Conlang Random Thread

[Ahzoh]

I don't know how my examples don't make it very clear that I mark relativization on the verb, turning said verb into be a relative clause […]

They do make that clear. What isn’t clear to me is what that has to do with restrictions on which NPs can be extracted out of that relative clause.

Well it turns out it didn't since I can still have "king-ABS [people-ABS unite-REL]"

Though, your post in the thread about Chukchi implied that the above is not allowed, with the example [melotalɣ-ən piri-lʔ-ən] ʔətt-ən "the dog that caught the hare" being considered invalid and requiring antipassivization.

[bradrn]

I don't know how my examples don't make it very clear that I mark relativization on the verb, turning said verb into be a relative clause […]

They do make that clear. What isn’t clear to me is what that has to do with restrictions on which NPs can be extracted out of that relative clause.

Well it turns out it didn't since I could still have "king-ABS [people-ABS unite-REL]"

Though, your post in the thread about Chukchi implied that the above is not allowed, with the example [melotalɣ-ən piri-lʔ-ən] ʔətt-ən "the dog that caught the hare" being considered unallowed for some reason.

Indeed, because in Chukchi you can only relativise the absolutive argument (S or O). In the non-relativised sentence, ‘the dog(ERG) caught the hare(ABS)’, the dog is A, so it can’t be relativised.

Similarly, if Vrkhazhian only allows relativising the absolutive argument — which seems reasonable to me, considering what else you’ve said about it — you could not say *‘king-ABS [people-ABS unite-REL]’, because that would be relativising the A argument of ‘unite’. You would have to apply an antipassive, and say ‘king-ABS [for-PREP people-ERG unite-ANTIP-REL]’. But that has nothing to do with the verb: it’s because of restrictions on relativising the NPs.

[Ahzoh]

Indeed, because in Chukchi you can only relativise the absolutive argument (S or O). In the non-relativised sentence, ‘the dog(ERG) caught the hare(ABS)’, the dog is A, so it can’t be relativised.

Similarly, if Vrkhazhian only allows relativising the absolutive argument — which seems reasonable to me, considering what else you’ve said about it — you could not say *‘king-ABS [people-ABS unite-REL]’, because that would be relativising the A argument of ‘unite’. You would have to apply an antipassive, and say ‘king-ABS [for-PREP people-ERG unite-ANTIP-REL]’. But that has nothing to do with the verb: it’s because of restrictions on relativising the NPs.

Well I do not like that outcome; if I could only relativize one and only one argument, I do not like that it'd have to be the S/P. Luckily there seems to be no inherent reason why I can't relativize the A argument and that my structures can allow either S/P or A arguments to be relativized.

[bradrn]

Indeed, because in Chukchi you can only relativise the absolutive argument (S or O). In the non-relativised sentence, ‘the dog(ERG) caught the hare(ABS)’, the dog is A, so it can’t be relativised.

Similarly, if Vrkhazhian only allows relativising the absolutive argument — which seems reasonable to me, considering what else you’ve said about it — you could not say *‘king-ABS [people-ABS unite-REL]’, because that would be relativising the A argument of ‘unite’. You would have to apply an antipassive, and say ‘king-ABS [for-PREP people-ERG unite-ANTIP-REL]’. But that has nothing to do with the verb: it’s because of restrictions on relativising the NPs.

Well I do not like that outcome; if I could only relativize one and only one argument, I do not like that it'd have to be the S/P. Luckily there seems to be no inherent reason why I can't relativize the A argument and that my structures can allow either S/P or A arguments to be relativized.

Indeed, it’s perfectly acceptable for a language to allow relativising all arguments. Indeed, that’s what most languages do. But I thought you said you wanted your language to have restrictions on relativisation.

[Ahzoh]

Indeed, it’s perfectly acceptable for a language to allow relativising all arguments. Indeed, that’s what most languages do. But I thought you said you wanted your language to have restrictions on relativisation.

Not if it means I can only relativize the absolutive argument (without additional modifications).

[bradrn]

Indeed, it’s perfectly acceptable for a language to allow relativising all arguments. Indeed, that’s what most languages do. But I thought you said you wanted your language to have restrictions on relativisation.

Not if it means I can only relativize the absolutive argument (without additional modifications).

I mean, if you really want, you could declare that only the nominative argument can be relativised in Vrkhazhian. I don’t know of any language with animacy-based alignment where that occurs, and it seems a little self-contradictory to me, but it’s your conlang after all.

[WeepingElf]

The closest to a language with active-stative alignment expressed by case marking I am aware of is Georgian.

