified in 8 must have at least one additional MOA. 8 is measuring the tendency for SAE phonologies to have lots of fricatives. What is 46 measuring? There is nothing SAE about meeting the condition of 46 as written because it asks for a lack of fricative-only POAs. At least one in the phonology thread interpreted it as meaning the opposite of what it says and suggested it should be reworded accordingly. I would change it to:

46. If a non-glottal POA has only one MOA, it's fricative

There are a couple of questions that use something like "stops other than nasals." Would it be simpler to say "plosives?"

Also this. "S" in syllable structures should probably be "P", too.

Any thoughts? Salmoneus, I hope you don't mind if I rewrite parts of your test even though you're planning to write a new version. I don't blame you for not making it perfect.

[Znex]

I've noticed that. Very few natlangs were run through the grammar test (as opposed to the phonology test), and none of those with the most recent version on that thread, though, so it's harder to tell what the scores for it mean. FWIW I tried it with English, French, German and Welsh and got 90, 95, 100 and 57 respectively, which might tell us something considering that the first three are SAE and the last isn't. Or it might mean I don't know what I'm talking about.

I've tried it with a few more natlangs now: Swedish gets 80, Dutch gets 95, and Irish gets 69. I'll try some Iberi-Romance (maybe Basque too for fun) and some Central/Eastern European languages later.

Hmmm, while running through Swedish, I noticed that German couldn't have gotten 100 since the two possession questions contradict each other: German only ever uses dative possessors in reference to inalienable objects, same as in French for instance.
(Ich wasche mir die Hände/Je me lave les mains "I wash my hands" vs. Ich wasche meine Kleidung/Je lave mes vêtements "I wash my clothes")

I would say this is definitely not SAE, since SAE languages have at most masculine, feminine and neuter. In the original thread before this question was added, Cedh suggested "Two to four grammatical genders for nouns, causing agreement in pronouns, determiners and adjectives, with a basic distinction masculine vs. feminine being made (half marks if gender is only marked on pronouns)". For some reason, the wording "grammatical sex marking" was adopted instead, which is less clear. My version still doesn't account for the type of use case you mention. Something like Cedh's proposal would be better (do any SAE languages have four genders? I thought they stopped at three -- also not sure about agreement).

I suppose Cedh might be referring to European languages like Russian that don't only have masculine and feminine gender, but have also adopted an animate-inanimate distinction.

[Xwtek]

By "Absence of any phonemic POA for stops further back than velar [half mark for only one stop-POA behind velar, or for prominent allophonic stops behind velar," do glottal stop counts as phoneme that violates that?

[Frislander]

By "Absence of any phonemic POA for stops further back than velar [half mark for only one stop-POA behind velar, or for prominent allophonic stops behind velar," do glottal stop counts as phoneme that violates that?

Yes, because they're very uncommon in SAE, and /h/ is similar, if slightly less rare.

[Frislander]

Hmmm, while running through Swedish, I noticed that German couldn't have gotten 100 since the two possession questions contradict each other: German only ever uses dative possessors in reference to inalienable objects, same as in French for instance.
(Ich wasche mir die Hände/Je me lave les mains "I wash my hands" vs. Ich wasche meine Kleidung/Je lave mes vêtements "I wash my clothes")

Oh wow, so French and German have an alienable/inalienable distinction which people have been purposefully ignoring in discussions of the topic for decades because such a contrast is seen as an "exotic feature"?

[mèþru]

Well, it is rare within the region outside of German and the langues d'oïl.

[cedh]

I would say this is definitely not SAE, since SAE languages have at most masculine, feminine and neuter. In the original thread before this question was added, Cedh suggested "Two to four grammatical genders for nouns, causing agreement in pronouns, determiners and adjectives, with a basic distinction masculine vs. feminine being made (half marks if gender is only marked on pronouns)". For some reason, the wording "grammatical sex marking" was adopted instead, which is less clear. My version still doesn't account for the type of use case you mention. Something like Cedh's proposal would be better (do any SAE languages have four genders? I thought they stopped at three -- also not sure about agreement).

I suppose Cedh might be referring to European languages like Russian that don't only have masculine and feminine gender, but have also adopted an animate-inanimate distinction.

