Also Dahalo, Zulu, Yucatec Maya… It isn’t common, but it’s certainly well-attested.Knit Tie wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 9:27 pmNevermind, there's Me'enit.
https://www.academia.edu/23703870/Sketc ... of_Me_enit
So ANADEW is a fair claim, I'd say.
The gaps are perfectly phonetically reasonable though. Notice how the vowel pairs involving [j] (i1-i2, e1-e2) are missing the contrast after coronals and /w/ (the latter perhaps representing a merger of */wj/ with /jw/?), and the vowel pairs involving [w] (o1-o2) are missing after labials. Dropping [j] after a coronal (or palatal) and [w] after a labial are perfectly common sound changes.Pabappa wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 4:50 pmThe fact that they dropped syllables gradually and irregularly from the table rather than, for example, just ditching whole rows all at once, suggests that it was never a perfect snapshot of the phonology of the language at the time of writing. Spelling lags pronunciation in many languages, perhaps a majority. If we assume that what was once /ə wə/ became /o wo/ and then both merged as /o~wo/ (an allophonic contrast, not phonemic), it seems reasonable to me to assume that the syllable we spell yo1 may have become identical with yo2 in pronunciation before it was dropped from the syllabary.
What I tried to convey last time when this topic came up was that phonological /jw/ shows up as [ɥ] at the surface. You see that a lot in diachronic Chinese, where /j/ is the initial and /w/ is the glide of the CGVC syllable structure, but that doesn't need to mean /ɥ/ is a separate phoneme that only appears in a very limited context.
(Copied from the Romanization Challenge thread, where I’ve just written a phonological description of this language.)bradrn wrote: All syllable have CV(C) structure. … Moras are defined as follows: a CV syllable is 1 mora, a CVː syllable (with a long vowel) is 2 moras, a CVC syllable (with a coda) is also 2 moras, and a CVːC syllable (with both a long vowel and a coda) is 3 moras. Words must be at least bimoraic. … Stress is predictable: the syllable with the most number of moras (i.e. the heaviest syllable) is stressed, so e.g. /ˈɬii.sə/, /ʔəˈtɬaaɣ/. If there are multiple heaviest syllables, the stress goes on the first, e.g. /ˈba.na/, /daˈlas.naː/. However, a syllable with /ə/ as its vowel may not be stressed; instead, the next heaviest (or next equal heaviest if there are multiple syllables with the same weight) syllable is stressed, so we get e.g. /ˈʔi.nəɣ/ rather than /ʔiˈnəɣ/, /da.ləsˈnaː/ rather than /daˈləs.naː/. Stress is not phonemic, but it may appear to be depending on syllabification, especially with prenasalised consonants: e.g. /wa.ⁿdal/ is stressed on the second syllable, whereas /wan.dal/ is stressed on the first syllable.
I was hoping for about 1500-2000 years. A lot of people are telling me I should turn codas into new tones, so I suppose that'd be a lot of the sound changes.
Yes, except if I were to write 455 as a single number I'd go with the 5, that's why it is doubled.akam chinjir wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2020 12:22 am (I'm assuming it can be left as a phonetic detail that you've got 455 rather than just 4 and 412 instead of just 42
*(breathes deep*)
I would be very interested in seeing a gloss of what each word in Ê ê Ê Ê actually means.Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:23 pm Yesterday (read: a few hours ago), I officially named the Tlar Kyanà ministry of intelligence: The Ê ê Ê Ê. Yes, that is the full name. Yes, they were all different etyma that collapsed to the same phonetic realization (had it existed in the protolanguage, it would have been originally *ʔjɛɾ B ɛʔ B ʔwɛ B ɛɾ B, all four words of which collapsed to → /e B2/).
Not gender/case/number, but English verbs come to mind: I walk, we walk, you walk, they walk, he/she/it walks.
How about Tlar Kyanà calling it the "Four Ês"? (Man in Space, please don't say the word for "four" is also Ê.)bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:29 amI would be very interested in seeing a gloss of what each word in Ê ê Ê Ê actually means.Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:23 pm Yesterday (read: a few hours ago), I officially named the Tlar Kyanà ministry of intelligence: The Ê ê Ê Ê. Yes, that is the full name. Yes, they were all different etyma that collapsed to the same phonetic realization (had it existed in the protolanguage, it would have been originally *ʔjɛɾ B ɛʔ B ʔwɛ B ɛɾ B, all four words of which collapsed to → /e B2/).
(I also can’t help but think that surely there’s a less ambiguous name for it…)
I quite like this, particularly the idea of having multiple classes where the "default" is different. So it's less about marking number/case/etc. and more about marking default vs. non-default.
That's a bit like Old French, and in fact a few nouns in Old French had paradigms much like what you suggest.missals wrote: ↑Wed Apr 29, 2020 9:55 pm A little bit ago I imagined a language that had a case/number/definiteness and maybe gender system, but which only had two forms for each noun and only distinguished a single, highly-prominent cell in the paradigm.
Like say a language had a nominal suffix -ə, and it always appeared on nouns except the nominative singular indefinite form. So, if kot is '(a) dog', then kotə is 'the dog' the 'dogs' 'dog (obl.)' 'the dogs (obl.)' '(some) dogs' etc etc. I wonder if such a system exists in a language somewhere? it seems rather like the final stage in the erosion of an IE case/number/gender system.
(...)
I imagine all of this would be supplemented to some degree by inflection of articles and adjectives, like in German.
Code: Select all
PLAIN PALATALIZED
Rounded bilabials: pʷ bʷ w
Bilabials: p b m pʲ bʲ mʲ
Alveolars: t d n s l tʲ dʲ sʲ
Postalveolars: č ǯ ň š ł
Palatals: ć ǵ ń ś y (ć ǵ ń ś y)
Velars: k ġ ŋ x g kʲ
Labiovelars: kʷ ġʷ xʷ gʷ
Uvulars: q h
Rounded uvulars: qʷ hʷCode: Select all
Labials: p b m f v
Alveolars: t d n s l
Palataloids: č ǯ ň š y
Velars: kEnglish
Code: Select all
singular plural
absolutive /dɒg/ /dɒgz/
possessive /dɒgz/ /dɒgz/