kskʼɩroijø̂u — an antilanguage
Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2022 7:19 am
Like many conlangers, my languages can suffer from some amount of… how should I put it? monotony of style. This thread is an experiment: to produce an antilanguage with as many features as possible which I haven’t used before. To do this in a systematic way, I have gone through WALS, found all the features where I haven’t yet explored one or more options, then attempted to create a conlang from those.
(And no, kskʼɩroijø̂u is not the name of this language. It means ‘an antilanguage’ in throijø̂uzh kʼaezh.)
Segmental phonology
2A: Vowel Quality Inventories — Large (7-14)
4A: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives — In fricatives alone
6A: Uvular Consonants — Uvular stops and continuants
7A: Glottalized Consonants — Ejectives only
8A: Lateral Consonants — Laterals, but no /l/, no obstruent laterals
9A: The Velar Nasal — No velar nasal
10A: Vowel Nasalization — Contrast present
11A: Front Rounded Vowels — High and mid
I’ve made consonant inventories of most sizes, from 8 consonants (Hlʉ̂) to 27 (unnamed protolanguage 20). Vowel inventories, on the other hand, tend to remain smaller: I’m most comfortable with 4-vowel inventories, and only my most recent conlangs have had as many as 7. Furthermore, I tend to be fairly boring with my vowel systems, which are either /a i u/ + one mid vowel or /a e i o u/ + two central vowels; none have diphthongs or indeed anything more interesting than a length contrast. My consonant systems are less boring, but still tend to be symmetrical and stop-heavy, with minimal or no voicing distinctions, no consonants further back than velar, and no non-pulmonic consonants.
Consonants:
/m n ɲ/ ⟨m n nj⟩
/p t k q kʼ qʼ/ ⟨p t k q kʼ qʼ⟩
/t͡θ t͡s t͡ʃ/ ⟨tc ts ch⟩
/f θ s ʃ χ h/ ⟨f th s sh kh h⟩
/v ð z ʒ/ ⟨v dh z zh⟩
/ɺ ʎ r j w/ ⟨l lj r j w⟩
Vowels:
/i y u/ ⟨i y u⟩
/ɪ ʊ/ ⟨ɩ oe⟩
/e ø o/ ⟨e ø o⟩
/ɛ ɑ/ ⟨ae a⟩
/ĩ ũ ẽ õ ɑ̃/ ⟨ĩ ũ ẽ õ ã⟩
/ɑɛ̯ ɑɪ̯ ɑʊ ɛɑ̯ ɛɪ̯ eo̯ øʊ̯ yi̯ yu̯ ʊɪ̯ ou̯/ ⟨aae ai ao ea ei eo øu yi yu oi ou⟩
/ɑ̃ĩ̯ ɑ̃ũ ẽɑ̯̃ ẽõ̯ ẽĩ̯ õũ̯ ũĩ̯/ ⟨ãi ão ẽa ẽo ẽi õu ũi⟩
The orthographies are chosen to use as many digraphs as possible — ambiguity is ignored, unlike my usual orthographies. Especially unusual for me is the use of digraphs for vowels, though I also use some particularly obnoxious letters.
Suprasegmental phonology
WALS is particularly poor in this area. Mostly my languages have very simple syllable structure, so this one uses what Easterday calls ‘highly complex’ syllable structure. I’ve used both fully tonal and fixed stress systems, so this one has a flexible pitch-accent system.
Syllable structure is (C₁)(C₂)(C₃)(C₄)(C₅)V(C₆)(C₇)(C₈), where C₁–C₄ may be any obstruents agreeing in voicing (though note that the tenuis stops have voiced allophones), C₅ may be any sonorant or /h/, C₆ may be any continuant except a semivowel, and C₇–C₈ may be any obstruents agreeing in voicing. Additional restrictions apply to /h/, which cannot occur as any of C₂–C₄ or in the coda, to /ɺ/, which may not occur at the start of a word, and to ejectives, which may not appear at the end at a word. Geminates, as well as stops followed by homorganic ejectives, are disallowed; if one is produced in the morphology it is degeminated.
