Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

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Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

This will be a scratchpad thread for my future use; it will also more specifically feature bits of "glossolalia" (interesting or aesthetically-pleasing strings of sounds I come up with that could be part of a conlang).

To start off, here's something I came up with today:

The words kure kabo popped into my head today, while watching this guy try to get a cat off of his motorcycle seat in what I think was somewhere in Japan, so that probably influenced by interpretation of this string

So after playing around with the pronunciation, I decided that unstressed word-final /e o/ will sometimes be raised to or [ɪ ʊ], particularly in rapid or casual speech, and that intervocalic /b/ will be realized as [β̞], or in more formal speech, as a true fricative [β]. There will be a whole series of voiced stops /b d g/ which pattern like this.

Additionally, unstressed final /i u/ will be realized as voiceless [i̥ u̥] or simply deleted (this, of course, is definitely influenced by Japanese). Thus even when final unstressed /e o/ are raised to , they will still not merge with /i u/. These processes may have happened word-internally in certain contexts, possibly leading to the formation of geminate stops and possibly the origin of present-day intervocalic voiceless stops, if I want to assume that the voiced stop series is the result of historical intervocalic voicing.

Furthermore, /k/ before /a/ will sometimes be backed somewhat, approaching /q/, mainly in emphatic speech and more often in men’s speech.

And what does it mean? Since I imagined it in the context of trying to convince an uncooperative cat to get off a seat, I’ll consider it in light of that.

So, it’s probably some kind of command, an imperative, telling the cat to move. In fact, it can probably be translated to English as “Get down!” or “Get off!” I’ve decided it’s going to be some kind of serial verb construction, so it could be something like remove descend or move jump or exit descend. I’m not sure which it will be yet.

This language will also have constructions like noun1 verb1 noun2 verb2 (noun3), where noun2 is the subject of verb1, and the subject of verb2 is either noun1 or noun2. E.g. boy saw girl hit car could either mean “The boy saw a girl hit a car” or “The boy saw a girl and he hit a car” - there will be morphology to disambiguate these two possibilities. (Or, perhaps, it will depend on context?)
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

A thing I made -

Image

After reading about a certain Romance variety with 4 genders, and keeping in mind some stuff about Bantu noun classes, I imagined a language that had a bunch of different noun classes, where each noun was pluralized by reassigning it to a different noun class (or not), and there wasn’t a 1:1 relationship between singular and plural noun classes - in fact it was essentially a network, with most noun classes containing singulars of some nouns and plurals of others. I made this graphic to visualize that idea.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Creyeditor »

Looks a lot more than inflectional classes.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Creyeditor wrote:Looks a lot more than inflectional classes.
There could be a 1:1 correspondence with inflectional class, but not necessarily. E.g. in the Romance variety I was inspired by, there are masculine nouns (which thus take masculine agreement) that have a singular in -u and a plural in -i, and some that have a singular in -e and a plural in -i. But they're both still masculine and take the same agreement. E.g.:

u dulu 'the pain'
i duli 'the pains'

u furise 'the shepherd'
i furisi 'the shepherds'

Different nominal inflections, same agreement - thus, same gender.

And it could go the other way, too - two nouns could take the same singular/plural inflection, but still be in different genders/noun classes.

u pane 'the bread'
i pani 'the breads'

a cruce 'the cross'
i cruci 'the crosses'

Same nominal inflections, different agreement - thus, different gender.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Infinitive + present indicative paradigm for “run”, “marry”, and “sleep” in a three-vowel Romance language which I might make (stress indicated with acute):

ɪɴғ: kur·í, marid·á, durm·í
1s: kúr·u, maríd·u, duárm·u
2s: kur, maríd, durm
3s: kúr·i, maríd·u, duárm·i
1ᴘ: kur·ím, marid·ám, durm·ím
2ᴘ: kur·íd, marid·ád, durm·íd
3ᴘ: kúr·un, maríd·an, duárm·un

(The interpuncts aren’t part of the orthography, they’re just there so you can more easily see the morpheme boundaries)
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Possible vocab (from the Swadesh list) for the three-vowel Romance language idea I’ve got. Singular and plural listed for nouns.

