Conlang Random Thread

[Moose-tache]

I'm willing to bet that things of the "previous" word order hang around later the closer they are to the head of the phrase.

For example, if you have an SOV language where the noun phrase is ( ( adjective ( noun ) ) ) postposition ), the postposition to preposition swap is more likely to happen than the adj-noun to noun-adj swap. Something actually attached to the head of the phrase, like a suffix or clitic, can retain the previous order for milllennia.

[jal]

Well consider German and Dutch - while they are V2, verbs otherwise typically go to the end of a clause.

I very much doubt that is a remnant of SOVness.


JAL

[bradrn]

Well consider German and Dutch - while they are V2, verbs otherwise typically go to the end of a clause.

I very much doubt that is a remnant of SOVness.

Why? The explanation I’ve seen is that verbs became treated similarly to second-position clitics and consequently moved from clause-final position to second position, while remaining at the end of the clause when they didn’t move.

[jal]

Why? The explanation I’ve seen is that verbs became treated similarly to second-position clitics and consequently moved from clause-final position to second position, while remaining at the end of the clause when they didn’t move.

There's so much weirdness going on with clause order in those languages, that I found it unlikely at first glance. But then again, I might be very wrong.


JAL

[foxcatdog]

I've come up with a few relics of SOVness or head final ness
*van from *bane is reinterpreted from an inanimate nominative marker to a passive marker which is cliticised to the verb it is also a general descendant of postpositions
The "weak" causative appears *laf from *lapa appears before the verb as a prefix in a sentence which most naturally would come out SOV since it derives from a postposition *pana
In general we have postpositions and not prepositions
1 and 2 object markers precede the verb through this is a retention from the proto language as it already had them as prefixes in these positions
In general postpositioniness.

[foxcatdog]

Other notes
The standard possesive construction in most languages of Marians family is Head + Genitive Pronoun + Possesor this is in imitation of Head + Genitive Preposition + Possessor in the language family which has influenced them
This is influenced by their shift to SVO since pronoun posssessed phrases shifted to head initial more quickly then adpositional phrases and in fact adpositions fronting is not seen in many languages
Marianic and many others even has the forms guitar + 1.sing.gen + father + 1.sg.gen for something like "my father's guitar"
The family (i have a draft of it btw) which influenced this shift also used relational nouns extensively so you get Preposition/Relational noun + (Genitive could go hear) + Noun + (Genitive could also go here in more conservative languages) in related languages through these are generally absent from Marian
Marianic and to a lesser extent other southeastern languages underwent the shift in pronouns and demonstratives of Dative > Genitive > Accusative and also in Southeastern languages shortened versions of these demonstratives as articles. Marian doesn't retain them but some have also undergone shifts in the Instrumental and Locative demonstratives/pronouns
(Also Marianic only distinguishes) case in demonstratives/pronouns
Marian and to some degree other Southeastern languages reduce the original accusative from *na to *a and have extended its usage to animate nouns
The Marianic passive functions as an ergative in many languages another shift from its original function to mark a subject inanimate
SVOness has shifted across the entire east as the human and dwarvish languages have generally shifted to it in more recent times. The catkin languages which have deeply influenced Marian are also in the process of a shift to SVO through some speculate this is due to the influence of the Chienna languages of the Empire of the Sun which are SVO which has began more extensive trade and communication with such languages.

[foxcatdog]

Marian's endonym is maric aveesi with Aveesi most likely being from proto *abaśi+masi which is "to dance" + "to make" reflexed as *aavi (proto marianic *x from *ś is generally inconsistent in its reflexion of length postconsonantally) and *més respectively when alone. Outside of the cities you reverse the order of these two elements but in the cities ethonological elements always come first. It's alternate name is né kal dekina "the musical speech" from *neiwi kala diheke napawa "dem.f tongue to.make.music create" which derives from its sing songy rhythm created by non phonmeic pitch accent. Words beginning with voiceless consonants have a HHL pitch while words beginning with voiced consonants have a LHH pitch (dialectally you see HLL/LLH and HLL/LHH). There is no sign of its phonemicisation as voiceless stops are lightly aspirated and voiced stops are fully voiced. This pitch accent is shared with most other Marianic languages and some other languages of its family have phonemic pitch accent. If you were wondering why *kal and *mar haven't undergone the chain shift to *o it's because in the former it is before a lateral and in the latter its in contact with a labial.

[linguistcat]

How likely is it for a language game used for obfuscation in a small population to become it's own language with changes to grammar and separate sound changes from the main language it was based from? Or basically could something go from being actively used to hide the meaning of conversations in one language to developing on it's own into a new language?