Stress is ‘diacritic’ and right-weighted, in that one syllable of each morpheme may be marked for stress, and primary stress occurs on the rightmost stressed syllable. The stressed syllable takes either high tone /ˊ/ or falling tone /ˆ/; the tone used is lexically determined by the root. Thus for instance [TODO]
(Nominal) Morphology
21A: Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives — Case + number
25A: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology — Dependent marking
28A: Case Syncretism — Inflectional case marking is syncretic for core and non-core cases
30A: Number of Genders — Two
31A: Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems — Sex-based
32A: Systems of Gender Assignment — Semantic and formal
37A: Definite Articles — Definite affix
38A: Indefinite Articles — Indefinite affix
41A: Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives — Two-way contrast
43A: Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives — Third person pronouns and demonstratives are related to remote demonstratives
45A: Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns — Binary politeness distinction
49A: Number of Cases — 10 or more cases
50A: Asymmetrical Case-Marking — Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical
Most of my languages — all of them, now that I think about it — have been heavily head-marking, or at least double-marking with a low number of noun cases. Obviously the best thing to do in this language, therefore, is to have as big a case system as I can manage. I am famously fond of non-accusative alignments; thus, nominative–accusative alignment seems good here — with minimal syntactic case-marking even, restricted to pronouns (so just like English). I also strongly tend to avoid gender systems, especially non-semantic ones, so a two-term formal gender system seems right out of my comfort zone.
There are two genders: male and female. Gender assignment is largely formal, in that the gender of humans is more or less random. Gender is marked on demonstratives, third person pronouns, the definite prefix, case suffixes, and adjectival modifiers (via case concord). All nouns are assigned a gender: either masculine or feminine, though some human nouns may take either. Adjectives may take either gender marking, depending on their head noun.
Definiteness and plurality are marked via prefixes, in that order, as follows:
Thus for instance we have ktsɩvŷ ‘a table’, atsɩvŷ ‘the table’, kõtsɩvŷ ‘tables’, ãotsɩvŷ ‘the tables’; or kʼéop ‘hill’, thkʼéop ‘the hill’, kõkʼéop ‘hills’, thõkʼéop ‘the hills’. (Note minor fusion in the masculine definite plural.)
A very small number of otherwise feminine nouns take the masculine definite article. These mostly relate to plant and animal products: achélaae ‘the leaf’, aqnǿur ‘the tuber’, apŷlks ‘the wool’.
The following cases are distinguished:
The inventory of cases differs slightly between pronouns and nominals. The personal pronouns have no equative or vocative forms; first and second persons additionally have no instrumental. On the other hand, only personal pronouns have a distinct accusative; other nominals merge the nominative and accusative into a single ‘direct’ case.
Nouns and adjectives take distinct case-markers depending on whether they are male or female. The case-markers further differ between those words ending in consonants, and those ending in vowels. Some consonant-following case-markers require a lexically determined thematic vowel, always a short non-nasalised vowel. Case-markers are as follows:
(thâle ‘parent’, koist-ɩ ‘person’, chnjé ‘red’, hõkʼâdh-e ‘big’.)
Pronouns and demonstratives exhibit some irregularities in case-marking, inflecting as follows:
An important part of grammar here is case concord: all nominal modifiers take the same case inflections as the head. This applies to the genitive as well, which can result in extensive Suffixaufnahme (case stacking):
Jaae kroitcépek ahoekálavchɩkh Nêjakchɩchɩkh Skafárpozhchɩk.
This is a drawing of the temple to Nêjak at Skafárp.
My languages also tend to be rather lacking in derivational morphology. Therefore, to avoid this, I will immediately create numerous derivational affixes which can be applied to nouns:
(And no, kskʼɩroijø̂u is not the name of this language. It means ‘an antilanguage’ in throijø̂uzh kʼaezh.)
Segmental phonology
2A: Vowel Quality Inventories — Large (7-14)
4A: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives — In fricatives alone
6A: Uvular Consonants — Uvular stops and continuants
7A: Glottalized Consonants — Ejectives only
8A: Lateral Consonants — Laterals, but no /l/, no obstruent laterals
9A: The Velar Nasal — No velar nasal
10A: Vowel Nasalization — Contrast present
11A: Front Rounded Vowels — High and mid
I’ve made consonant inventories of most sizes, from 8 consonants (Hlʉ̂) to 27 (unnamed protolanguage 20). Vowel inventories, on the other hand, tend to remain smaller: I’m most comfortable with 4-vowel inventories, and only my most recent conlangs have had as many as 7. Furthermore, I tend to be fairly boring with my vowel systems, which are either /a i u/ + one mid vowel or /a e i o u/ + two central vowels; none have diphthongs or indeed anything more interesting than a length contrast. My consonant systems are less boring, but still tend to be symmetrical and stop-heavy, with minimal or no voicing distinctions, no consonants further back than velar, and no non-pulmonic consonants.
