Conlang Random Thread

[Xwtek]

Dunno if this would go better in linguistics since it deals with realism based on natlangs, but it is for a conlang so:

How realistic would it be for a language to go from SOV to VSO, possibly by fronting the verb for some kind of emphasis? What other parts of grammar would be likely to change early on?

Usually by backgrounding argument. An example of language currently going toward VSO is Spoken French, where the word order is still SVO, but you still can background an argument by putting a pronoun in place of a noun, and moving the noun to the end of sentence. Then you can make that obligatory, so the pronoun becomes personal affixes

[Raphael]

Another stupid newbie question: what do you call a noun that would be in genitive in a language that has genitive, if you're talking about a language that doesn't have genitive?

[Vijay]

The possessor? I'm not sure whether I understood the question.

[Raphael]

The possessor? I'm not sure whether I understood the question.

Suppose there's an isolating language that doesn't even mark possessive the way English does, but relies entirely on word order to indicate possessive relations. (To be honest, I don't know enough about linguistics yet to know whether such languages exist.) Suppose you'd translate the phrase "Sandra's computer" into that language. Now, when discussing syntax, what are the correct syntax terms for the words "Sandra" and "computer"?

[Vijay]

Okay, then I guess I did understand the question. Sandra is the possessor, and the computer is the possessum.

[Raphael]

Okay, then I guess I did understand the question. Sandra is the possessor, and the computer is the possessum.

Thank you!

[masako]

So, I derived a syllabary for Classical Nahuatl based on glyphs that have been translated:



Think of it as a kind of Hiragana for Nahuatl.

It's still under development. More to follow.

[Xwtek]

So, I derived a syllabary for Classical Nahuatl based on glyphs that have been translated:



Think of it as a kind of Hiragana for Nahuatl.

It's still under development. More to follow.

The glyph look mayan to me

[Frislander]

You know it seems to me that pre-nasalised stops are super-common, more so even than ejectives. They're found everywhere from Amazonia to Africa to South-East-Asia to Oceania and other random spots inbetween, whereas ejectives are much more limited in distribution, being common in Western North America, the Caucasus, the Andes, Ethiopia, South Africa and that's basically it aside from Yapese. Yet I see pre-nasalised stops far less often in conlangs than ejectives. I wonder why that is?

[masako]

You know it seems to me that pre-nasalised stops are super-common, more so even than ejectives. They're found everywhere from Amazonia to Africa to South-East-Asia to Oceania and other random spots inbetween, whereas ejectives are much more limited in distribution, being common in Western North America, the Caucasus, the Andes, Ethiopia, South Africa and that's basically it aside from Yapese. Yet I see pre-nasalised stops far less often in conlangs than ejectives. I wonder why that is?

I don't know how to answer your question, but I know that I purposely avoided ejectives and included pre-nasalized stops for this very reason. I took the pre-nasalized stops mostly from Bantu languages, but some of the vocabulary I wanted to incorporate into Kala came from Australian Aboriginal languages which have PNS, at least sparingly.

Personally, the inclusion of ejectives seems to me to be an attempt at making a conlang appear more "alien" or "unique".

[masako]

...

The glyph look Mayan to me

The ones I made, or the ones I used for derivation? 'Cause those images came from this (PDF).

[Nortaneous]

You know it seems to me that pre-nasalised stops are super-common, more so even than ejectives. They're found everywhere from Amazonia to Africa to South-East-Asia to Oceania and other random spots inbetween, whereas ejectives are much more limited in distribution, being common in Western North America, the Caucasus, the Andes, Ethiopia, South Africa and that's basically it aside from Yapese. Yet I see pre-nasalised stops far less often in conlangs than ejectives. I wonder why that is?

Between this and the "where are the isolating conlangs?" thread I gotta start documenting my conlangs more, geez

(the reason I don't is that I do not understand syntax at all)

(but most of Macro-Vengic develops prenasalized stops -- of the two main languages, Zzyxwqnp develops them from nasals before oral vowels, and Hlu gets them from cluster reduction after unstressed vowel loss -- whereas aside from Kannow I don't think I have any with ejectives)

[Pabappa]

I use prenasalized stops a lot. My major conlangs don't have them, but I've considered having it such that syllables in Poswa front load nasal+stop clusters, so e.g. tampa would be /ta.mpa/ just as it is in the languages with the true prenasals.

