spanick's scratchpad

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spanick's scratchpad

Post by spanick »

I have a number of conlangs which I don't regularly work on and I have a lot less time than I used to, so I felt a scratchpad was in order.

***
I had a new idea for a conlang recently. So far I only have a phonology and some rough idea of where I'm going with the grammar. Working name: Wedanci

phonology
/p t k b d/ <p t k b d>
/ts/ <c>
/s h/ <s h>
/m n/ <m n>
/w j/ <w y>
/l/ <y>

/i e a u o/ <i e a u o>
Vowels may be long and long vowels are written as double i.e. <aa>.

Syllables are minimally CV and may maximally be either CVV or CVR where VV is a long vowel (not a diphthong) and R is any of /m n w j l/.

/w/ varies allophonically with /v/ when appearing as an onset with /u o/ or as coda with /u/.
Similarly, /j/ varies with /ʝ/ as the onset or coda with /i/.
/s ts/ vary with /ʃ tʃ/ before /i e/.

grammar
SVO
Isolating
Ergative-Absolutive
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spanick
roman
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Re: spanick's scratchpad

Post by spanick »

So I haven't had much time to work in Wedanci. In lieu of that, I've decided to post some stuff I have on another conlang I've already done a lot of work with, Dnukta'u. I've never posted the grammar online (because it's incomplete) but I have used this language for the lexicon building thread at ZBB. I actually have lost my liking for this language and have begun working on making this a Proto-language to a whole family.

Phonology
Phoneme Inventory and Orthography
/p t k q ʔ b d g/ <p t k q ' b d g>
/f s x χ h/ <f s kh qh h>
/m n ŋ ɴ/ <m n ng nq>
/l/ <l>

/i a u/ <i a u>
/iː aː uː/ <í á ú>

/ai au ia iu ua ui/ <ai au ia iu ua ui>
/aːi aːu iːa iːu uːa uːi/ <ái áu ía íu úa úi>

Prosody
Primary stress always falls on the root syllable and secondary stress is assigned subsequently.
Feet are trochaic and built left to right. They are quantity sensitive for long vowels and diphthongs but not for codas. Two syllables cannot be stressed in a row. When there are two heavy syllables in a row because of vowel length (H)(H) the second syllable gets shortened (HL). When the second stressed syllable is a diphthong, the first syllable loses its stress and its length, if it is long. Any unfooted syllables simply lack stress.

Syllable Structure
Roots are minimally CVC and maximally (s)(C)CVC(C)(s). For the record, I don't yet have a list of the possible clusters but for example I have /sqt/, /pt/, and /pk/ as onsets. The only restriction I can think of as being formal is that obstruants much be of the same voicing: pt, bd, but *pd. Obstruants here being only stops. The exception is that a glottal stop may follow or precede (most often it follows) a voiced stop.

Morphology

Roots
As mentioned above, roots have a minimal structure of CVC. The nucleus in each root is an unspecified monophthong. The nucleus vowel determines the part of speech of the root. <u ú> create nouns, <a á> create verbs, and <i í> create adjectives.

For example:
nVm - root pertaining to eating
num "food"
nam "to eat"
nim "edible"

Not all roots have all forms. The relationship between the various forms have some semantic connection but there is no way to regularly predict the meanings.

Derivations suffixes can be added to the roots followed by inflectional endings.

Noun and Adjective Inflection

Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify and adjectives and nouns have identical inflections. They are marked for eight cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental, vocative, and locative.

Nom. -u
Acc. -s
Dat. -á
Gen. -ís
Abl. -unq
Voc. -a
Ins. -iq
Loc. -la

The plural is marked not by a suffix but by an infix -i- following the root vowel. When this infix follows <i í> they are separated by an epenthetic glottal stop.

num "food"
Singular/Plural
N numu/nuimu
A nums/nuims
D numá/nuimá
G numís/nuimís
Ab numunq/nuimunq
V numa/nuima
I numiq/nuimiq
L numla/nuimla

Verbal Inflection
Verbs are marked for three persons and four aspect/mood combinations.

Verbs take the same plural infix as nouns.