Consonants:
/m n ɲ/ ⟨m n nj⟩
/p t k q kʼ qʼ/ ⟨p t k q kʼ qʼ⟩
/t͡θ t͡s t͡ʃ/ ⟨tc ts ch⟩
/f θ s ʃ χ h/ ⟨f th s sh kh h⟩
/v ð z ʒ/ ⟨v dh z zh⟩
/ɺ ʎ r j w/ ⟨l lj r j w⟩
Vowels:
/i y u/ ⟨i y u⟩
/ɪ ʊ/ ⟨ɩ oe⟩
/e ø o/ ⟨e ø o⟩
/ɛ ɑ/ ⟨ae a⟩
/ĩ ũ ẽ õ ɑ̃/ ⟨ĩ ũ ẽ õ ã⟩
/ɑɛ̯ ɑɪ̯ ɑʊ ɛɑ̯ ɛɪ̯ eo̯ øʊ̯ yi̯ yu̯ ʊɪ̯ ou̯/ ⟨aae ai ao ea ei eo øu yi yu oi ou⟩
/ɑ̃ĩ̯ ɑ̃ũ ẽɑ̯̃ ẽõ̯ ẽĩ̯ õũ̯ ũĩ̯/ ⟨ãi ão ẽa ẽo ẽi õu ũi⟩
The orthographies are chosen to use as many digraphs as possible — ambiguity is ignored, unlike my usual orthographies. Especially unusual for me is the use of digraphs for vowels, though I also use some particularly obnoxious letters.
Suprasegmental phonology
WALS is particularly poor in this area. Mostly my languages have very simple syllable structure, so this one uses what Easterday calls ‘highly complex’ syllable structure. I’ve used both fully tonal and fixed stress systems, so this one has a flexible pitch-accent system.
Syllable structure is (C₁)(C₂)(C₃)(C₄)(C₅)V(C₆)(C₇)(C₈), where C₁–C₄ may be any obstruents agreeing in voicing (though note that the tenuis stops have voiced allophones), C₅ may be any sonorant or /h/, C₆ may be any continuant except a semivowel, and C₇–C₈ may be any obstruents agreeing in voicing. Additional restrictions apply to /h/, which cannot occur as any of C₂–C₄ or in the coda, to /ɺ/, which may not occur at the start of a word, and to ejectives, which may not appear at the end at a word. Geminates, as well as stops followed by homorganic ejectives, are disallowed; if one is produced in the morphology it is degeminated.
Stress is ‘diacritic’ and right-weighted, in that one syllable of each morpheme may be marked for stress, and primary stress occurs on the rightmost stressed syllable. The stressed syllable takes either high tone /ˊ/ or falling tone /ˆ/; the tone used is lexically determined by the root. Thus for instance [TODO]
(Nominal) Morphology
21A: Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives — Case + number
25A: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology — Dependent marking
28A: Case Syncretism — Inflectional case marking is syncretic for core and non-core cases
30A: Number of Genders — Two
31A: Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems — Sex-based
32A: Systems of Gender Assignment — Semantic and formal
37A: Definite Articles — Definite affix
38A: Indefinite Articles — Indefinite affix
41A: Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives — Two-way contrast
43A: Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives — Third person pronouns and demonstratives are related to remote demonstratives
45A: Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns — Binary politeness distinction
49A: Number of Cases — 10 or more cases
50A: Asymmetrical Case-Marking — Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical
Most of my languages — all of them, now that I think about it — have been heavily head-marking, or at least double-marking with a low number of noun cases. Obviously the best thing to do in this language, therefore, is to have as big a case system as I can manage. I am famously fond of non-accusative alignments; thus, nominative–accusative alignment seems good here — with minimal syntactic case-marking even, restricted to pronouns (so just like English). I also strongly tend to avoid gender systems, especially non-semantic ones, so a two-term formal gender system seems right out of my comfort zone.