IIRC I was thinking (a) of Danish and Swedish, which have two genders if you count only agreement, but four genders in pronouns; (b) of those Slavic languages that have conditioned splits in parts of the gender agreement system (e.g. Russian, Polish, and Czech); and (c) of the fact that I've seen German analyzed as having four genders (masculine singular, feminine singular, neuter singular, and plural). All of these are in some way terminologically controversial though, so maybe it'd be best to give full marks for two or three genders if these include a m-f distinction, and half marks if either the m-f distinction is missing, if there is either a clear 4th gender or an unclear 5th gender, or if the conditions for full marks are only met in pronouns.

(German, Danish and Swedish should all receive full marks, and Slavic at least half marks IMO. I'm not an expert for Slavic languages though, so I can't really judge if their additional gender splits really count as what I'd call a separate grammatical gender.)

[mèþru]

agefaqeg is more complicated; it has the following genders:

More: show

• other
• animate
  • other
  • other animal
    • hypothetical
    • known
  • four-legged animals
    • hypothetical
      • male
      • female
      • neuter (there are only two social genders in their culture; this is for mixed groups)
    • sex unknown
    • sex known
      • female
      • male
      • neuter
  • fish
    • hypothetical
      • male
      • female
      • neuter
    • sex unknown
    • sex known
      • female
      • male
      • neuter
  • flowering plant
    • hypothetical
      • male
      • female
      • neuter
    • sex unknown
    • sex known
      • female
      • male
      • neuter
  • human
    • hypothetical
      • male
      • female
      • neuter
    • sex unknown
    • sex known
      • female
      • male
      • neuter
• abstract
• tangible inanimate
  • other
  • dead
• hypothetical abstract

That's 36 (sub)genders

[HazelFiver]

Hmmm, while running through Swedish, I noticed that German couldn't have gotten 100 since the two possession questions contradict each other: German only ever uses dative possessors in reference to inalienable objects, same as in French for instance.
(Ich wasche mir die Hände/Je me lave les mains "I wash my hands" vs. Ich wasche meine Kleidung/Je lave mes vêtements "I wash my clothes")

Oh wow, so French and German have an alienable/inalienable distinction which people have been purposefully ignoring in discussions of the topic for decades because such a contrast is seen as an "exotic feature"?

I speak French but not German. Yes, it is an alienable/inalienable distinction, but I only realized this recently. I've never thought of it as "dative possessors" but as "body parts must be preceded by definite articles rather than possessive pronouns". You can say e.g. je lève les mains or je ferme les yeux and there's no "dative". It also isn't used with anything other than pronouns -- you would say les mains de John, not *les mains à John -- so it's not "complete". (This seems to be different from German.) Also I don't think you do it with inalienable objects other than body parts, and it's not always used with body parts anyway as in this article.

Spanish works similarly to French here, but it seems to be more complicated and not just about alienability. This paper has some information on that. It also says that using possessive pronouns instead of dative possessors is associated with formal registers.

I think non-SAE languages with this distinction have setups more like mine, where there are two whole separate genitive cases and you can't switch them around for "stylistic variation", only for unexpected different meanings (žoba łi John = John's eyes (his own), žoba za John = John's eyes (that he keeps in a jar somewhere)). SAE languages don't do this. I've read that you can do the "John's eyes" thing in Spanish, but apparently using the other construction doesn't always change the meaning.

If we really want SAE languages with dative/article possessors to meet both of these conditions, the alienability question should be changed to something like:

no non-optional distinction between alienable (e.g. legal property) and inalienable (e.g. body part) possession that is made in all contexts

I don't think "made in all contexts" excludes Spanish, unless I misread the paper, but "non-optional" does.

[Frislander]

If you dislocated the possessor though, would you use the dative still, something like John, je l'ai fermé les mains?

[Znex]

I speak French but not German. Yes, it is an alienable/inalienable distinction, but I only realized this recently. I've never thought of it as "dative possessors" but as "body parts must be preceded by definite articles rather than possessive pronouns". You can say e.g. je lève les mains or je ferme les yeux and there's no "dative". It also isn't used with anything other than pronouns -- you would say les mains de John, not *les mains à John -- so it's not "complete". (This seems to be different from German.) Also I don't think you do it with inalienable objects other than body parts, and it's not always used with body parts anyway as in this article.

Spanish works similarly to French here, but it seems to be more complicated and not just about alienability. This paper has some information on that. It also says that using possessive pronouns instead of dative possessors is associated with formal registers.

