Is this any good?

[conlangernoob]

Hi,

I'm new to conlanging, and I've been working on a so far unnamed Proto language for about a week. Here is a link to it on google docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub

Obviously it is not complete (none of the pronoun tables have even started to be filled in) but I have a few questions:

1. Is the way I organized the document the right way to organize it for conlangs?
2. How feasible is it to combine the question and the demonstrative pronouns?
3. Is it realistic to have an [s] but not a [z]. Are there any other unrealistic elements in my phonology?

Thanks,

conlangernoob

[bradrn]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub

Welcome to the board conlangernoob! Alas, this link gives me an error, ‘You need permission to access this published document’… could you change the permissions so that it’s publicly accessible to us?

That being said, I can at least partially answer two of your questions right now:

2. How feasible is it to combine the question and the demonstrative pronouns?

It depends what you mean by ‘demonstrative pronouns’, since there’s lots of types. Merging interrogatives with indefinite demonstrative pronouns (e.g. ‘anyone’, ‘somewhere’, etc.) is very normal; in fact English is quite unusual in not doing it. Merging interrogatives with nominal or adjectival demonstrative pronouns (like ‘this’ or ‘that’) would be much less usual, and I wouldn’t expect it to happen without other kinds of demonstrative pronouns being merged in with both.

3. Is it realistic to have an [s] but not a [z].

Absolutely. Very many languages have no voicing contrast in fricatives. If you do have other fricatives with a voicing contrast, it becomes somewhat less common, but still fine — natural consonant systems can have all sorts of weird gaps in them.

[Torco]

at the risk of sounding all philosophical, dear noob, ask yuorself: what does it mean to have z but not s?

right? cause there's a phoneme that you have that you want to call z, but also you know that you have no s phoneme: this means that the phoneme in question is typically [z], no? but since there's no s, it means that in some positions it could be realized as [s], or as a sort of inbetween, half-voiced generic buzzy kind of s. is it *never* unvoiced? this is possible, but unlikely: people tend to be lazy and just, say, not buzz their chords when an s sound is between, I don't know, unvoiced h and the end of a sentence, for example. and besides, why not make it just s? no one's going to get confused (the way people get confused when I speak my spoken english where I don't voice my z and it makes plurals sound weird.)

so if your question is can my alveolar fricative phoneme be pretty rarely realized as unvoiced? is that realistic? I would say so, yes. now, you could mean other things, so the question is what is the underlying reality (or, in this case, fictiveness I suppose) that you're describe and is that naturalistic. ultimately, what we call a phoneme is just that, a name. a rose by any other name and so on.

also, yeah, you forgot to click 'anyone with the link' in the share thing on googledocs.

[bradrn]

at the risk of sounding all philosophical, dear noob, ask yuorself: what does it mean to have z but not s?

Other way round. They have [s] but not [z].

[hwhatting]

at the risk of sounding all philosophical, dear noob, ask yuorself: what does it mean to have z but not s?

Other way round. They have [s] but not [z].

Which would give us Spanish as a well-known sample language with that feature (at least the RAE Castilian variety that we tend to learn here in Europe; I don't know about Spanish regional or LatAm varieties.)

[WeepingElf]

Of course, there are languages where [z] is an allophone of /s/. German is, according to my own analysis, such a language: /s/ is realized as [z] when it is the only segment of a syllable onset and not geminate, or something like that.

[hwhatting]

Of course, there are languages where [z] is an allophone of /s/. German is, according to my own analysis, such a language: /s/ is realized as [z] when it is the only segment of a syllable onset and not geminate, or something like that.

There is no "geminate s" (= /s:/) in Standard German. It's written like that for historical reasons, because there used to be geminate consonants in the ancestor of Standard German, and there are German dialects where true geminates exist, but for a synchronic analysis of Standard German the concept of gemination is useless. And exactly for that reason, Standard German is normally described as having two phonemes, /s/ and /z/, which contrast at the syllable onset between vowels.

[WeepingElf]

Of course, there are languages where [z] is an allophone of /s/. German is, according to my own analysis, such a language: /s/ is realized as [z] when it is the only segment of a syllable onset and not geminate, or something like that.

There is no "geminate s" (= /s:/) in Standard German. It's written like that for historical reasons, because there used to be geminate consonants in the ancestor of Standard German, and there are German dialects where true geminates exist, but for a synchronic analysis of Standard German the concept of gemination is useless. And exactly for that reason, Standard German is normally described as having two phonemes, /s/ and /z/, which contrast at the syllable onset between vowels.

Thank you for your correction. Of course, Standard German has no geminates, nor do most dialects. What I wrote about "German" may have been true of Old or Middle High German but not of the modern language.

[conlangernoob]

This should work: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjYqyc8TSib4gQAsHrt ... K?e=zawBVa

[WeepingElf]

This should work: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjYqyc8TSib4gQAsHrt ... K?e=zawBVa

It does.

[Torco]

Other way round. They have [s] but not [z].

lmao you're right.

yeah, I don't think there is *any* variety of spanish that has /z/ as a distinct phoneme from /z/, and I've only ever heard [z] from young colombian women.

