Zompist Bboard Again

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:26 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:20 pm

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 2:12 pm I personally find Phonology to be one of the less interesting part of language and I find it tedious to come up with extremely detailed "descriptions" of phonetics of a language that isn't actually spoken by anyone. For most of my recent languages, I keep the phonology chapter very simple and move on to what I find more interesting. That's not to say interesting things can't be done with phonology (and in particular, as some of you have pointed out, the intersection of phonology and other aspects of grammar) but I'm super invested in coming up with cool ways to treat cross reference, indexing, case alignment, phrase structure, algorithmically determined word order, differential object marking, hierarchical index marking etc. etc. Just a lot more meat on the bones, and more thought provoking (to me!) than descriptions of very particular tongue movements I may or may not be capable of.

This is, I think, a good encapsulation of the attitude I find frustrating: that phonology is just consonants, vowels, syllable structure and allophony, and grammar is where all the interesting stuff is. And I’ll admit to finding grammar intensely interesting — I can spend literally months reading about the intricacies of verb serialisation or split intransitivity — but there are just so many more interesting things that can be done with phonology. For one thing, unless you make a language with no morphophonology whatsoever (which is basically unattested on Earth), morphology is intensely dependent on phonology: stuff like infixes and mutation are impossible to specify without going back to the phonology, and that in turn has consequences elsewhere. (e.g. One reason we know that Nias has the intensely rare marked-absolutive alignment is the exact pattern of initial consonant mutation in the absolutive.) Or you can have stuff like syncope or harmony rules or tone sandhi, which can mess up morphology in all sorts of fascinating ways. I personally find it really thought provoking to see how messed-up I can make my morphology, which ends up with things like e.g. Hlʉ̂ verb alternation between singular and plural objects (actually an infix fused with syllable nucleus), or the unholy mix of syncope, lenition and mutation in Wēchizaŋkəŋ.

Note that I didn't say phonology was not interesting, just less interesting. A more succinct view of what I was saying is that I find con-phonetics super boring. And as I did say, where phonology interersects with morphology and syntax – that stuff is super interesting.

vegfarandi wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:26 am [Note that I didn't say phonology was not interesting, just less interesting. A more succinct view of what I was saying is that I find con-phonetics super boring. And as I did say, where phonology interersects with morphology and syntax – that stuff is super interesting.

fusijui wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:53 pm The hobby changes, too; for years, decades, mention of 'the phonology problem' would have been understood as the ~95% of all conlang projects that consisted of just phonologies, often insanely elaborate, baroque, microscopically detailed ones. I think that's less of a thing lately.

fusijui wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:53 pm And I think we have a lot more diversity in the kinds, styles, approaches to conlangs than just ten years ago. So, personally, I kind of recoil from suggestions to re-center phonology in this hobby.