Conlang Random Thread

[Travis B.]

I would say that your changes here are perfectly plausible myself. As for English, if you've read some of the discussions on the forum you'd know that some people analyze their varieties of English (e.g. AusE) as not permitting hiatus at all in the first place (with all the historical long vowels other than PALM being analyzed as vowel-glide sequences, and PALM simply not being permitted in hiatus).

In both Australian and Southern British excepting some recessive Westcountry dialects Englishes, PALM=START, so if you are calling long vowels Vowel+glide, you also have to analyse PALM as /ɑr/, which I do, and I thing I've seen Darren do, so there really are no exceptions, except in traditional RP which is non-rhotic but preserves a non-diphthongal HAPPY that probably isn't a VC sequence.

The idea that there aren't open syllables feels really odd to me typologically, to tell the truth. I would rather analyze long vowels as diphthongs rather than as vowel-consonant sequences for this reason. Another reason why I would analyze them as diphthongs is that the combinations of nucleus and glide are fixed rather than being relatively open as would be expected if they were vowel-consonant sequences.

[bradrn]

On the preposed sound changes, a) it is Nenets

Say more?

[Lērisama]

On the preposed sound changes, a) it is Nenets

Say more?

I'm away from the book that describes it in more detail. I will when I get back.

[Richard W]

-/ŋ/ is deleted from onset clusters (except in onset clusters like /dŋ/ where it's in the more sonorous position), which makes sense given how common prohibiting onset velar nasals is.

Onset velar nasals are relatively rare, but I'd think that clusters like the /dŋ/ don't occur as the onset (rather than as a full syllable with /d/ being the onset and /ŋ/ being the nucleus).

Although it's now moot, I'd reconstruct it for the pre-registrogenesis form of Khmer ថ្ងុង /tŋoŋ/ 'dejectedly'. Searching for IPA tŋ.* http://sealang.net/khmer/dictionary.htm found a whole raft of such words. (Registrogenesis and subsequent changes converted the contrast of /d/ and /t/, preserved in the spelling, to a vowel difference.)

[Richard W]

Wrt: the plausibility of those changes, fair point; though iirc there was a language (Nenets?) which I vaguely remember inserting [ŋ] word-initially in the absence of an onset. Could be misremembering though.

That also happens in some dialects of Mandarin Chinese, though it is more precisely described as initial /ʔ‌> /ŋ/. The merger of the two is pretty widespread, though I think the commoner change is in the opposite direction.

[Richard W]

The idea that there aren't open syllables feels really odd to me typologically, to tell the truth.

Old Mon did not permit words to end in vowels.

[Travis B.]

The idea that there aren't open syllables feels really odd to me typologically, to tell the truth.

Old Mon did not permit words to end in vowels.

Still, the alternative analysis of things like FLEECE and GOOSE being diphthongs seems easier to justify.

[bradrn]

The idea that there aren't open syllables feels really odd to me typologically, to tell the truth.

Old Mon did not permit words to end in vowels.

In Hup the overwhelming majority of syllables (not just words!) are closed. And of course Arrernte is famously analysed with underlying VC syllable structure.

[Travis B.]

Part of this is that I can understand SSBE and GenAus perfectly fine, and the idea that they really are radically different phonologically from the English I am familiar with here seems... wrong. A diphthong-ful analysis is much less different from the English here, such that the crossintelligibility between GenAm on one hand and SSBE and GenAus on the other makes much more sense, in that it reduces much of the variation between the former and the latter to loss of phonemic vowel length and monophthongization of FACE and GOAT preconsonantally in the former case and non-rhoticism and diphthongization of historical long vowels in the latter case.

[Lērisama]

The thing about phonology, is that because it is an abstraction that only exists in the mind of the speaker, hugely different analyses can be valid for the same language, and it is much harder to map the phonetics of a foreign dialect to your own phonology than to learn it's phonology yourself, so it doesn't surprise me at all that analyses of rhotic & non-rhotic dialects¹ can differ so much. On the subject of frequency of codae, I'd like to second Bradrn on that it's not too strange, and also note that it only applies to stressed syllables: most unstressed syllables are open.

