New Tonal Conlang idea

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clawgrip
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by clawgrip »

I feel there is some misinformation being spread here and I want to clear it up. First of all:
why [do] nasalised /e/ and /u/ become /ɛ̃/ and /ʌ̃/?
Nasalized vowels can lean toward close or open vowels. Anyone who speaks French should know that French nasalization favours open vowels to some extent, and the close vowels are shifted downward when nasalized (cf. ‹i› /i/ vs. ‹in› /ɛ̃/, ‹ue› /y/ vs. ‹un› /œ̃/, ‹o› /o/ vs. ‹on› /ɔ̃/). Since the two vowels in the quote above shift down when nasalized, it doesn't seem particularly unusual. Perhaps a better question to ask is, why does nasalized /u/ drop more than nasalized /o/, and why does it lose roundness while nasalized /o/ does not?
You either use tones on vowels, or you don't at all. What I mean is there is no single language out there that marks tones on specific vowels and not on all, especially not with a contour tone system like the one you chose.
Let's take a look at some tonal languages and see if this assertion holds true.

Mandarin Chinese has the four main tones, plus a fifth "tone", the neutral tone, which is essentially a lack of tone. Mandarin Chinese has strong and weak syllables, and while the strong syllables always carry one of the four main tones, the weak syllables tend to have the neutral non-tone. The tonic realization of the neutral tone is simply an extension of the previous syllable's tone. Others can describe it much better than I can, but the fact is that Mandarin Chinese, the most famous tonal language, has exactly what you are claiming no tonal language has.

Zulu also evidently has something similar, a low tone which is essentially a lack of tone into which a preceding high tone can spread.

Moving on, Cantonese has six tones, all of which may appear in open syllables (non-checked tones), and only three of which may appear in closed syllables (checked tones). With a little bit of sound change, it is easily conceivable that the checked tones could be reduced in number from three to one, or none, like Mandarin.

Several Southeast Asian languages with sesquisyllables carry tone only on the major syllable, while the minor syllable may be toneless or have phonetically predictable tone.

Serbo-Croatian has both rising and falling pitches, but these may only occur on stressed syllables; unstressed syllables lack this distinction.

Many examples of this.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Davush »

clawgrip wrote:
Mandarin Chinese has the four main tones, plus a fifth "tone", the neutral tone, which is essentially a lack of tone. Mandarin Chinese has strong and weak syllables, and while the strong syllables always carry one of the four main tones, the weak syllables tend to have the neutral non-tone. The tonic realization of the neutral tone is simply an extension of the previous syllable's tone. Others can describe it much better than I can, but the fact is that Mandarin Chinese, the most famous tonal language, has exactly what you are claiming no tonal language has.
I'm not so sure the Mandarin fifth tone or neutral tone can be described as 'lack of tone' though, because if it is pronounced in the wrong (relative) pitch, it would be taken as another tone, although the pitch of the neutral tone is fixed depending on the previous syllable.

For example, the neutral tone after the high tone (55) has an approximate value of 33~22, if it was pronounced as 55 (the same as the high tone), it would be taken as a 'full' high tone. If it was pronounced too low, say 11, it could be taken as a third tone (which is usually realised as low-level or low-falling). This means the 'neutral' tone still has quite specific tonal realisations, they just don't exhibit the full range of pitch/contour as 'full' tones do.

The use of the word 'extension' here doesn't necessarily mean repetition of the same tone. The third tone is often described as a falling-rising (213) tone, but is usually realised as a low-fall (21). the 'neutral' tone after the 3rd tone represents the 'rising' segment, i.e. lǎ ba is realised as /la21 ba33/, with the neutral syllable /ba33/ being higher in pitch after the 'fall' from the previous syllable. In this way, the contour has kind of spread over 2 syllables.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Evynova »

But then again, the tone is never on the last syllable of a word, it is always on either the semantic root of said word, or on the stressed syllable. I'm not saying having tone on a single syllable is impossible (or not having tones on certain syllables, for that matter) but it seemed very implausible to have it exclusively on the last syllable, the one that is the least stressed and tends to even disappear over time (French words and their silent endings, for example), unless (and I should have expressed myself better), the semantic root is the last syllable and extra information is added by means of prefixes.

As for high-low tone systems, low tone isn't a lack of tone. Moreover, even if, register tones and contour tones are two different things, and they work differently. And that is also the case with register tones and a pitch accent system, they might sometimes sound the same but they function in very different ways.

