What have you accomplished today?

[Travis B.]

I have added more to my beginnings of a grammar, including a good number of example sentences.

[TomHChappell]

I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

(Or, if you want palatalization to be perseverative rather than anticipatory, after close vowels.)

….

It might not matter what I think makes more sense.

[WeepingElf]

I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

I don't think so. Palatalization before front vowels is very much a thing; I don't know any language that palatalizes before close vowels. You may be thinking of the RUKI rule in Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, which backs (not palatalizes; the outcomes in Indo-Aryan are retroflex, and in Slavic, velar) /s/ after close vowels, velar stops and /r/.

[Creyeditor]

Japanese palatalizes before high vowels, right?

[Travis B.]

Japanese palatalizes before high vowels, right?

You're thinking of the realization of /t/ as [ts] before /ɯ/, which is distinct from the palatalization before /i/ and /iː/ or, historically, /e/ and /eː/* in Japanese.

Edit: * before Early Modern Japanese, present-day /se/ and /ze/ were palatalized, presumably as [ɕe] and [ʑe].

[Travis B.]

I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

(Or, if you want palatalization to be perseverative rather than anticipatory, after close vowels.)

….

It might not matter what I think makes more sense.

Palatalization before front vowels as a class is very common crosslinguistically. It happened in Romance, Slavic, Anglo-Frisian, and Japanese (even though it has since been reversed before /e/ and /eː/) to give a few examples off the top of my head.

[Man in Space]

All the two-consonant CC onsets are accounted for; only the triconsonantal onsets are left. We're in the home stretch now.

[Travis B.]

I have added more example sentences to my Rihalle Kaafi grammar.

[Man in Space]

I might go back to make alternate/multiple phonetic radicals for some of the onsets later, but other than that…Common Caber has a full set of phonetic radicals (407 or so).

[Travis B.]

I wrote non-broken-up versions of the glosses in my Rihalle Kaafi grammar, and also reworked my independent pronouns because I really did not like how they were before.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I've (mostly) gotten an SCA working on my website, at Demotic Lulani Diachrony. Just gotta deal with pesky consonant clusters, and I'll be ready to unleash it on the actual vocabulary of the parent language.

Or, if you're reading this from the future, I did unleash it thus, and am probably working on some other language's evolution. You'll be able to tell by the wordlist -- if all the input words are of the same structure, I'm still testing. Hopefully they'll be actual High Lulani > Demotic words eventually.

[bradrn]

I've (mostly) gotten an SCA working on my website, at Demotic Lulani Diachrony. Just gotta deal with pesky consonant clusters, and I'll be ready to unleash it on the actual vocabulary of the parent language.

I’m curious to know why you made your own, rather than using someone else’s? (For instance — mentioning it purely as a random example — mine?)

[Travis B.]

I've (mostly) gotten an SCA working on my website, at Demotic Lulani Diachrony. Just gotta deal with pesky consonant clusters, and I'll be ready to unleash it on the actual vocabulary of the parent language.

I’m curious to know why you made your own, rather than using someone else’s? (For instance — mentioning it purely as a random example — mine?)

Sometimes people just like writing software for its own sake. I created my own Forth, even though there are a zillion of Forths out there, including on each of the platforms I target (even though, to my knowledge, my Forth was the first to target the RP2350).

[Ryan of Tinellb]

I do like coding for it's own sake, but also there's always some feature of existing software that I'd like to be different. It's not just SCAs, I've also got my own HTML editor.

Of course, this is all just procrastination on my novel. It doesn't need a conlang, which doesn't need a website, which doesn't need bespoke software. I just hope I never get it into my head to make my own programming language, in English or in my conlang! Or I'll never be done....

[bradrn]

I just hope I never get it into my head to make my own programming language, in English or in my conlang!

Oh, what fun you’d be missing out on by not doing this!

(Said as someone who is currently working, very slowly, through Appel’s Modern Compiler Implementation in ML.)

[Skookum]

Developed the beginnings of a phonology for a language I'm creatively calling "Proto-Plateau", ancestor of a relatively shallow language family (2-3000 years old) that will split into Proto-Highland and Proto-Lowland. The language was spoken by highly mobile hunter-gatherers, evidenced by the fact that there are no reconstructable lexemes for domesticated plants/animals other than "dog". Highland peoples still practice a nomadic way of life, while Lowland peoples are more sedentary, inhabiting productive river valleys with a focus on fishing and small-scale horticulture. Anyways, the phonology:

Consonants
/*t (*č¹) *k *kʷ *ʔ/
/*s *h/
/*r² *y *ɣ *w/

¹: Occurs only in morphophonogical alternation with *y, and in a handful of nominal/adjectival roots, all with diminutive or onomatopoeic associations (eg., *ča:ča: little sister, *čokʷčokʷ crow, raven, *tu:čẽh grey (cf. *tu:kẽh black)).
²: An alveolar approximant, as this is the pronunciation it has in most daughter languages where it hasn't shifted to /l/.

Vowels
/*i *i: *u *u:/
/*ẽ *ẽ: *ə *õ *õ:/
/*a *a:/

Syllable structure is CV(C). Roots are typically bisyllabic, and always end in a consonant.