I'm thinking stuff more like Cockney Rhyming Slang than Pig Latin, but might include changes similar to the latter as well.

[Creyeditor]

Maybe Verlan is a good example. I guess it started out as a language game but I feel like a significant portion of French slang and colloquial language vocabulary is derived from it.

[Man in Space]

How likely is it for a language game used for obfuscation in a small population to become it's own language with changes to grammar and separate sound changes from the main language it was based from? Or basically could something go from being actively used to hide the meaning of conversations in one language to developing on it's own into a new language?

I'm thinking stuff more like Cockney Rhyming Slang than Pig Latinq, but might include changes similar to the latter as well.

You might check out Vietnamese nói lái.

[linguistcat]

Thanks both of you this gives me a few more options and I'll see what works for my conlang ^^

[missals]

Today I was imagining a language in the vein of Brahui or Albanian, or perhaps Romani or Ossetian, in that it would be either an isolate (or an "isolate within the family"), or geographically far-removed from the rest of its family, having been exposed to many layers of loanwords and profound influence from other languages - but not enough to be considered a mixed language, if only in that no one other language would dominate it enough to be the principal relexifier. Basically it would retain a (very) small core of true inherited reflexes from the ancestor language, both in the basic vocabulary and the grammatical elements, and each layer of loanwords would essentially trace its history by the sound changes they were exposed to. So, rather like Brahui or Albanian but taken to an even greater extreme.

And if I were to give it an actual "in-world" history, I like to imagine that it wouldn't be documented or written down until extremely late, maybe not even until the 20th century, thus making its external history a perplexing matter that has to be reconstructed from internal evidence. And, particularly, it would be amusing if it were an Indo-European language, or a member of some other well-known language family of Eurasia.

How likely is it for a language game used for obfuscation in a small population to become it's own language with changes to grammar and separate sound changes from the main language it was based from? Or basically could something go from being actively used to hide the meaning of conversations in one language to developing on it's own into a new language?

I'm thinking stuff more like Cockney Rhyming Slang than Pig Latin, but might include changes similar to the latter as well.

It is apparently thought that the Äynu language in northwestern China originated as a cryptolect, i.e., a cant or "secret language". The Iban language of Sarawak (see p. 148 in Blust's The Austronesian Languages) also has a number of common lexical items whose semantics appear to be the inverse of cognates in other languages and their shared etymon, e.g. Malay kampoŋ 'hamlet, village' and Iban kampoŋ 'forest never yet cleared', suggesting that these meanings originated as part of a language game, but eventually entered common usage.

[bradrn]

Today I was imagining a language in the vein of Brahui or Albanian, or perhaps Romani or Ossetian, in that it would be either an isolate (or an "isolate within the family"), or geographically far-removed from the rest of its family, having been exposed to many layers of loanwords and profound influence from other languages - but not enough to be considered a mixed language, if only in that no one other language would dominate it enough to be the principal relexifier. Basically it would retain a (very) small core of true inherited reflexes from the ancestor language, both in the basic vocabulary and the grammatical elements, and each layer of loanwords would essentially trace its history by the sound changes they were exposed to. So, rather like Brahui or Albanian but taken to an even greater extreme.

Sounds a bit like Bai.

[linguistcat]

How likely is it for a language game used for obfuscation in a small population to become it's own language with changes to grammar and separate sound changes from the main language it was based from? Or basically could something go from being actively used to hide the meaning of conversations in one language to developing on it's own into a new language?

I'm thinking stuff more like Cockney Rhyming Slang than Pig Latin, but might include changes similar to the latter as well.

It is apparently thought that the Äynu language in northwestern China originated as a cryptolect, i.e., a cant or "secret language". The Iban language of Sarawak (see p. 148 in Blust's The Austronesian Languages) also has a number of common lexical items whose semantics appear to be the inverse of cognates in other languages and their shared etymon, e.g. Malay kampoŋ 'hamlet, village' and Iban kampoŋ 'forest never yet cleared', suggesting that these meanings originated as part of a language game, but eventually entered common usage.

Thanks! I had forgotten the term cryptolect, and didn't know hardly anything about Austronesian Languages let alone cryptolects of them.

[Emily]

is this where we post stupid joke conlangs we make that don't deserve their own threads or is there somewhere else they should go

[elgis]

I think anything goes in the random threads. It should be okay to post stupid joke conlangs here.