I know the grammatical definition of "inalienability" does differ between languages, such that body parts can be marked out distinctively, although from a conceptual POV body parts and family are both inalienable. For instance Mandarin Chinese might be said to have the opposite distinction: most nouns (including body parts) have a mandatory 的 possessive marker when occurring in possessive phrases, but other nouns implying close relationship (family, close friends/partners, school/work) more often than not appear without 的.

And in European languages, there may be some evidence that the alienability distinction is a relatively recent innovation: for instance Scottish Gaelic possesses a distinction (with a "dative"/prepositional possessor for alienable nouns, so the opposite to French and German) while its cousin Irish does not, and German has a distinction while Dutch does not (and neither do Swedish and English for that matter).

[Hallow XIII]

At least in German, that distinction is incipient at best, since it only applies to reflexives. Elsewhere, the Dative construction has benefactive/malefactive semantics, and is usable without regard of the possession status. Conversely, while ich habe ihm das Bein gebrochen is much more natural (probably due to the above), ich habe sein Bein gebrochen is by no means ungrammatical. The reflexive "alienable/inalienable" distinction clearly has its roots in this. That's also why the Dative construction only applies to body parts (see also: *ich habe mir die Mutter getötet).

Scottish Gaelic, afaik, also only applies its inalienable construction to body parts, but the difference here is that it does this in all syntactic contexts. If you say an ceann orm, it will mean "my head", and if you say an ceann agam, it will mean "the severed head I have here", regardless of the rest of the sentence. So, given that IF what we have is actually an alienable/inalienable distinction it applies only in one very specific syntactic context and it's doubtful whether it actually is such a distinction, well, I don't think I'd let German off the hook here.

[Znex]

I was thinking of a slightly different construction in Scottish Gaelic to "an N air": the possessive adjectives are only ever used - and here I refer to Ó Maolalaigh and MacAonghuis on this - with inalienable nouns, including body parts and blood relations, while indeed "an N aig" are used for alienable nouns or normally inalienable nouns with an alienable sense (like a severed head).

And sure, something similar can happen with other languages that alienability constructions are usually recognised for; in Mandarin Chinese again, if you do use 的 as a possessive marker for inalienable nouns (here: blood relations, close relations, school/work), it implies social distance in such a way that can be rude. Not to mention that 的 also is not used only as a possessive marker in other cases. But more classically alienability-distinguishing languages like Ojibwe and Hawaiian can be more strict: one possession pattern is explicitly ungrammatical with one group and vice versa, and the other pattern when not used with the other group creates an explicitly ungrammatical phrasing; there's no semantic flexibility in these, it would seem to me.

I don't know, I don't think there's any question that the European structures still convey an alienability distinction, even if they are less flexible or less common through the grammar than in some other languages. It could just reflect the newness of the distinction.

[Pabappa]

I wrote up some additional characteristics of European languages a few years ago, originally on http://kneequickie.com/kq/Europe . Since that page seems to be not loading properly I copied the source to http://www.frathwiki.com/User:Soap/sandbox for the time being. I think these could be added to the test to help further refine the distinction between European languages and those that might fit better in Southeast Asia or in neither place. For example, the extrasyllabic /s/ has been a European specialty for at least 5000 years.

No SAE language allows non-sibilant fricative + plosive onsets such as /ft/

Greek has it. E.g.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/φτερό from earlier /pt/.
:edit , also Russian, Polish, etc unless that is not within the reach of SAE?

Sorry, I'm on my mobile phone so can't quote posts properly

[HazelFiver]

If you dislocated the possessor though, would you use the dative still, something like John, je l'ai fermé les mains?

Yes, I don't see why not.

I wrote up some additional characteristics of European languages a few years ago, originally on http://kneequickie.com/kq/Europe . Since that page seems to be not loading properly I copied the source to http://www.frathwiki.com/User:Soap/sandbox for the time being. I think these could be added to the test to help further refine the distinction between European languages and those that might fit better in Southeast Asia or in neither place. For example, the extrasyllabic /s/ has been a European specialty for at least 5000 years.

I think I've seen that page before. Interesting. Some of these are already covered, but some aren't. Does Japanese really have homorganic consonant clusters, or is the first consonant just assimilated? (Does it matter?)

No SAE language allows non-sibilant fricative + plosive onsets such as /ft/

Greek has it. E.g.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/φτερό from earlier /pt/.
:edit , also Russian, Polish, etc unless that is not within the reach of SAE?