I: ju
you: tu
he: il
she: ilu
we (m): nutud
we (f): nutudi
you (p, m/f): vu
you (p, m): vutud
you (p, f): vutudi
they (m): iltud
they (f): iltudi
father: padri, par
mother: madri, mar
man: umi, um
woman: fimu, fimi
human: man, man or pirsunu, pirsuni
husband: marid, marid
wife: ispusu, ispusi
child (m): nin, nin
child (f): ninu, nini
tree: arburi, arbur
grass: iarbu, iarbi
horn: kuarn, kurn
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

A further elaboration on this idea

/mʷ m̼ n nʷ ɲ~ŋ̟ ŋ̠ʷ/
/pʷ p̼ t ts tʃʷ c~k̟ k̠ʷ/
/fʷ f̼ s ʃʷ ç~x̟ x̠ʷ/
/vʷ v̼ r rʷ ʝ~ɣ̟ w̠/
/l ɫʷ/

As you can see, every consonant is part of a rounded-unrounded pair. Except for the labials, all the rounded consonants are further back, too. /t/ and /ts/ are both counterparts of /tʃʷ/.

As for the source of these contrasts, I'm thinking that the rounded variants formed before rounded vowels, and then there were was some kind of vowel rearrangement, or perhaps a lot of vowel deletions, which made the distinction phonemic. Some also formed from coalescence of /Cw/ clusters.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Concept: A language where most of the vocabulary is made up of phonaesthetic or onomatopoeic bound bases; thus, a given word will be a compound of two non-separable elements, each suggesting some quality or phenomenon, placed in juxtaposition to provide the overall meaning of the word.

For example, there might be the following bound bases (acute indicating high tone, no acute indicating low/no tone):

- small
qo - large
- point, sharp
bo - round
hesh - whoosh, blow
dák - strike, smack
éya - down, descend
ayé - up, ascend

And some words might be:

níayé - to hop, skip
qohesh - a gale, a powerful wind
tídák - to poke, prick; a pin
níbo - a marble, a round bead
heshayé - steam, smoke, updraft
éyadák - to land or fall over with a smack
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Idea: A language with a series of particles grammaticalized from interjections, all used in the construction “[particle] the one who [predicate]”, e.g.

o the one who is holy ‘I revere the one who is holy’ / ‘the one who is holy is revered’

ai the one who lives there ‘I wish I were the one who lives there’ / ‘the one who lives there is envied’

yei the one who wins ‘I acclaim the one who wins’ / ‘the one who wins is acclaimed’

ekh the one who stands there ‘i detest/curse the one who stands there’ / ‘the one who stands there is detested/cursed’

au the one who loses ‘i pity the one who loses’ / ‘the one who loses is pitied’

and so on
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by gestaltist »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 21 Nov 2017 07:17 Idea: A language with a series of particles grammaticalized from interjections, all used in the construction “[particle] the one who [predicate]”, e.g.

o the one who is holy ‘I revere the one who is holy’ / ‘the one who is holy is revered’

ai the one who lives there ‘I wish I were the one who lives there’ / ‘the one who lives there is envied’

yei the one who wins ‘I acclaim the one who wins’ / ‘the one who wins is acclaimed’

ekh the one who stands there ‘i detest/curse the one who stands there’ / ‘the one who stands there is detested/cursed’

au the one who loses ‘i pity the one who loses’ / ‘the one who loses is pitied’

and so on
Clever. I like it.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

I was thinking of some ideas for Lexember and I came up with a little thing. I might make it into more of a conlang, idk.

/paˈin.o/ 'beautiful' (sɢ) < /paˈdi.no/ < /pad/ 'sight' (zero derivation of /pad/ 'see') + /ino/ '-ly' < /hino/ 'body' (or maybe 'face' or 'manner, behavior' or something)

/peˈno.e/ 'beautiful' (ᴘʟ) < /pa.iˈno.e/ < /paˈin.o/ + /e/ ᴘʟ < some source word meaning 'some' or something of the sort

/pad/ 'understand' < 'see'

(stress is strictly penultimate)
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

I made this today. Might edit or expand:

ken /kɛn/ “he/she/it runs”
kene/kɛnə/ “running/a run”
kêne /kinə/ “I run”
kînen /kinən/ “you (sg) run”

hit /hɪt/ “he/she/it falls”
hize /hɪtsə/ “falling/a fall”
hîte /hitə/ “I fall”
hîten /hitən/ “you (sg) fall”

sob /sɔb/ “he/she/it breathes”
sobe /sɔbə/ “breathing/a breath”
sôbe /subə/ “I breathe”
sêben /sibən/ “you (sg) breathe”

ruh /rʊx/ “he/she/it sleeps”
ruhe /rʊxə/ “sleeping/some sleep”
rûhe /ruxə/ “I sleep”
rîhen /rixən/ “you (sg) sleep”

las /las/ “he/she/it speaks”
lase /lasə/ “speaking/a speech”
lâse /lɔsə/ “I speak”
lêsen /lisən/ “you (sg) speak”
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