¹ Obviously this is a simplification; I wouldn't be surprised at rhotic dialects that could stand a VC analysis or non-rhotic ones that couldn't.

[Travis B.]

The thing about phonology, is that because it is an abstraction that only exists in the mind of the speaker, hugely different analyses can be valid for the same language, and it is much harder to map the phonetics of a foreign dialect to your own phonology than to learn it's phonology yourself, so it doesn't surprise me at all that analyses of rhotic & non-rhotic dialects¹ can differ so much.

It's really not non-rhoticism that makes the analyses radically different as much as analyzing historical long vowels as vowel-consonant sequences combined with analyzing non-rhoticism as including underlying /r/ that only surfaces when a morpheme is followed by another vowel-initial morpheme.

On the subject of frequency of codae, I'd like to second Bradrn on that it's not too strange, and also note that it only applies to stressed syllables: most unstressed syllables are open.

But then that would raise the question of why phonemic /r/ is part of THOUGHT but not part of COMMA.

¹ Obviously this is a simplification; I wouldn't be surprised at rhotic dialects that could stand a VC analysis or non-rhotic ones that couldn't.

The thing, though, is that a VC analysis rests on intrusive R and rhotic varieties as a whole lack this.

[Ahzoh]

Two possible Vrkhazhian phonologies now. Likely they will be dialects with the ejective having one being the imperial register and the affricate-having one being the common register. The common register is not a descendant of the imperial register, but rather they are both co-divergent.

/m n ŋ/<m n n̮>
/pʰ tʰ tsʰ tɬʰ kʰ/<p t c ć k>
/p t ts tɬ k ʔ/<b d z ź g ʔ>
/f s ɬ x/<f s ś ḫ>
/w r l j/<w r l y>

/m n ŋ/<m n n̮>
/pʰ pʼ b tʰ tʼ d kʰ kʼ g ʔ/<p ṗ b t ṭ d k ḳ g ʔ>
/f s sʼ z ɬ ɬʼ ɮ x/<f s ṣ z ś ṣ́ ź ḫ>
/w r l j/<w r l y>

The imperial nobility and educated classes make great effort to preserve the ejective consonants as distinct from their aspirated and voiced counterparts because being able to produce them is considered a mark of linguistic prestige. Such a distinction is easily lost in the common register and the ejectives are readily converted into either their aspirated/fortis counterparts or the unaspirated/tenuis. Thus the consonants with a three-way distinction have the following correspondences:
/pʰ pʼ b/ = /pʰ p p/ or /pʰ pʰ p/
/tʰ tʼ d/ = /tʰ t d/ or /tʰ tʰ d/
/s sʼ z/ = /tsʰ ts ts/ or /tsʰ tsʰ ts/
/ɬ ɬʼ ɮ/ = /tɬʰ tɬ tɬ/ or /tɬʰ tɬʰ tɬ/
/kʰ kʼ g/ = /kʰ k k/ or /kʰ kʰ k/

Also came up with complicated assimilation rules:
Asymmetrical assimilation (inverse of phoneme combinations do not assimilate)
p/b + f > ff /f.f/
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + s > ss /s.s/
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + ś > śś /ɬ.ɬ/
k/g + ḫ > ḫḫ /x.x/
n + r > rr /r.r/
n + l > ll /l.l/

Symmetrical assimilation (inverse of phoneme combinations also assimilate)
p/b + p > pp /pʰ.pʰ/ [p.pʰ]
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + t > tt /tʰ.tʰ/ [t.tʰ]
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + c > cc /tsʰ.tsʰ/ [t.tsʰ]
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + ć > ćć /tɬʰ.tɬʰ/ [t.tɬʰ]
k/g + k > kk /kʰ.kʰ/ [k.kʰ]
p/b + b > bb /p.p/
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + d > dd /t.t/
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + z > zz /ts.ts/ [t.ts]
t/d/c/z/ć/ź + ź > źź /tɬ.tɬ/ [t.tɬ]
k/g + g > gg /k.k/
s/ś + s > ss /s.s/
s/ś + ś > śś /ɬ.ɬ/
r/l + r > rr /r.r/
r/l + l > ll /l.l/

