Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

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Creyeditor
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Creyeditor »

sangi39 wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:What if length contrast is phonemic and the short vowels are more marked, so there are fewer of them?
Combining both ideas:
/i: ɪ ɯ u:/
/e: ɘ o:/
/ɛ: ɔ:/
/a a:/

With the following correspondece:

Code: Select all

Long        short
/i:/,/e:/    /ɪ/  
/u:/,/o:/    /ɯ/
/ɛ:/,/ɔ:/    /ɘ/ 
/a:/         /a/
Oo, now that looks interesting, but then you've got to think about what conditions any alternation might appear in, otherwise, would it be meaningful to talk about "correspondences" between short and long vowels at all?
Yep, we would have to have minimal pairs, but also (morpho-)phonological processes that somehow change one into the other.
We might talk later about this, but this could also be related to stress, with e.g. both quantities occuring in stressed syllables but only short ones in unstressed, which of course implies that sometimes stress changes somehow.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by CMunk »

Creyeditor wrote:
sangi39 wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:What if length contrast is phonemic and the short vowels are more marked, so there are fewer of them?
Combining both ideas:
/i: ɪ ɯ u:/
/e: ɘ o:/
/ɛ: ɔ:/
/a a:/

With the following correspondece:

Code: Select all

Long        short
/i:/,/e:/    /ɪ/  
/u:/,/o:/    /ɯ/
/ɛ:/,/ɔ:/    /ɘ/ 
/a:/         /a/
Oo, now that looks interesting, but then you've got to think about what conditions any alternation might appear in, otherwise, would it be meaningful to talk about "correspondences" between short and long vowels at all?
Yep, we would have to have minimal pairs, but also (morpho-)phonological processes that somehow change one into the other.
We might talk later about this, but this could also be related to stress, with e.g. both quantities occuring in stressed syllables but only short ones in unstressed, which of course implies that sometimes stress changes somehow.
So if we say that labialized consonants are indistinct before rounded vowels, and short vowels are coloured by labialized consonants.

Code: Select all

Syllable Stressed Unstressed
/kuː/    [ˈkuː]   [˳kɯ̽]
/kʷuː/   [ˈkuː]   [˳kʊ]
/koː/    [ˈkoː]   [˳kɯ̽]
/kʷoː/   [ˈkoː]   [˳kʊ]
/kɯ/     [ˈkɯ]    [˳kɯ̽]
/kʷɯ/    [ˈku]    [˳kʊ]
Some information would be retained in the stressed syllables, but other information would be retained in the unstressed.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by cntrational »

Alright, we're going with Crey's proposal.

/m n ɲ m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ mʷ nʷ ɲʷ/
/p t c k q ʔ/
/pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ qʰ/
/pʷ tʷ cʷ kʷ qʷ ʔʷ/
/f s ɬ ç x h/
/sʰ çʰ/
/sʷ ɬʷ çʷ xʷ hʷ/
/l ʎ ʟ/

/i: u: ɪ ɯ/
/e: o: ɘ/
/ɛ: ɔ:/
/a: a/

What secondary vowel features and suprasegmentals should be there? Nasalization, glottalization, tone, stress, things like that.
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sangi39
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by sangi39 »

I'm thinking nasalisation on all vowels.

The current interactions between length and stress, as proposed by CMunk, at least in one dialect, could have some quite interesting consequences if nasalisation became more restrictive in one dialect, and then shifted to length:

Code: Select all

/i:/,/e:/    /ɪ/  > /i:/,/e:/  /ɪ/
/u:/,/o:/    /ɯ/  > /u:/,/o:/  /ɯ/
/ɛ:/,/ɔ:/    /ɘ/  > /ɛ:/,/ɔ:/  /ɘ/
/a:/         /a/  > /a:/       /a/

/i:~/,/e:~/  /ɪ~/ > /e:/,/ɛ:/  /e:/
/u:~/,/o:~/  /ɯ~/ > /o:/,/ɔ:/  /o:/
/ɛ:~/,/ɔ:~/  /ɘ~/ > /a:/       /ɘ:/
/a:~/        /a~/ > /a:/       /a:/
Depending on the exact conditions.

In other dialects, nasalisation might shift vowel length up to three contrastive lengths:

Code: Select all

/i:/,/e:/    /ɪ/  > /i:/,/e:/    /ɪ/
/u:/,/o:/    /ɯ/  > /u:/,/o:/    /ɯ/
/ɛ:/,/ɔ:/    /ɘ/  > /ɛ:/,/ɔ:/    /ɘ/
/a:/         /a/  > /a:/         /a/

/i:~/,/e:~/  /ɪ~/ > /i::/,/e::/  /ɪ:/
/u:~/,/o:~/  /ɯ~/ > /u::/,/o::/  /ɯ:/
/ɛ:~/,/ɔ:~/  /ɘ~/ > /ɛ::/,/ɔ::/  /ɘ:/
/a:~/        /a~/ > /a::/        /a:/
The various length contrasts then shift in various ways. Maybe in one descendant, the over-long vowel diphthongise while in another, all vowels shorten by "one" while the original short vowels reduce down to /ɘ/.

Basically, I think nasalisation is an easy option that opens up quite a few options diachronically.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by shimobaatar »

[+1] to nasalization.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Esmelthien »

Nasalisation's fine. What about rising/falling tone on long vowels?
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Dezinaa »

I vote for unpredictable stress (i.e. stress can be on any syllable).

If we don't include stress, tone would be interesting. But I'm not sure if anything really happens when tone is lost. The reason I'm voting for stress is so we could do something like Grimm's law.

Edit: I don't think I was thinking of Grimm's law. What I meant was a sound change where stops and fricatives become voiced intervocally in unstressed syllables, then stress becomes initial, which phonemicizes voiced obstruents.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Esmelthien »

Hah, I learned about this today in IE! You're thinking of Verner's law.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by spikedee »

What about combining tone and stress into a pitch accent system where unstressed syllables don't carry tone, but stressed syllables have either a high or low tone? Various derivational and inflectional affixes can muck around with the system, changing the placement of stress and which tone it carries. I think this has the potential to create lots of interesting outcomes in the descendant langs: vowel mutations, alternations in obstruent voicing, blurring of clear agglutinative morpheme boundaries, etc.

Don't care much either way about other suprasegmentals. Don't mind nasalized vowels, but I'll go ahead and say that I think nasal vowel harmony is a bit too much before anyone proposes that. [xD]
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Dezinaa »

..........bump


spikedee wrote:What about combining tone and stress into a pitch accent system where unstressed syllables don't carry tone, but stressed syllables have either a high or low tone? Various derivational and inflectional affixes can muck around with the system, changing the placement of stress and which tone it carries. I think this has the potential to create lots of interesting outcomes in the descendant langs: vowel mutations, alternations in obstruent voicing, blurring of clear agglutinative morpheme boundaries, etc.

Don't care much either way about other suprasegmentals. Don't mind nasalized vowels, but I'll go ahead and say that I think nasal vowel harmony is a bit too much before anyone proposes that. [xD]
I like this idea.

I think we should all agree (or vote?) on the options so we can move on to grammar. [:D]

Edit: Sangi's idea is also cool.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by cntrational »

hurf i forgot about this

I'll update soon.
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Re: Proto-CBBian: A collablang protolang and a collabfamily

Post by Wario Toad 32 »

Can I participate
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