An idea for some ablaut-ish alternations I came up with: (acute indicates stress)

kávdi / kudí < káwdi / kawdí

séfki / sukí < séwki / sewkí

táʃpu / tipú < tájpu / tajpú

múʒne / miné < mújne / mujné

And maybe:

kómpta / kũtá < kómta / komtá

sílma / somá < sílma / silmá
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

A different, more elaborated version of the same ablaut idea:

In the initial stage the vowels are simply /i a u/, no length distinction. Syllables can have coda /j w h/; there are probably other coda consonants, but I am only addressing those three here. /h/ is the counterpart of /a/. Roots commonly but not exclusively have a CVCCV structure; I will just be dealing with those.

In the latter stage, the vowels are /aː eː iː oː uː ɨː i a u/.

The following root templates/alternations exist, derived from the respective forms in the initial stage (Č represents a consonant that underwent palatalization):

CeːCV / CiCV ← CájCV / CajCV́
CoːCV / CuCV ← CáwCV / CawCV́
CaːCV / CaCV ← CáhCV / CahCV́
ČiːCV / ČiCV ← CíjCV / CijCV́
ČɨːCV / ČuCV ← CíwCV / CiwCV́
ČeːCV / ČaCV ← CíhCV / CihCV́
CɨːCV / CiCV ← CújCV / CujCV́
CuːCV / CuCV ← CúwCV / CuwCV́
CoːCV / CaCV ← CúhCV / CuhCV́

Note that before the pretonic nuclei were deleted, consonants preceding /i/ were palatalized. The alternation in stress existing in the initial stage was the result of an original, predictable stress system in which stress moved due to affixation of additional phonological material which was phonemicized after the deletion of certain final vowels and syllables.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Some diachronic stuff:

At the start, we permit syllable with up to two morae - a syllable can have a short vowel, or a long vowel, or a short vowel and a final consonant. No syllable-internal consonant clusters, initial or final.

The morphosyntax of the language is largely analytic, featuring compound words (of varying degrees of opacity), but with inflection provided mainly by particles. This is not necessarily creole-esque, due not only to the presence of opaque compounds, but also in that there may be some contextual and paradigmatic inflection (even if in the form of particles). Some compound elements have also likely been grammaticalized into derivational affixes.

There is then a round of vowel reduction. Essentially, the nuclei of all unstressed syllables is reduced to schwa, which is then deleted if the following coda consonant can become syllabic. The outcome of cases involving coda consonants that are not obviously amenable to syllabification - say, [pokˈtal] > [pəkˈtal] > ??? is not yet decided. But, cases like [kojˈmen] will produce outcomes like [kiˈmen], and cases like [taˈpos] will produce outcomes like [təˈpos]. In cases where schwa is immediately followed by a stressed vowel - say, in [leˈot] > [ləˈot], it will probably be deleted - [lot].

Many particles are now realized as chains of unstressed clitics before or after stressed content words.

Subsequently, wherever there is a stressed short vowel in an open syllable, the following consonant is geminated (such a change actually occurred in Emilian or some similar Romance variety in that part of Italy) - and, where no consonant follows the stressed short vowel, a glottal stop appears. E.g. [kaˈlopat] [ˈma] > [kəˈloppət] [maʔ].

This produces a situation where there are now just two stressed syllable shapes, (C)V̄ and (C)VC. Out of analogy with existing alternations - say, the root [lop] in [kaˈlopat] also appeared without [ka], in just [loˈpat], giving [ləˈpat] - any unstressed vowel that gains stress due to whatever reason shall now geminate the following consonant or receive a final glottal stop, as appropriate (this is a thing in several Austronesian languages). Generally, there will remain a connection between the stressed and unstressed forms of each root - speakers will recognize that [laj] has an unstressed form [li] that appears in certain compounds. But as certain roots cease to be used as independent words, or loanwords are introduced with unstressed vowels that never had a historical/underlying stressed form, or simply as historical memory fades, it comes to be that when stress is placed on a schwa with no assigned stressed counterpart, the default stressed realization of schwa will be...something I haven't decided yet. I might make it so that some stressed vowel actually is [ə] from the get-go, like say [o] before an alveolar becomes [ə], and then all the stress and reduction rules apply, meaning that there's an existing stressed-unstressed pair that differs only in stress and its correlates, and not quality, meaning that other instances of schwa that become stressed just analogize to that and remain [ə].

