Zompist Bboard Again

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 9:13 pm ...very, very few verbs in either language (none, off the top of my head) are labile, the most common situation in English, where the transitivity of a verb is indicated only by what is going on around it.

Classical Japanese has a few marginal cases, where you have yodan and nidan that will make the distinction between transitive and intransitive in certain contexts, but which have identical predicative forms, note 開く aku (intransitive, godan; transitive, shimo nidan); the second has a modern form 開ける (akeru), however, removing the ambiguity.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 9:13 pm The most high profile topic-comment languages with pro-drop are Korean and Japanese. In these languages, each verb stem has a valence. In many cases, there are transparently derived stems, like Japanese shimeru/shimaru (stop something/stop yourself), or Korean cuk-/cuki- (die/kill). Both the Japanese a/e alteration and the Korean -i suffix can go both ways. In other words, you have to remember if the default Korean root is transitive and -i makes it middle/passive/intransitive, or if it's inherently intransitive, and -i makes it causative. But very, very few verbs in either language (none, off the top of my head) are labile, the most common situation in English, where the transitivity of a verb is indicated only by what is going on around it.

This makes more sense, thanks!

Yeah, y'all make good points. I think I'll go back and work on it so that there's morphological transitivity. Been slowly working on a new keyboard layout for IPA. Will probably have another update in a week or two.

Before then, I wanted to go over the phonology:

Consonants:
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This language is known for its middling consonant inventory distinguishing about four places of articulation and six manners of articulation, notable is the full retroflex series.

/m n n` N/ <m n rn ng>

/p t t` k/ <p t rt k>

/s s` h/ <s rs h>

/ts/ <c>

/v\ r\` j/ <w r y>

/l l`/ <l rl>
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Vowels:
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The vocalic system, like the consonantal, is also fairly average with a distinction between 3 heights and frontness and backness, with all vowels having a two step length distinction.

/i i: u u:/ <i ii u uu>
/E E: O O:/ <e ee o oo>
/a a:/ <a aa>
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Syllable & Root Structure:
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A typical syllable can have a maximum structure of (C)V(V)(C) with C being any consonant V being any vowel and VV being any long vowel or diphthong.

The typical root will be mono- or disyllabic, with monosyllabic roots predominating consisting of (C)V(V)(C) or maximally two of those sequences in a pattern (C)V(V)(C)V(V)(C) parentheticals are optional. e.g. you can have roots like par\` <par>, sE:hi <seehi>, or lakur\` <lakur>.

Clusters are not allowed intervocallically. Likewise retroflex consonants and /h/ are only permitted intervocallically or in coda.

Alveolar consonants move to retroflex position if the following syllable starts with a retroflex consonant e.g. /ta:.r\`a/ > [t`a:.r\`a] <taara>

In some varieties final /h/ is deleted and lengthens the preceding vowel instead, likewise any sequence of /i/ + /a/, /O/ or /E/ moves /i/ to /j/ in some varieties, in others a /j/ is inserted between the two vowels.

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But this was just a little part of the least interesting part of any conlang. Next time I'll go over the Nominal morphology.