I also have some languages with ejectives, but here again my main conlangs don't have them.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I prefer post-nasalised stops to pre-. /bmaɪ/, /dnai/, /gŋaɪ/. Even before I knew what they were called.

[Raholeun]

I prefer post-nasalised stops to pre-. /bmaɪ/, /dnai/, /gŋaɪ/. Even before I knew what they were called.

Why not both? You might like the Hup language from the Nadahup family. They really go bonkers: "In oral environments, voiced stops are pre-nasalized in morpheme-initial position, post-nasalized in morpheme-final position, and may be medially nasalized at morpheme boundaries". That's how words like /bɨg/ 'long time' get realized as [ᵐbɨgᵑ] and /tog-ot/ 'daughter-OBL' as [togᵑ.ᵑgot]. It also does a similar thing with palatals, which I think was cute.

[Xwtek]

...

The glyph look Mayan to me

The ones I made, or the ones I used for derivation? 'Cause those images came from this (PDF).

The ones you made. But then that's because I think only Mayan carve a letter. Nahuatl mostly draw on parchment I think my Mesoamerican knowledge is lacking, so take this with a grain of salt.

[Nortaneous]

𝕺𝕽𝕴𝕲𝕴𝕹𝕾 𝕺𝕱 𝕻𝕽𝕰𝕹𝕬𝕾𝕬𝕷𝕴𝖅𝕰𝕯 𝕮𝕺𝕹𝕾𝕺𝕹𝕬𝕹𝕿𝕾 𝕴𝕹 𝖄𝕰 𝕷𝕬𝕹𝕲𝖀𝕬𝕲𝕰𝕾 𝕺𝕱 𝖄𝕰 𝕬𝕷𝕷𝕺𝕾𝕻𝕳𝕰𝕽𝕰
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Zzyxwqnp developed prenasalized stops from NP clusters, but then lost voiced plosives as part of tonogenesis, shifted its prenasalized series to a new voiced series, and then developed new prenasalized stops from partial denasalization of nasals before oral vowels.

Hlu developed them from NP clusters, and clusters of a nasal and a voiced fricative.

Amqoli has to be analyzed as having prenasalized consonants, since [n] is usually an allophone of /l/, but all of md- nd- ld- contrast. This is, of course, because *n > l in almost all environments, so again they're from clusters.

Arve developed them from clusters of N and just about anything, but then shifted them all to trills. (Velar prenasalized stops became uvular trills.) Then voiceless trills became plain fricatives, except /r̥/, and ʀ can also be realized as a fricative. The bilabial trill is prescribed for the standard, but dialects merge it with any of /w v m/. Arve doesn't currently have prenasalized stops.

Insular Kett doesn't have prenasalized stops, but does have postnasalized stops, which are from geminate nasals and coalescence of the topic marker -an.

Gehui has a voiced series that is probably realized as prenasalized since it contrasts with implosives. It also doesn't have time depth. The consonant inventory is dramatically reduced in most of the descendants -- Hathe has eleven consonants. So prenasalized stops are generally lost.

[Xwtek]

Can a SOV language becomes prefixal polysynthetic language also with SOV word order?

[malloc]

Can a SOV language becomes prefixal polysynthetic language also with SOV word order?

From what I understand, Navajo is basically SOV (although more precisely the word order follows animacy) and very heavily prefixing.

[Xwtek]

Can a SOV language becomes prefixal polysynthetic language also with SOV word order?

From what I understand, Navajo is basically SOV (although more precisely the word order follows animacy) and very heavily prefixing.

No, I mean a language moves from nonpolysynthetic to polysynthetic. But the word order before and after polysynthesis remains SOV. In my conlang, Asen'to is heavily prefixing polysynthetic language. However, it's recent innovation because the proto Northern Mataka is fusional just like modern German. Proto Athabascan, on other hand, is just as polysynthetic as its descendant. Nahuatl also moves from a more isolating language to a polysynthetic language, however, it also changes the word order at the same time.

The general idea is proto Northern Mataka is a fusional language, like modern Europe languages. However, most of its descendant is an agglutinative polysynthetic languages except for its most (grammatically) conservative language.