And when it comes to nasals, I'm very much aware that they can change over time: French is my mother tongue. I was just curious to know why he changed those particular vowels and not the others :)

I should have expressed myself more clearly, sorry about that.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by KpTroopaFR »

Guys, stop arguing, this is abandoned anyway.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Davush »

KpTroopaFR wrote:Guys, stop arguing, this is abandoned anyway.
I don't think anybody is arguing. The topic prompted a discussion on tonal systems, so why not discuss it? [:D]
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

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Davush wrote:The use of the word 'extension' here doesn't necessarily mean repetition of the same tone. .. In this way, the contour has kind of spread over 2 syllables.
Yes, this is what I meant by extended: the tone is lengthened to cover two syllables instead of one, with perhaps some alterations due to this extended length. My reasoning for considering it a lack of tone is because is has no realization of its own; its realization is entirely governed by the tone before it. Also (since I'm not an expert in Chinese phonology by any means), my reasoning was partly based on this quote from Wikipedia: "This idea [of the neutral tone not being a regular tone] is appealing because without it, the neutral tone needs relatively complex tone sandhi rules to be made sense of; indeed, it would have to have four allotones, one for each of the four tones that could precede it." But, as the quote continues, "However, the "spreading" theory incompletely characterizes the neutral tone, especially in sequences where more than one neutral-tone syllable is found adjacent." Anyway, it should be clear that it is not as cut-and-dry as it was made out to be. Clearly, some syllables in a tonal language may lack tone or at least have reduced tonic importance compared to others.

This is perhaps a European perspective. Southeast Asian languages tend to stress the last syllable and weaken or delete the first syllable. Vietnamese completely eliminated its first syllables, first by deleting the first vowel, creating a cluster, then by deleting the first consonant in the cluster, leaving just the last syllable.
Evynova wrote:But then again, the tone is never on the last syllable of a word, it is always on either the semantic root of said word, or on the stressed syllable. I'm not saying having tone on a single syllable is impossible (or not having tones on certain syllables, for that matter) but it seemed very implausible to have it exclusively on the last syllable, the one that is the least stressed and tends to even disappear over time (French words and their silent endings, for example), unless (and I should have expressed myself better), the semantic root is the last syllable and extra information is added by means of prefixes.
Indeed, the idea that the last syllable is weakest may be a European perspective. Southeast Asian languages (which you may be talking about) generally tend to stress the last syllable and weaken or delete the first syllable. Vietnamese, for example, completely eliminated its first syllables, first by deleting the first vowel, creating a cluster, then by deleting the first consonant in the cluster, leaving just the last syllable.
As for high-low tone systems, low tone isn't a lack of tone. Moreover, even if, register tones and contour tones are two different things, and they work differently. And that is also the case with register tones and a pitch accent system, they might sometimes sound the same but they function in very different ways.
Yes, though it is not always so distinctly different. I feel the Serbo-Croatian example kind of challenges the distinction between register tone and pitch accent, because it has elements of both, since it is a binary distinction within one half of a larger binary distinction, a pitch accent system within a pitch accent system.
I should have expressed myself more clearly, sorry about that.
I probably sounded a little hostile in my first post. Sorry!
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Davush »

clawgrip wrote:
Davush wrote:The use of the word 'extension' here doesn't necessarily mean repetition of the same tone. .. In this way, the contour has kind of spread over 2 syllables.
Yes, this is what I meant by extended: the tone is lengthened to cover two syllables instead of one, with perhaps some alterations due to this extended length. My reasoning for considering it a lack of tone is because is has no realization of its own; its realization is entirely governed by the tone before it. Also (since I'm not an expert in Chinese phonology by any means), my reasoning was partly based on this quote from Wikipedia: "This idea [of the neutral tone not being a regular tone] is appealing because without it, the neutral tone needs relatively complex tone sandhi rules to be made sense of; indeed, it would have to have four allotones, one for each of the four tones that could precede it." But, as the quote continues, "However, the "spreading" theory incompletely characterizes the neutral tone, especially in sequences where more than one neutral-tone syllable is found adjacent." Anyway, it should be clear that it is not as cut-and-dry as it was made out to be. Clearly, some syllables in a tonal language may lack tone or at least have reduced tonic importance compared to others.
Yeah, I think I was trying to emphasise that in a language where tone features so heavily such as Chinese, a 'neutral tone' still has specific tonal realisations. In my mind 'no tone' sounds like 'use whatever tone you like because it doesn't matter here' (or similar), but obviously the specifics would depend on the overall phonology and structure of the language.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Evynova »