And I'm thinking this language will have a logographic writing system, with the glyphs' values being assigned during the early stage of the language, before all the vowel reductions
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

An idea to be incorporated into a non-Sinitic Sinosphere language that undergoes vowel reduction and develops a system of clitics and unstressed particles akin to English, rather than tone: (essentially the idea described in the above post)

a native early-stage word for ‘horse’, say, [kun]

a native word for ‘man’, say, [lep]

a bound root borrowed from Chinese for ‘horse’, [ma]

a compound using [ma] and [lep] originally meaning ‘horseman, cavalryman’

after unstressed vowel reduction it becomes [ˈmaləp] or even [ˈmalp], and over the centuries takes on the sense of English knight or cavalier - a mounted warrior from a society in centuries past associated with some code of conduct

in modern times, a new word simply meaning ‘horseman, cavalryman’ is coined with [kun] and [lep] to be used in the context of modern or western-style warfare or simply as a general category. vowel reduction is probably not productive at this stage (cf. English horseman, seaman vs. funnyman, Superman), so this word is probably [ˈkunlep], if not [ˈkunləp]
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Messing around with some alternations inspired by English and other things - imagine a language with a plural -g and begadkefat-type spirantization, with some other developments in the meantime

baʔ - baɣ
naðð - naθk
namm - naŋk
haxx - haxk
loo - looɣ
pii - piiɣ
naað - naθk
seeβ - seɸk
huux - huxk
kaal - kalk
toox - tokk

idk some of these alternations are definitely not consistent since I didn't perfectly map out a set of sound changes, it's just an overall look I'm going for
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Nortaneous »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 15 Sep 2018 05:49 An idea to be incorporated into a non-Sinitic Sinosphere language that undergoes vowel reduction and develops a system of clitics and unstressed particles akin to English, rather than tone: (essentially the idea described in the above post)
wouldn't be surprised if this happened in Qiang
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Actually, putting this here, too, since it ended up being a more developed version of the idea I just posted. This version also includes possible definite plural forms:

/p t k/
/b d g/
/s h/
/r l/
/w j/

/i iː e eː a aː o oː u uː (ə)/

Initial stress

Some words:

oːk 'dog'
na oːk 'the dog'
oːkd 'dogs'

kim 'cat'
na kim 'the cat'
kimd 'cats'

heːb 'son'
na heːb 'the son'
heːbd 'sons'

kud 'man'
na kud 'the man'
kudəd 'men'

- Nasal assimilation
- Progressive voicing assimilation of word-final clusters
- Postvocalic lenition:

p t k > f θ x
b d g > v ð ɣ
s r j > r j ∅

- Deletion of vowels in unstressed final syllables (and more general reduction/deletion)
- Loss of /h/
- Devoicing of word-final clusters
- Shortening of long vowels before a multiconsonantal coda
- Simplification of word-final [θθ] to [θ]
- k g x ɣ > t͜ʃ d͜ʒ ʃ ʒ / _[e/i]
- eː oː > iː uː
- i u > ɪ ʊ
- e o a > ə
- iː uː aː > i u a (i.e. length distinction becomes quality/tenseness distinction)
- θ ð > s z
- single consonant following stressed lax vowel is lengthened; glottal stop inserted into empty word-final coda following stressed lax vowel

New inventory:

/p t t͜ʃ k (ʔ)/
/b d d͜ʒ g/
/f s ʃ x/
/v z ʒ ɣ/
/r j w/

/i ɪ u ʊ a ə/

The outcome:

ux uux 'dog'
nux n'uux 'the dog'
ʊxt uxt 'dogs'
nəs‿uxt nas-uxt 'the dogs'

t͜ʃɪmː čim 'cat'
nə‿ʃɪmː na-šim 'the cat'
t͜ʃɪnt čint 'cats'
nə‿t͜ʃɪnt na-čint 'the cats'

iv iiv 'son'
nə‿iv na-iiv 'the son'
ɪft ift 'sons'
nə‿ɪft na-ift 'the sons'

kəzː kaz 'man'
nə‿xəzː na-xaz 'the man'
kəsː kas 'men'
nə‿kəsː na-kas

Actually I think I want to institute one last rule, where all final obstruents are devoiced.
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Re: Porphyrogenitos' scratchpad and intermittent glossolalia

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

ajidá lavyéki ‘the old city’
ajidá e savyéki ‘the city is old’
anachidá ‘to some cities’

mbáza mvyéki ‘an old sparrow’
anopáza novyéki ‘to some old sparrows’
opáza so novyéki ‘the sparrows are old’

evyéki ‘the old one’
dumvyéki ‘of an old one’
anovyéki ‘to some old ones’

etené savyéki ‘she becomes old’
sémbya sevyéki 'he seems old’
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