Personal endings are:
First: -ah
Second: -t
Third: -ni

The aspect/mood markings come between the root and the personal endings:
Perfective/Realis: -gi
Perfective/Irrealis: -is
Imperfective/Realis: -dau
Imperfective/Irrealis: -u

I haven't devised a scheme to deal with tense yet.
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Re: spanick's scratchpad

Post by spanick »

I've started work on a new a priori (?!) conlang and have been getting a little energy worked up behind it. There's still not much, but I'll post what I have and try to work from here as much as possible. This is also one of my few attempts at creating a language in an earth-like setting but not part of our planet.

So far, everything is unnamed but the gist of it is that there is an earth-like planet with several sentient species on it. This language, is spoken by a human civilization which has achieved a level of technology comparable to the Medieval Era of Europe.

Consonants
/pʰ p tʰ t cʰ c kʰ k/ <ph p th t ch c kh k>
/s ç x/ <s ś h> (/x/ varies allophonically with /h/ word initially)
/m n ɲ̟/ <m n ń>
/l ʎ/ <l lj>
/ʋ j/ <v j>

Vowels
Stressed: /i e u o a/ <i e u o a>
Unstressed: /ɪ ɛ ʊ ɔ ʌ / <i e u o a>

Stress
Stress is normally assigned to the first syllable of a word. The position of the stress may be affected by other factors so a more thorough explanation of the stress is needed.
Feet are trochaic and assigned left to right. Feet are also weight sensitive so that closed syllables are considered heavy (H) and open syllables are light (L).

Phonotactics
The maximum (anticipated) syllable structure is:
(S)(C)(R)V(R)(C)(S)
S – either /s/ or /ç/
C – any consonant
R – any resonant, defined as: / m n ɳ l ʎ ʋ j/

Nominal Morphology
Nouns are assigned to one of four noun classes based on animacy:

Class A-1 – animate, with reason and will (reserved for humans or certain supernatural beings)
Class A-2 – animate, with will and without reason (reserved for animals and other kinds of supernatural beings)
Class A-3 – animate, without will or reason (reserved for plants and insects)
Class I – inanimate (anything else including idea, natural phenomena, elements, etc.)

Class A-1
This class is distinguished by its use of obligatory gender markings for natural gender: masculine and feminine. There is also a marking for unknown, which is used when the speaker does not know the gender of the referent or is speaking generally of a category of people.
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Re: spanick's scratchpad

Post by spanick »

Been toying around with an analytic PIE language lately.

Phonology
This is the phonology representative of what I've seen in the words I've worked with and might not be entirely complete.
/p t k b d g/ <p t k b d g>
/z ɕ ʝ x h/ <z š j x h> (/h/ and /x/ are in complementary distribution with /h/ occurring only word-initially)
/m n/ <m n>
/ʋ ɻ/ <v r~l>

/i iː u uː/ <i ī u ū>
/e eː ø øː o oː/ <e ē ö ȫ o ō>
/a aː/ <a ā>
/ã õ ẽ/ <ã õ ẽ>

/au ai ei eu/ <au ai ei eu>

Again, this is just what has been observed so far. It's entirely possible that all vowels could have nasal counterparts and it's also possible that there could be a front high rounded vowel.

Like I said above, this is an analytic language. Nouns are not longer inflected for case or number. However, there is one unique exception to this. Some nouns have separate forms for the Subject and Oblique cases. These can sometimes bear little resemblance to each other. For example:

Subject/Oblique
otar/uten "water"
nepōt/ãpt "nephew"

Nouns can receive two affixes: the negative prefix an-/ã- and the definite article suffix -k/-ak. There is no indefinite article, but the negative prefix can be thought of as a negative indefinite article similar to German "kein".

The default word order is SOV.
Ex: Gnok uten pox. "The man drinks water."

Verbs are not marked for number, tense, person, or aspect. They can receive the negative prefix an-/ã-. Much like Chinese, tense is often inferred by context, adverbs, and the use of aspectual particles. So far, the only particle I've definitively decided on is the interrogative particle <mē>.
Ex: Ukak heu gje et mē. "Did the wolf eat a sheep yesterday?"
Lit: wolf-the sheep yesterday eat INT

Pronouns can also have Subject/Oblique forms but not all do.

1S ekox/me
1P vei/nō
2S tax/te
2P jū
3S tot
3P tex

An oblique pronoun immediately proceed the noun it modifies, as do adjectives.
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