There are two genders: male and female. Gender assignment is largely formal, in that the gender of humans is more or less random. Gender is marked on demonstratives, third person pronouns, the definite prefix, case suffixes, and adjectival modifiers (via case concord). All nouns are assigned a gender: either masculine or feminine, though some human nouns may take either. Adjectives may take either gender marking, depending on their head noun.
Definiteness and plurality are marked via prefixes, in that order, as follows:
| Indefinite | k- |
| Definite | a- (M) th- ~ dh- (F) |
| Plural | õ- |
Thus for instance we have ktsɩvŷ ‘a table’, atsɩvŷ ‘the table’, kõtsɩvŷ ‘tables’, ãotsɩvŷ ‘the tables’; or kʼéop ‘hill’, thkʼéop ‘the hill’, kõkʼéop ‘hills’, thõkʼéop ‘the hills’. (Note minor fusion in the masculine definite plural.)
A very small number of otherwise feminine nouns take the masculine definite article. These mostly relate to plant and animal products: achélaae ‘the leaf’, aqnǿur ‘the tuber’, apŷlks ‘the wool’.
The following cases are distinguished:
- Nominative — transitive and intransitive subject; unmarked case
- Accusative — transitive object
- Dative — recipient or beneficiary
- Locative — location
- Instrumental — instrument
- Comitative — accompaniment
- Privative — without, atelic object
- Equative — copula complement
- Comparative — index of comparison
- Ablative — source, location from
- Allative — destination, location to
- Vocative — addressing a person
The inventory of cases differs slightly between pronouns and nominals. The personal pronouns have no equative or vocative forms; first and second persons additionally have no instrumental. On the other hand, only personal pronouns have a distinct accusative; other nominals merge the nominative and accusative into a single ‘direct’ case.
Nouns and adjectives take distinct case-markers depending on whether they are male or female. The case-markers further differ between those words ending in consonants, and those ending in vowels. Some consonant-following case-markers require a lexically determined thematic vowel, always a short non-nasalised vowel. Case-markers are as follows:
| Case | M Noun -V | M Noun -C | F Noun -V | F Noun -C | M Adj -V | M Adj -C | F Adj -V | F Adj -C |
| DIR | thâle-∅ | koist-∅ | thâle-∅ | koist-∅ | chnjé-∅ | hõkʼâdh-∅ | chnjé-∅ | hõkʼâdh-∅ |
| DAT | thâle-p | koist-p | thâle-f | koist-ɩ-f | chnjé-zp | hõkʼâdh-ae-zp | chnjé-f | hõkʼâdh-ae-f |
| LOC | thâle-zh | koist-ɩ-zh | thâle-∅ | koist-∅ | chnjé-z | hõkʼâdh-ae-z | chnjé-j | hõkʼâdh-ae-j |
| INSTR | thale-qâe | koist-qáe | thâle-k | koist-k | chnje-zkáe | hõkʼadh-kâe | chnjé-ch | hõkʼâdh-ch |
| COM | thâle-st | koist-ɩ-st | thâle-s | koist-ɩ-s | chnjé-zt | hõkʼâdh-ae-zt | chnjé-sh | hõkʼâdh-ae-sh |
| PRIV | thâle-lø | koist-ø | thâle-woe | koist-oe | chnjé-lø | hõkʼâdh-ø | chnjé-joe | hõkʼâdh-oe |
| EQU | thâle-k | koist-k | thâle-kh | koist-ɩ-kh | chnjé-zk | hõkʼâdh-k | chnjé-j | hõkʼâdh-ae-j |
| COMP | thâle~je (~jV) | koist~oi (~V) | thâle~we (~wV) | koist~woi (~wV) | chnjé-z | hõkʼâdh-ae-z | chnjé-j | hõkʼâdh-ae-j |
| ABL | thâle-m | koist-ɩ-m | thâle-p | koist-p | chnjé-n | hõkʼâdh-ae-n | chnjé-p | hõkʼâdh-p |
| ALL | thâle-lj | koist-ɩ-lj | thale-lɩ̂ | koist-ɩ-lɩ́ | chnjé-lø | hõkʼâdh-ø | chnje-jɩ́ | hõkʼadh-jɩ̂ |
| VOC | thâle-wo | koist-o | thâle-∅ | koist-∅ | chnjé-∅ | hõkʼadh-∅ | chnjé-∅ | hõkʼâdh-∅ |
(thâle ‘parent’, koist-ɩ ‘person’, chnjé ‘red’, hõkʼâdh-e ‘big’.)