[bradrn]

This should work: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AjYqyc8TSib4gQAsHrt ... K?e=zawBVa

Thanks! To give my opinions on your questions:

1. There isn’t really any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ with regards to structuring a grammar (for a natural or constructed language) — different people have different preferences. That being said, having a huge ‘grammar’ section isn’t really helpful: try splitting it up into something like, let’s say, ‘Word classes’, ‘Nominal morphology’, ‘Verbal morphology’, ‘Basic syntax’, etc. (or whatever works best to highlight the structure of your language).
2. Given that you already have indefinite pro-forms, it would make more sense to combine the interrogatives with that, if you want to combine them with something.
3. The phoneme inventory looks fine, if a bit unstable — in particular the presence of /ð/ without /z/ makes me think the former would soon turn into the latter.

And some more miscellaneous thoughts/questions:

• What is that big table of ‘consonant frequencies’, and the following big table of ‘blend frequencies’? I’ve never seen anything like those even in the literature on acoustic phonetics, let alone a reference grammar.
• What kind of entities are the ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite articles’? You talk about them in one sentence together with nominal inflection, but in most cases I’d assume that something called an ‘article’ is an independent word in some way.
• How does the ‘collective’ number differ from the ‘plural’?
• Glad to see another conlang with an alignment split! Although I’ve yet to see a natlang with a future/nonfuture split… past/nonpast and perfective/imperfective are much more common. I’m honestly not entirely sure which category I’d expect to get ergative alignment and which accusative alignment — I think I’d prefer ergative alignment in the future, but modal alignment splits vary so much that it’s hard to predict anything confidently.
• Does your language distinguish proximity in demonstratives, or not?
• Neither ‘habitual’ nor ‘infinitive’ are tenses. The former is an aspect, while the latter is just another form of the verb. Not that that means your ‘tense’ system is bad (in fact I quite like it!) — just that it might be more accurate to call it something else. (The usual name is ‘TAM’, for ‘tense/aspect/mood’.)
• You say ‘moods are auxiliary’, but what does that mean?
• Does the verb agree only with second person subjects, or can it cross-reference other arguments too?

[Zju]

Although I’ve yet to see a natlang with a future/nonfuture split…

Isn't that just a less common term for irrealis/realis split? Or a specific usage thereof?

[bradrn]

Although I’ve yet to see a natlang with a future/nonfuture split…

Isn't that just a less common term for irrealis/realis split? Or a specific usage thereof?

Irrealis categories are broader than future, and some languages with an irrealis don’t use it for the future (e.g. Caddo, at least according to Palmer’s Mood and Modality), so they’re definitely not the same. I assume there would be a strong similarity between the two, though.

[hwhatting]

Thank you for your correction. Of course, Standard German has no geminates, nor do most dialects. What I wrote about "German" may have been true of Old or Middle High German but not of the modern language.

Not even for them, as they had no /z/. The development of OHG / MHD /s/ to /z/ word-initially and between vowels is normally dated to Early Modern High German and part of the overall restructuring that got rid of the geminates. AFAIK, those Southern German dialects that still have geminate "s" don't tend to have /z/.

[Travis B.]

Thank you for your correction. Of course, Standard German has no geminates, nor do most dialects. What I wrote about "German" may have been true of Old or Middle High German but not of the modern language.

Not even for them, as they had no /z/. The development of OHG / MHD /s/ to /z/ word-initially and between vowels is normally dated to Early Modern High German and part of the overall restructuring that got rid of the geminates. AFAIK, those Southern German dialects that still have geminate "s" don't tend to have /z/.

Oh! I had always assumed that /s/ > [z] was parallel to /f/ > [v] as reflected in varieties of MHG (and was parallel to the same change in more southerly Low Franconian varieties), and that the change that resulted in ENHG [v] > [f] (preceding /w/ > [v]) just happened to not result in [z] > [s], so it left [z] behind.

[conlangernoob]

Thanks, bradrn for the tips!

I implemented a few of your suggestions:

1. The table of consonant frequencies and blend frequencies are mainly probabilities for me to use when I generate words in the akana generator.
2. Yes, the articles are independent words.
3. I removed the collective number, but I initially planned for it to mark words that don’t really have a singular like “rice”.
4. I think a few languages have a future/nonfuture split.
5. I revised my verb section. Here it is:
Verbs can be inflected in the following ways:
Infinitive
Habitual
Future
Imperfect
Perfect
There are three verb moods that can be expressed through particles that follow the verb (indicative is unmarked):
Imperative mood
Optative mood
Potential mood
Verbs agree with second person nominative/ergative, third person and first person accusative/absolutives.
6. No, my language does not distinguish proximity in demonstratives.

[Travis B.]

Imperative mood

I should note that it is extremely common to use the bare stem or at most a minimally-inflected form of a verb as its 2nd singular imperative, so I would hesitate to use a separate particle or auxiliary verb for expressing them.

[conlangernoob]

Good idea! I will get rid of the imperative particle, and just express it by removing the subject, although will having a split alignment make things tricky?

[Zju]

Although I’ve yet to see a natlang with a future/nonfuture split…

Isn't that just a less common term for irrealis/realis split? Or a specific usage thereof?

Irrealis categories are broader than future, and some languages with an irrealis don’t use it for the future (e.g. Caddo, at least according to Palmer’s Mood and Modality), so they’re definitely not the same. I assume there would be a strong similarity between the two, though.

Yeah I meant fut - non fut opposition is fine and can be kept if e.g. imperatives, conditionals, infinitives etc. are tagged along with the future form of the category.