Batsbi is straightforwardly active-stative with case-marking. There’s also a bunch of supposedly ‘ergative’ languages which really have some form of active-stative alignment: most prominently Basque and Tibetan. (You could even argue that it’s because those ones use case-marking that they often aren’t called ‘active-stative’.)

Yes. These languages are usually considered ergative with some irregularities, but Batsbi even seems to be fluid-S. I don't know any of these languages well enough to say much about them, though. And there is some evidence that Early PIE may also have been an active-stative language of this kind, but this is very uncertain (though I explore this possibility in my Hesperic languages, specifically the Albic ones). Hittite has a split between accusative marking on animate nouns and ergative marking on inanimate ones, though the ergative case is quite clearly an innovation; but other IE languages have, as is well known, a nominative/accusative syncretism on neuter nouns, and many of them tend to avoid neuter transitive subjects. Also, there are two sets of personal endings which appear to have been associated with active and stative subjects, respectively, at an early stage. All of this may be explained by an active-stative alignment in Early PIE or Pre-PIE.

The existence of these languages shows that active-stative alignment can be expressed by case marking, so the former CONLANG list member I had that beef with was wrong - or rather, we were talking about different kinds of active-stative languages.

This rareness of active-stative case systems is certainly the reason why there are no generally accepted naming conventions for such cases […]

I’d say ‘nominative’ and ‘absolutive’ are quite standard choices. In languages where active situations are considered uncommon, the former has often been called ‘agentive’ (especially in Sino-Tibetan), or even ‘ergative’.

Fair.

This whole topic just demonstrates my anxiety towards anything involving alignments that aren't Nom-Acc. It requires so much thinking and considerations of minute aspects that I otherwise wouldn't have to think too hard about if I stuck to vanilla Nom-Acc.

Not really, you just have to learn how to reason about them. This is why I wrote a thread about alignment systems — it’s not perfect, but I’ll still recommend reading it.

I arrived at the active-stative alignment of my main conlang project when trying to understand ergativity (when I joined CONLANG in 2000, the ergative wave of the late 1990s was just ebbing off), and found that it feels very natural to me.

[bradrn]

Yes. These languages are usually considered ergative with some irregularities, but Batsbi even seems to be fluid-S.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone call Batsbi ‘ergative’ — the references I’ve seen have always labeled it fluid-S. Not only that, in my experience it’s pretty much the standard go-to example of a fluid-S language. It’s quite different to the Basque and Tibetan situation, where the ‘ergative’ is only rarely used for A arguments.

[WeepingElf]

Yes. These languages are usually considered ergative with some irregularities, but Batsbi even seems to be fluid-S.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone call Batsbi ‘ergative’ — the references I’ve seen have always labeled it fluid-S. Not only that, in my experience it’s pretty much the standard go-to example of a fluid-S language. It’s quite different to the Basque and Tibetan situation, where the ‘ergative’ is only rarely used for A arguments.

Ah, yes.

[Jonlang]

I've been chewing over the possibility of creating a conlang with Greek-ish-style consonants (but lacking /v/, /ð/, and /ɣ/ and including /j/) and having a Biblical Hebrew style vowel system of a–i–u, ā–ī–ū–ō–ē where ō and ē come from older diphthongs au/aw, ai/aj. Mostly because it's different to what I've done, involves more voiceless consonants than I usually go for, includes /z/ which I usually avoid, and has a more restrictive vowel system than I am used to working with, because I pretty much always go for 5 vowels, 2-3 lengths (which may actually be difference in quality but regarded as length), and 10+ diphthongs.

I'm thinking:

/p t k/
/b d g/
/f θ x/ <f,ph th kh>
/m n/
/s z/
/l r j/
/h/

• /f θ x/ <ph th kh> come from older aspirated plosives. /f/ <f> however comes from older /ɸ/. <kh> is used instead of <ch> because 1. I use <c ch> in other conlangs for /k x/, and 2. /k/ is <k> so the corresponding fricative uses <kh>.
• /h/ can only occur in syllable onsets and is written as a diacritic in the native script (which doesn't actually exist) - this can be romanised by the acute diacritic or by <h>; I prefer the use of the diacritic because 1. it is more Greek-y, and 2. it does not clash with <ph th kh>. However, the use of the acute with a macron or circumflex is kinda ugly and I tend then to use <h> but whatever. Maybe the double acute thingy from Hungarian would be better?
• /l r/ have voiceless allophones when initial, but this is not represented in the romanisation.
• /n/ has the allophone [ŋ] before a velar consonant.
• Long vowels can be written with a macron or a circumflex, but never an acute.