Ambiguous:
s/ś + c > sc /s.tsʰ/, or cc /tsʰ.tsʰ/ [t.tsʰ], or ss /s.s/
s/ś + ć > ść /ɬ.tɬʰ/, or ćć /tɬʰ.tɬʰ/ [t.tɬʰ], or śś /ɬ.ɬ/
s/ś + z > sz /s.ts/, or zz /ts.ts/ [t.ts], or ss /s.s/
s/ś + ź > śź /ɬ.tɬ/, or źź /tɬ.tɬ/ [t.tɬ], or śś /ɬ.ɬ/

[AwfullyAmateur]

I have become interested in Old English. It's interesting, how it sounds almost like a mirror-world version of English. This has helped me get a bit back into conlanging. Sodémereš Čanša now has 800 words.

[Glass Half Baked]

I would love to see and possibly learn some relatively complete conlangs. Anybody have something they want to share?

[jal]

I would love to see and possibly learn some relatively complete conlangs.

Relatively complete? Naah, though by and large Sajiwan would fit the bill, but it's also quite uninteresting as conlangs go. Alũbetah is fairly complete grammar-wise, but lacks vocabulary (and it was invented as a protolang anyway). In the olden days (a few boards ago) we had some pretty complete conlangs like Itlani and Siwa, and what's that language created by that dude that even had a flag made and waving in his yard - damn, was it something with an "A"? I'm getting old... And Novogradian is also fairly complete. But all those people unfortunately are no longer active here. I sometimes miss those days...


JAL

[foxcatdog]

*iarimain “(of male persons) fertile/off age (of buttocks) fat (of talk) erotic (of land/soil) fertile/abundant/overgrown (of animals and increasingly anything) yellow” from OA *piatimain from PCA *pihati “fertile” shortening of PA *piha “talltail wolf” + *tina “pelt” *-main is the Proto Amaric Stative Verb Converter

[jal]

*iarimain “(of male persons) fertile/off age (of buttocks) fat (of talk) erotic (of land/soil) fertile/abundant/overgrown (of animals and increasingly anything) yellow” from OA *piatimain from PCA *pihati “fertile” shortening of PA *piha “talltail wolf” + *tina “pelt” *-main is the Proto Amaric Stative Verb Converter

Now I'm curious why the shoft from fertile -> yellow.


JAL

[foxcatdog]

Now I'm curious why the shoft from fertile -> yellow.


JAL

That's the colour of Chienna fat (or fur).

[Nortaneous]

The idea that there aren't open syllables feels really odd to me typologically, to tell the truth.

Old Mon did not permit words to end in vowels.

This is also common in Aslian.

Part of this is that I can understand SSBE and GenAus perfectly fine, and the idea that they really are radically different phonologically from the English I am familiar with here seems... wrong.

Don't these varieties generally prohibit stressed short vowels from appearing without a coda? (A related, syllabification-agnostic question: don't they generally prohibit word-final stressed short vowels?) Doesn't contrastive vowel length in these varieties come entirely from the elision of a coda consonant?

[Travis B.]

Part of this is that I can understand SSBE and GenAus perfectly fine, and the idea that they really are radically different phonologically from the English I am familiar with here seems... wrong.

Don't these varieties generally prohibit stressed short vowels from appearing without a coda? (A related, syllabification-agnostic question: don't they generally prohibit word-final stressed short vowels?) Doesn't contrastive vowel length in these varieties come entirely from the elision of a coda consonant?

My big quibble is with treating things like PRICE, GOOSE, FACE, GOAT, GOAL, PRICE, MOUTH, and CHOICE as vowel-consonant sequences rather than diphthongs -- the analyses of SSBE and GenAus get much more sane when they are considered as diphthongs (PALM/START, SQUARE, THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE, NEAR, and CURE can be treated as rhotic diphthongs) because then you avoid distribution problems with what vowel and what semivowel can go where (and because they then look far less radically different from other English varieties they are fully crossintelliglble with).