KpTroopaFR wrote:Guys, stop arguing, this is abandoned anyway.
Oh, that's a shame. I would have loved to see what you were going to develop with this :(
clawgrip wrote:Indeed, the idea that the last syllable is weakest may be a European perspective. Southeast Asian languages (which you may be talking about) generally tend to stress the last syllable and weaken or delete the first syllable. Vietnamese, for example, completely eliminated its first syllables, first by deleting the first vowel, creating a cluster, then by deleting the first consonant in the cluster, leaving just the last syllable.
I didn't know that. I'm not an expert in Asian languages. I should probably read more about them when I get the chance. Tones were a big turn-off for me for a long time, I've only got interested in their actual potential recently. At least I know what I'll read before bed, now!
clawgrip wrote:I probably sounded a little hostile in my first post. Sorry!
Don't worry about that :) Thank you for the useful information, anyway! I didn't know Serbo-Croatian was tonal. I need to know how tones appeared there!
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by KpTroopaFR »

By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

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KpTroopaFR wrote:By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
Thank you, that's a nice idea. I want to expand it actually, not improve though [:D] Just some tiny changes in the phonotactics, preserving the general idea that vowels can never be long and nasal or nasal and long or long and tonal or tonal and nasal.

Phoneme inventory
Consonants
/p b t d c ɟ/ <p b t d tt dd>
/m n/ <m n>
/r/<r>
/f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h/<f v s z š ž x xj h>

Vowels
/i iː u uː/ <i ī u ū>
/e eː ɛ̃ œ̃ a aː ã o oː õ/ <e ē ẽ ũ a ā ã o ō õ>

Tones
e.g. /á à â/<á à â>

Some phonological/phonetic processes:
Consonants:
/c ɟ/ become [k g] before back vowels /a o u/.
/x ɣ/ become [k g] at the beginning fo a word.
/s z/ become [ʃ ʒ] before front vowels .

Vowels
/œ̃/ is a nasalized, somewhat fronted lax mid central vowel with lip rounding [ə̟̹̃]
Long vowels /iː uː eː aː oː/ are articulated somewhat more periphal and - in the case of mid vowels - a bit higher than the cardinal vowels [i̝̟ u̝̠ e̝̟ o̝̠ ɑ̞̠]
Lax and nasalized vowels /i u e ɛ̃ œ̃ a ã o õ/ on the other hand are articulated more mid-centralized and - for mid vowels - a bit lower than other vowels [i̽ u̽ e̞̽ ɛ̞̃̽ a̽ ã̽ o̞̽ õ̞̽].
Vowels in the last syllable of a word are articulated as if they are long vowels, except for the length.
The short high vowels /i u/ and /œ̃/ diphthongize to a glide centralizing sequence [jə wə ɥ̃ə] under certain prosodic conditions.

Tones:
The high tone e.g. /á/ starts of slightly lower than neutral and rises to reach a high plateau throughout the second half of the vowel [a˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]
The low tone e.g. /à/ starts of slightly higher than neutral and slowly lowers until the end of the vowel [a˦˧˨˩]
The rising-falling tone e.g. /â/ starts of slightly higher than neutral, rises quickly to a high pitch and continiously falls throughout the rest of the vowel [a˦˥˦˧˨˩]
Toneless syllables e.g. /a/ bear the first part of the tonal specification of the following vowel, i.e. [a˦] before low and rising-falling tones and [a˨] before high tones.
It is also heavily influenced by the tone of a following word. The specific combinations are:
The toneless vowels are slightly falling between two high toned vowels /CáCa#Cá/ [Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥#Ca˦˧Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥].
The toneless vowels are level and slightly higher than neutral between a high tone and a low or falling tone /Cá#CaCà/ [Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥#Ca˦Caa˦˧˨˩].
The toneless vowels are level and slightly lower than neutral between a low or falling tone and a high tone /CàCa#Cá/ [Ca˦˧˨˩#Ca˨Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥].
The toneless vowels are slightly rising between two low or falling tones /CàCa#Cà/ [Ca˦˧˨˩#Ca˨˧Ca˦˧˨˩].
If there are more than one toneless vowel in a word, the tone just spreads out all over the toneless vowels.

Some phonotactic constraints:
A lexical word is minimally bisyllabic.
Long vowels and nasal vowels can only occur in the first syllable in bisyllabic word and in the first foot (=the first two syllables) in trisyllabic words.
The tones of the first foot are never contrastive, instead they are phonetically predictable.
Cotrastive tones only occur in the last syllable.
Polysyllabic functional words show vowel harmony effects. Certain vowels cannot cooccur. The relevant feature is ATR/RTR. If the vowel in the penultimate syllable is /i iː u uː e eː o oː õ/, the vowel in the last syllable has to be one of the following /i u e o/. If the vowel in the penultimate syllable is /ɛ̃ œ̃ a ã aː/ the vowel in the last syllable is always /a/. This is also a main phonological difference between /õ/ and /ɛ̃/.
Monosyllabic functional words never bear a tone undergo special sandhi rules (more later, maybe ...)