This is likely to be a short-lived project because I don't know enough about Greek or Hebrew. This is not intended to be a triconsonantal Semitic style conlang, nor particularly based on Greek grammar. Any further points of grammar are likely to be quite uninspiring and unapologetically IE-looking, I'm afraid. Though influence from Celtic, Latin, and Germanic are banned, I will have to look elsewhere.

[Ahzoh]

This is likely to be a short-lived project because I don't know enough about Greek or Hebrew. This is not intended to be a triconsonantal Semitic style conlang, nor particularly based on Greek grammar. Any further points of grammar are likely to be quite uninspiring and unapologetically IE-looking, I'm afraid. Though influence from Celtic, Latin, and Germanic are banned, I will have to look elsewhere.

You could try incorporating nominal TAM or do what Elamite does and have nominal suffixes that indicate noun class, number and person.

[Ahzoh]

I think I need the help of a tone expert, cuz I honestly don't know how I'm gonna go about developing tone in another of my conlangs, Ossmalic.

I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three.

Cuz I'm lookin at a pre-tonal syllable structure of (F)(C)V(C) where
F = /s x/
C = /m n̪ p b t̪ d̪ k g s x l j w/
V = /ɐ æ ɒ e ø i y ɤ o ɯ u i̯æ i̯e y̯ɒ y̯ø ɯ̯æ ɯ̯ɤ u̯ɒ u̯o/

I haven't really come up with words yet except for names and some nouns in the target language: /os.smal/ "White Mountain", /mag.xu̯ɑ.laj/ "Black Horse", /tʲil.mad.sʲaj/ "Evil One", /sʲol/ "river" and /as.sʲu.taj/ "bear". The voicing of some phonemes are tentative depending on whether coda obstruents can simply devoice regardless of environment.

[bradrn]

I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three.

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

[Ahzoh]

I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three.

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

Thanks, I'll give it a read.

[WeepingElf]

I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three.

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

Thank you! That looks very interesting and useful (from a first glance at it).

[TomHChappell]

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

I think this resource should be linked to from a “Resources” thread!

[Ahzoh]

I've read a reddit guide on tonogenesis but it doesn't tell you how to manifest tones from closed syllables or syllables with dipthongs or syllables with onset clusters or all three.

I was trying to write up something, but in the process I discovered this paper which looks quite comprehensive: https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2022.2157675. It looks like it should answer most of your questions. (I can send you a PDF if you can’t access it.)

I've gone and read through it and it was quite helpful, though it could not tell me much about the behaviour of simple versus complex onsets. What I did glean from it led me to either believe I could have it like, say, /sda/ > /dá/ while /da/ > /tà/ and /sa/ > /sà/.
I'm quite pleased with what I came up with.

e.g.
ta → tá
da → tà
a.ta → à.tá
a.da → à.dà
os.smal → òs.mál
os.ste.ne → òs.té.nè
os.xba.ti → òs.bá.tí
mag.xua.laj → màk.xwǎ.lǎj
as.su.taj → às.sù.táj

And I can have it so the writing is still like how it was pretonal.

Now to figure what to do when say three or more syllables have the same tone or two+ syllables with rising or falling tone are next to each other. Unlike Mandarin, this is supposed to be an agglutinating language and also I don't really want the wacky complex tone system that Sino-Tibetan (and Vietnamese) languages have.

[bradrn]

Now to figure what to do when say three or more syllables have the same tone or two+ syllables with rising or falling tone are next to each other. Unlike Mandarin, this is supposed to be an agglutinating language and also I don't really want the wacky complex tone system that Sino-Tibetan (and Vietnamese) languages have.

For that kind of stuff, I highly recommend Yip’s book Tone. It has a lot of great information about tone sandhi, autosegmental analysis, and so on. (Its only problem is that it relies heavily on Optimality Theory, but that’s not a huge issue.)

[Darren]

For that kind of stuff, I highly recommend Yip’s book Tone. It has a lot of great information about tone sandhi, autosegmental analysis, and so on. (Its only problem is that it relies heavily on Optimality Theory, but that’s not a huge issue.)

What actually *is* Optimality Theory? Is it something worth learning?

[bradrn]

For that kind of stuff, I highly recommend Yip’s book Tone. It has a lot of great information about tone sandhi, autosegmental analysis, and so on. (Its only problem is that it relies heavily on Optimality Theory, but that’s not a huge issue.)

What actually *is* Optimality Theory? Is it something worth learning?

In brief, it’s a theoretical framework for phonology which posits that surface forms are generated as the most ‘optimal’ form satisfying a language-specific ranking of constraints. I find it one of the less implausible formal theories, but it probably has little utility for conlanging.

(Although you may be interested to know that the tonal system of the protolang from last year’s Akana relay was one which I originally devised along Optimality-Theoretic principles.)