Consonant mutation
Proto-Plateau was a highly suffixing language, and certain suffixes trigger mutation in the final consonant of a stem.

Certain (but not all) vowel initial suffixes trigger weakening of a stem-final consonant:

Code: Select all

Plain    *t *s *k *kʷ *h
Weakened *r *r *ɣ *w  *y,w,∅¹

¹: *h weakens to *y following a front vowel, *w following a rounded vowel, and deletes following *a *a: *ə.

Certain (but not all) consonant-initial suffixes trigger hardening of a stem-final resonant.

Code: Select all

Plain    *r *y *ɣ *w
Hardened *t *č *k *kʷ

Working on stress at the moment.

[Travis B.]

Developed the beginnings of a phonology for a language I'm creatively calling "Proto-Plateau", ancestor of a relatively shallow language family (2-3000 years old) that will split into Proto-Highland and Proto-Lowland. The language was spoken by highly mobile hunter-gatherers, evidenced by the fact that there are no reconstructable lexemes for domesticated plants/animals other than "dog". Highland peoples still practice a nomadic way of life, while Lowland peoples are more sedentary, inhabiting productive river valleys with a focus on fishing and small-scale horticulture. Anyways, the phonology:

Consonants
/*t (*č¹) *k *kʷ *ʔ/
/*s *h/
/*r² *y *ɣ *w/

¹: Occurs only in morphophonogical alternation with *y, and in a handful of nominal/adjectival roots, all with diminutive or onomatopoeic associations (eg., *ča:ča: little sister, *čokʷčokʷ crow, raven, *tu:čẽh grey (cf. *tu:kẽh black)).
²: An alveolar approximant, as this is the pronunciation it has in most daughter languages where it hasn't shifted to /l/.

Vowels
/*i *i: *u *u:/
/*ẽ *ẽ: *ə *õ *õ:/
/*a *a:/

Syllable structure is CV(C). Roots are typically bisyllabic, and always end in a consonant.

Consonant mutation
Proto-Plateau was a highly suffixing language, and certain suffixes trigger mutation in the final consonant of a stem.

Certain (but not all) vowel initial suffixes trigger weakening of a stem-final consonant:

Code: Select all

Plain    *t *s *k *kʷ *h
Weakened *r *r *ɣ *w  *y,w,∅¹

¹: *h weakens to *y following a front vowel, *w following a rounded vowel, and deletes following *a *a: *ə.

Certain (but not all) consonant-initial suffixes trigger hardening of a stem-final resonant.

Code: Select all

Plain    *r *y *ɣ *w
Hardened *t *č *k *kʷ

Working on stress at the moment.

Have you thought of adding allophonic nasal consonants, e.g. realizing /*r *y *ɣ *w/ as a nasal, say, before a nasal vowel?

[Skookum]

Developed the beginnings of a phonology for a language I'm creatively calling "Proto-Plateau", ancestor of a relatively shallow language family (2-3000 years old) that will split into Proto-Highland and Proto-Lowland. The language was spoken by highly mobile hunter-gatherers, evidenced by the fact that there are no reconstructable lexemes for domesticated plants/animals other than "dog". Highland peoples still practice a nomadic way of life, while Lowland peoples are more sedentary, inhabiting productive river valleys with a focus on fishing and small-scale horticulture. Anyways, the phonology:

Consonants
/*t (*č¹) *k *kʷ *ʔ/
/*s *h/
/*r² *y *ɣ *w/

¹: Occurs only in morphophonogical alternation with *y, and in a handful of nominal/adjectival roots, all with diminutive or onomatopoeic associations (eg., *ča:ča: little sister, *čokʷčokʷ crow, raven, *tu:čẽh grey (cf. *tu:kẽh black)).
²: An alveolar approximant, as this is the pronunciation it has in most daughter languages where it hasn't shifted to /l/.

Vowels
/*i *i: *u *u:/
/*ẽ *ẽ: *ə *õ *õ:/
/*a *a:/

Syllable structure is CV(C). Roots are typically bisyllabic, and always end in a consonant.

Consonant mutation
Proto-Plateau was a highly suffixing language, and certain suffixes trigger mutation in the final consonant of a stem.

Certain (but not all) vowel initial suffixes trigger weakening of a stem-final consonant:

Code: Select all

Plain    *t *s *k *kʷ *h
Weakened *r *r *ɣ *w  *y,w,∅¹

¹: *h weakens to *y following a front vowel, *w following a rounded vowel, and deletes following *a *a: *ə.

Certain (but not all) consonant-initial suffixes trigger hardening of a stem-final resonant.

Code: Select all

Plain    *r *y *ɣ *w
Hardened *t *č *k *kʷ

Working on stress at the moment.

Have you thought of adding allophonic nasal consonants, e.g. realizing /*r *y *ɣ *w/ as a nasal, say, before a nasal vowel?

Definitely, and these allophonic nasals will become phonemic in most (all?) daughter languages, similar to what some linguists have proposed for Siouan languages.

[Man in Space]

The CC logography has made it to 1'400.