Oops. I wasn't aware Greek hadn't retained all its PP onsets, and I hadn't properly considered what consonant clusters Slavic languages allow. Yes, Slavic is considered SAE but somewhat peripheral. I still think clusters like /ft/ aren't what these questions are really about. In Greek and Slavic they're signs of greater distance from the "nucleus", since in more central languages they don't exist.

[zompist]

No SAE language allows non-sibilant fricative + plosive onsets such as /ft/

Greek has it. E.g.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/φτερό from earlier /pt/.
:edit , also Russian, Polish, etc unless that is not within the reach of SAE?

And French: phthisie.

[HazelFiver]

By the way, I think this phonology scores exactly 0:

More: show

Labial

Alveolar

Retroflex

Palatal

Velar

Uvular

Pharyngeal

Glottal

Lab.-alv.

Lab.-pal.

Lab.-vel.

Lab.-uvu.

Nasal

m mʷ

n nʷ

ɳ ɳʷ

ɲ ɲʷ

ŋ ŋʷ

ɴ ɴʷ

n͡m n͡mʷ

ɲ͡m ɲ͡mʷ

ŋ͡m ŋ͡mʷ

Plosive

p pʰ ƥ pʷ pʷʰ ƥʷ

t tʼ tʰ ƭ tʷ tʷʼ tʷʰ ƭʷ

ʈ ʈʼ ʈʰ ƭ̢ ʈʷ ʈʷʼ ʈʷʰ ƭ̢ʷ

c cʼ cʰ ƈ cʷ cʷʼ cʷʰ ƈʷ

k kʼ kʰ ƙ kʷ kʷʼ kʷʰ ƙʷ

q qʼ qʰ ʠʷ qʷ qʷʼ qʷʰ ʠʷ

ʡ ʡʼ ʡʷ ʡʷʼ

ʔ ʔʷ

t͡p t͡pʰ ƭ̢͜ƥ t͡pʷ t͡pʷʰ ƭ̢͜ƥʷ

c͡p c͡pʰ ƈ͜ƥ c͡pʷ c͡pʷʰ ƈ͜ƥʷ

k͡p k͡pʰ ƙ͜ƥ k͡pʷ k͡pʷʰ ƙ͜ƥʷ

q͡p q͡pʰ ʠ͜ƥ q͡pʷ q͡pʷʰ ʠ͜ƥʷ

Fricative (central)

f fʷ

s sʷ

ʂ ʂʷ

ç çʷ

x xʷ

χ χʷ

ħ ħʷ

h hʷ

s͡f s͡fʷ

ç͡f ç͡fʷ

x͡f x͡fʷ

χ͡f χ͡fʷ

Fricative (lateral)

ɬ ɬʷ

ꞎ ꞎʷ

ʎ̥˔ ʎ̥˔ʷ

ʟ̝̊ ʟ̝̊ʷ

Approximant (central)

ʋ ʋʷ

j ɥ

ɰ w

ʁ ʁʷ

ʕ ʕʷ

Approximant (lateral)

l lʷ

ɭ ɭʷ

ʎ ʎʷ

ʟ ʟʷ

ʟ̠ ʟ̠ʷ

Tap (oral)

ⱱ ⱱʷ

ɾ~ɺ ɾʷ~ɺʷ

ɽ~ɭ̆ ɽʷ~ɭ̆ʷ

Tap (nasal)

ⱱ̟̃ ⱱ̟̃ʷ

ɾ̃ ɾ̃ʷ

ɽ̃ ɽ̃ʷ

Trill

ʙ ʙʷ

ʢ ʢʷ

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		ɯ
Open		a

C(:)V syllable structure, three tones on the vowels (á ā à), breathy and modal voice, front/back vowel harmony with /a/ neutral, no phonemic stress, no vowel reduction.

(I wish this forum used a font other than Trebuchet MS, which makes x and chi look the same, as well as tilde and hyphen/macron.)

[HazelFiver]

No SAE language allows non-sibilant fricative + plosive onsets such as /ft/

Greek has it. E.g.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/φτερό from earlier /pt/.
:edit , also Russian, Polish, etc unless that is not within the reach of SAE?

And French: phthisie.

Actually it seems to be phtisie, but okay, I guess you win. That onset must be very rare, though. I didn't even know that word or its English counterpart.

[zompist]

Well, phthisie is an old spelling. There's also phtalate (English phthalate). Yes, very rare, but the French man up and plow through those initial clusters (cf. pneu, psychologie, ptérodactyle) where we skip the first consonant.