[fusijui]

Today I was imagining a language in the vein of Brahui or Albanian, or perhaps Romani or Ossetian, in that it would be either an isolate (or an "isolate within the family"), or geographically far-removed from the rest of its family, having been exposed to many layers of loanwords and profound influence from other languages - but not enough to be considered a mixed language, if only in that no one other language would dominate it enough to be the principal relexifier. Basically it would retain a (very) small core of true inherited reflexes from the ancestor language, both in the basic vocabulary and the grammatical elements, and each layer of loanwords would essentially trace its history by the sound changes they were exposed to. So, rather like Brahui or Albanian but taken to an even greater extreme.

And if I were to give it an actual "in-world" history, I like to imagine that it wouldn't be documented or written down until extremely late, maybe not even until the 20th century, thus making its external history a perplexing matter that has to be reconstructed from internal evidence. And, particularly, it would be amusing if it were an Indo-European language, or a member of some other well-known language family of Eurasia.

You're describing my conlanging habits pretty well, actually Have you checked out the League of Lost Languages (on FrathWiki IIRC)? It had similar interests, but I think with a more 'isolates & lost paleolanguages' focus.

I gave up on it long ago, but for a while I was fiddling with a "counter-'Gypsy'" language, carried by Late Egyptian speakers eastward. (Eventually I admitted to myself that I enjoyed the <i>idea</i> of it more than the results. And Coptic just isn't as cool as I thought it would be.)

[Emily]

I think anything goes in the random threads. It should be okay to post stupid joke conlangs here.

all righty then

fricatives.png (251.4 KiB) Viewed 2720 times

phonology
C = ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ h ɦ
S = syllabic versions of C

syllable structure: (C)S(C). S+S can sometimes be found within plain roots, but is much more common at the confluence of root and affix

all phonemes across a root match voicing to each other; all inflection affixes and most derivational affixes assimilate to voicing of root, but some derivational affixes don't

haven't worked out dissimilations to avoid "geminated" consonants but if i were being more serious with this i would

morphology
OAF is generally agglutinating and its inflections are suffixes

nouns
basic structure of a noun is ROOT + NUM + CASE

• sg: ∅
• pl: ɸ/β

• nom: ∅
• voc: x/ɣ
• acc: ç/ʝ
• dat: s/z
• gen: χ/ʁ
• inst: ʃ/ʒ

whether these endings are consonantal or syllabic depend on the ending of the root.

root ends in	endings	inflection(s)
S	num	C
S	case	C
S	num + case	C + S
C	num	S
C	case	S
C	num + case	S + C

examples:

	/sf̩/ "man"	/ɣ̍z/ "woman"
nom sg	sf̩	ɣ̍z
nom pl	sf̩ɸ	ɣ̍zβ̩
voc sg	sf̩x	ɣ̍zɣ̍
voc pl	sf̩ɸx̩	ɣ̍zβ̩ɣ

pronouns
pronouns take the same case suffixes as nouns, but the plurals are part of the root

• 1sg: ʃ̩θ
• 1pl excl: ʒ̍ð
• 1pl incl: ʒð̩
• 2sg: x̩f
• 2pl: ɣ̍v
• 3sg animate: s̩χ
• 3pl animate: z̩ʁ
• 3sg inanimate: ʂ̍χ
• 3pl inanimate: ʐ̍ʁ
  
  there are no articles

verbs
verbs conjugate for tense/mood only, not for person or number

• past: f/v
• present: ∅
• future: θ/ð
• imperative: ʂ/ʐ

syntax
the basic word order is SVO. adjectives precede the noun, and do not inflect unless they are standing in for a noun (e.g. "red" meaning "the red one").

there are no participles. relative clauses immediately follow the head noun. they begin with the uninflected particle /h̩s/ (glossed below as "that") followed by an inflected pronoun, then the remainder of the clause:

• "i killed the man (who) i saw" (/ɕx̩θ/ "kill", /ʒɣ̍/ "see"):

  • ʃ̩θ ɕx̩θf̩ sf̩ç h̩s s̩χç̍ ʃ̩θ ʒɣ̍v

    1SG kill-PAST man-ACC that 3SG.ANIM-ACC 1SG see-PAST

• "i killed the man who saw me":

  • ʃ̩θ ɕx̩θf̩ sf̩ç h̩s s̩χ ʒɣ̍v ʃ̩θç̍

    1SG kill-PAST man-ACC that 3SG.ANIM see-PAST 1SG-ACC

[Man in Space]

I have found an amusing plural in Old Central Tim Ar:

jiarâhi /xi̯aˈɹɨhi/ pl. ogerâng /oˈgeɹɨŋ/ 'province'

This is entirely regular, through sound change.

[WeepingElf]

Bizarre.