Pronouns and demonstratives exhibit some irregularities in case-marking, inflecting as follows:
| Case | 1SG | 1PL | 2SG | 2SG (polite) | 2PL | 3SG.M | 3SG.F | 3PL (M & F) | PROX.SG.M | PROX.SG.F | PROX.PL.M | PROX.PL.F | REM.SG.M | REM.SG.F | REM.PL (M & F) |
| NOM | tai | nai | soe | noe | nũ | pe | fe | mẽ | kʼae | khae | õkʼae | õkhae | pe | fe | mẽ |
| ACC | tae | nae | zø | noe | nũ | pɩ | fɩ | mĩ | kʼe | khe | õkʼe | õkhe | pɩ | fɩ | mĩ |
| DAT | tap | nap | soep | noep | nũm | pep | fep | mẽp | kʼaep | khef | õkʼaep | õkhef | pep | fef | mẽp |
| LOC | tazh | nazh | soezh | noezh | nũnj | pezh | fezh | mẽzh | kʼaezh | khaezh | õkʼaezh | õkhaezh | pezh | fezh | mẽzh |
| INSTR | — | — | — | — | — | peqâe | feqâe | mẽqâe | kʼaeqâe | khaek | õkʼaeqâe | õkhaek | peqâe | feqâe | mẽqâe |
| COM | tasi | nasi | soesi | noesi | nũsi | pesi | fesi | mẽsi | kʼaest | khaes | õkʼaest | õkhaes | pest | fes | mẽst |
| PRIV | tao | nao | sø | nø | nõ | peo | feo | mẽo | kʼaelø | khaewoe | õkʼaelø | õkhaewoe | pelø | fewoe | mẽlø |
| COMP | taji | naji | soewoe | noewoe | nũwoe | peje | feje | mẽje | kʼaejae | khaejae | õkʼaejae | õkhaejae | peje | fewe | mẽje |
| ABL | tam | nam | soem | noem | nũm | pem | fem | mẽm | kʼaem | khaep | õkʼaem | õkhaep | pem | fep | mẽm |
| ALL | tao | nao | soe | noe | nũ | pei | fei | mẽi | kʼei | khei | õkʼei | õkhei | pei | fei | mẽi |
An important part of grammar here is case concord: all nominal modifiers take the same case inflections as the head. This applies to the genitive as well, which can result in extensive Suffixaufnahme (case stacking):
Jaae kroitcépek ahoekálavchɩkh Nêjakchɩchɩkh Skafárpozhchɩk.
- jaae
- it.is
- k-roi-tcépe-k
- INDEF-NMLZ-mark-EQ
- a-hoe-kálav-ch-ɩ-kh
- DEF-F-temple-GEN-THM-EQ
- Nêjak-ch-ɩ-ch-ɩ-kh
- Nêjak-GEN-THM-GEN-THM-EQ
- Skafárp-o-zh-ch-ɩ-k
- Skafárp-THM-LOC-GEN-THM-EQ
This is a drawing of the temple to Nêjak at Skafárp.
My languages also tend to be rather lacking in derivational morphology. Therefore, to avoid this, I will immediately create numerous derivational affixes which can be applied to nouns:
- skʼɩ- (n→n) — nominal negation (‘un-’, ‘anti-’)
- ljǿ- (n→n) — nominal past tense (‘ex-’)
- -shoi (n→n) — augmentative, intensifier (‘arch-’, ‘over-’, etc.)
- es- (n→n) — collective noun
- -fo (n→n) — object related to
- ei- (n→adj) — similarity (‘-like’)
- -njeo (n→adj) — quality (‘-ness’)
- soen- (n→adj) — having (’-ful’)
- -ale (n→v) — turn into (‘-ify’)
- qʼu- (n→v) — enclose in (‘en-’)
- fkhej- (n→v) — pass through