Here some of your example words:
/ʒecí/ [ʒe̞̽˨ci̝̟˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<žettí>
/ʒuca/ [ʒu̽˨kɑ̞̠˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<žuttá>
/ʃoɣudu/[ʃo̞̽˦ɣu̽˦du̝̠˦˧˨˩] <šoxjudù>
/ɟaɟí/ [ga̽˨ɟi̝̠˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<daddí>
Last edited by Creyeditor on 05 Jan 2017 21:08, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by KpTroopaFR »

Spoiler:
Creyeditor wrote:
KpTroopaFR wrote:By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
Thank you, that's a nice idea. I want to expand it actually, not improve though [:D] Just some tiny changes in the phonotactics, preserving the general idea that vowels can never be long and nasal or nasal and long or long and tonal or tonal and nasal.

Phoneme inventory
Consonants
/p b t d c ɟ/ <p b t d tt dd>
/m n/ <m n>
/r/<r>
/f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h/<f v s z š ž x xj h>

Vowels
/i iː u uː/ <i ī u ū>
/e eː ɛ̃ œ̃ a ã aː o oː õ/ <e ē ẽ ũ a ā ã o ō õ>

Tones
e.g. /á à â/<á à â>

Some phonological/phonetic processes:
Consonants:
/c ɟ/ become [k g] before back vowels /a o u/.
/x ɣ/ become [k g] at the beginning fo a word.
/s z/ become [ʃ ʒ] before front vowels .

Vowels
/œ̃/ is a nasalized, somewhat fronted lax mid central vowel with lip rounding [ə̟̹̃]
Long vowels /iː uː eː aː oː/ are articulated somewhat more periphal and - in the case of mid vowels - a bit higher than the cardinal vowels [i̝̟ u̝̠ e̝̟ o̝̠ ɑ̞̠]
Lax and nasalized vowels /i u e ɛ̃ œ̃ a ã o õ/ on the other hand are articulated more mid-centralized and - for mid vowels - a bit lower than other vowels [i̽ u̽ e̞̽ ɛ̞̃̽ a̽ ã̽ o̞̽ õ̞̽].
Vowels in the last syllable of a word are articulated as if they are long vowels, except for the length.
The short high vowels /i u/ and /œ̃/ diphthongize to a glide centralizing sequence [jə wə ɥ̃ə] under certain prosodic conditions.

Tones:
The high tone e.g. /á/ starts of slightly lower than neutral and rises to reach a high plateau throughout the second half of the vowel [a˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]
The low tone e.g. /à/ starts of slightly higher than neutral and slowly lowers until the end of the vowel [a˦˧˨˩]
The rising-falling tone e.g. /â/ starts of slightly higher than neutral, rises quickly to a high pitch and continiously falls throughout the rest of the vowel [a˦˥˦˧˨˩]
Toneless syllables e.g. /a/ bear the first part of the tonal specification of the following vowel, i.e. [a˦] before low and rising-falling tones and [a˨] before high tones.
It is also heavily influenced by the tone of a following word. The specific combinations are:
The toneless vowels are slightly falling between two high toned vowels /CáCa#Cá/ [Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥#Ca˦˧Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥].
The toneless vowels are level and slightly higher than neutral between a high tone and a low or falling tone /Cá#CaCà/ [Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥#Ca˦Caa˦˧˨˩].
The toneless vowels are level and slightly lower than neutral between a low or falling tone and a high tone /CàCa#Cá/ [Ca˦˧˨˩#Ca˨Ca˨˧˦˥˥˥˥].
The toneless vowels are slightly rising between two low or falling tones /CàCa#Cà/ [Ca˦˧˨˩#Ca˨˧Ca˦˧˨˩].
If there are more than one toneless vowel in a word, the tone just spreads out all over the toneless vowels.

Some phonotactic constraints:
A lexical word is minimally bisyllabic.
Long vowels and nasal vowels can only occur in the first syllable in bisyllabic word and in the first foot (=the first two syllables) in trisyllabic words.
The tones of the first foot are never contrastive, instead they are phonetically predictable.
Cotrastive tones only occur in the last syllable.
Polysyllabic functional words show vowel harmony effects. Certain vowels cannot cooccur. The relevant feature is ATR/RTR. If the vowel in the penultimate syllable is /i iː u uː e eː o oː õ/, the vowel in the last syllable has to be one of the following /i u e o/. If the vowel in the penultimate syllable is /ɛ̃ œ̃ a ã aː/ the vowel in the last syllable is always /a/. This is also a main phonological difference between /õ/ and /ɛ̃/.
Monosyllabic functional words never bear a tone undergo special sandhi rules (more later, maybe ...)

Here some of your example words:
/ʒecí/ [ʒe̞̽˨ci̝̟˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<žettí>
/ʒuca/ [ʒu̽˨kɑ̞̠˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<žuttá>
/ʃoɣudu/[ʃo̞̽˦ɣu̽˦du̝̠˦˧˨˩] <šoxjudù>
/ɟaɟí/ [ga̽˨ɟi̝̠˨˧˦˥˥˥˥]<daddí>

I love that ! But I believe you switched <ã> and <ā> in the phonemic inventory.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

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Thank you twice [:)] I fixed it.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Davush »

Creyeditor wrote:
KpTroopaFR wrote:By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
Thank you, that's a nice idea. I want to expand it actually, not improve though [:D] Just some tiny changes in the phonotactics, preserving the general idea that vowels can never be long and nasal or nasal and long or long and tonal or tonal and nasal.
Nice description and detail, but I couldn't help smiling at the rollercoaster tone marks like ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥. [:D] I think it's more usual to miss out the intermediate steps of rises and falls because they're implied (at least when I've seen it)? So ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥ > ˨˥ or maybe ˨˥˥ if you want to emphasise the vowel is held slightly longer at the 'top' of the rise.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by KpTroopaFR »

Creyeditor wrote:Thank you twice [:)] I fixed it.
Are you planning on naming this language ?
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

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Davush wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:
KpTroopaFR wrote:By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
Thank you, that's a nice idea. I want to expand it actually, not improve though [:D] Just some tiny changes in the phonotactics, preserving the general idea that vowels can never be long and nasal or nasal and long or long and tonal or tonal and nasal.
Nice description and detail, but I couldn't help smiling at the rollercoaster tone marks like ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥. [:D] I think it's more usual to miss out the intermediate steps of rises and falls because they're implied (at least when I've seen it)? So ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥ > ˨˥ or maybe ˨˥˥ if you want to emphasise the vowel is held slightly longer at the 'top' of the rise.
Yeah, maybe a bit too much detail, it actually displays nicer in other fonts. You could think of it as [˨˥˥] in a broader transcription. My point was, that it is not a sudden rise. I guess those will occur at the edges of certain phrases, where you can have things like [˩˥˦˨˩] with a sudden rise and a slow fall.
KpTroopaFR wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Thank you twice [:)] I fixed it.
Are you planning on naming this language ?
I don't know yet. I would have just taken the first word of the vocabulary list you provided. Do you have a better idea?
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by KpTroopaFR »

Creyeditor wrote:
Davush wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:
KpTroopaFR wrote:By the way, if anyone wants to take over this conlang and improve it, go ahead. But I'm not gonna decide who if two or more people want to. So you guys decide.
Thank you, that's a nice idea. I want to expand it actually, not improve though [:D] Just some tiny changes in the phonotactics, preserving the general idea that vowels can never be long and nasal or nasal and long or long and tonal or tonal and nasal.
Nice description and detail, but I couldn't help smiling at the rollercoaster tone marks like ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥. [:D] I think it's more usual to miss out the intermediate steps of rises and falls because they're implied (at least when I've seen it)? So ˨˧˦˥˥˥˥ > ˨˥ or maybe ˨˥˥ if you want to emphasise the vowel is held slightly longer at the 'top' of the rise.
Yeah, maybe a bit too much detail, it actually displays nicer in other fonts. You could think of it as [˨˥˥] in a broader transcription. My point was, that it is not a sudden rise. I guess those will occur at the edges of certain phrases, where you can have things like [˩˥˦˨˩] with a sudden rise and a slow fall.
KpTroopaFR wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Thank you twice [:)] I fixed it.
Are you planning on naming this language ?
I don't know yet. I would have just taken the first word of the vocabulary list you provided. Do you have a better idea?
How about the ddã language ? It was on my list and it sounds nice. It's short, too, which I like.
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Re: New Tonal Conlang idea

Post by Creyeditor »

I will have to think about monosyllabic words though. I was thinking of giving them a prephonemic structure like this /ɟã/ < //ɟãhá//, with the pitch in general being a bit higher than usual in the other 'toneless' vowels. You could still say it's the ddã language though [:)]

So a new allophonic process. VhV becomes V if both vowels have the same quality. The nasalization and length features are taken from the first vowel.
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