Činlim'li Nujmil: Conlang Family

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Činlim'li Nujmil: Conlang Family

Post by Santophrin »

Činlim'li Nujmil
"The Words of the Roads"

Proto-Language: Maluna
Descendant 1: Činlim'li Nujmil
Modern Form of Descendant 1: Čiilii'li Nužmil
Descendant 2: Tųda

Meta-info:
This is mostly an attempt at a diachronically derived conlang. First attempt at a diachronic conlang. Also, I'll warn that I'm very syntactically oriented, so I might ramble a bit.

Table of Contents
  1. Proto-Language Maluna: Phonology
  2. Proto-Language Maluna: Typology & Syntax
  3. Proto-Language Maluna: Morphology
  4. Činlim'li Nujmil: Sound Changes
  5. Činlim'li Nujmil: Analogical Changes
  6. Činlim'li Nujmil: Phonology
  7. Čiilii'li Nužmil: Sound Changes from Činlim'li Nujmil
  8. Čiilii'li Nužmil Syntax 1: Clausal Structure & Scope
  9. Proto-lang Maluna: Descendants & Lexicon
  10. Tųda: Historical Changes & Phonology
  11. Tųda: Syntax Sketch
  12. ...
Last edited by Santophrin on 31 Oct 2019 11:07, edited 15 times in total.
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Činlimli Nujmil Proto-Phonology

Post by Santophrin »

Proto Language

Proto-Phonology:

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stops  | *p *t *k
nasals | *m *n *ŋ
liquids|    *l
high V | *i    *u
low V  |    *a

Syllable: CV
Primary stress is word-initial. Secondary stress is the first syllable of each disyllabic foot.

See some examples below (each σ represents a syllable, ' is primary stress, " is secondary stress)
ex: 'σσ, 'σσσ, 'σσ"σσ, 'σσ"σσσ, 'σσ"σσ"σσ

Here are some example sentences:

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naŋilimu putapa tini.
['na.ŋı"li.mʊ 'pu.tɐ.pɐ 'ti.nɪ]
naŋi -li    -mu  puta-pa  ti  -ni
bread-DET.SG-ACC eat -PFV PAST-1
"I ate the bread."

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laninala lanimu putapa ti?
['la.nı"na.lɐ 'la.nı.mʊ 'pu.tɐ.pɐ 'ti]
lani+nala lani-mu  puta-pa  ti
when      what-ACC eat -PFV PAST
"When did s/he eat what?"
Last edited by Santophrin on 19 Jun 2018 18:25, edited 1 time in total.
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Činlimli Nujmil Proto-Typology & Syntax

Post by Santophrin »

Proto-Language

Proto-Typology

The proto-lang tended to be agglutinative, and suffixing.

Now, I'll describe the syntactic headedness. If you don't quite know what that means, it is roughly about the ordering of things within a phrase, and the category of the phrase. The head is a 'lexical item' (roughly, word) that determines what the phrase is, for example "eat bread" is an action, namely eating, not an entity, such as bread. So, in "eat bread", the verb "eat" is the head, therefore making the phrase a verb-phrase, which is VP for short. And also the head "eat" goes to the left of "the bread", making it a left-headed phrase. Natural languages can be totally left-headed or right-headed, or sometimes a mix of both. English is mostly left-headed (verb before object, determiner before noun) Turkic languages are head-final (verb after object, complementizer at the right edge of the clause), while German has head-initial CPs, PPs, NPs, and DPs (determiner phrase); along with head-final VPs.

Here is a glossary of the abbreviations for the types of phrases I assume, with some links if you are interested:
Spoiler:
AP: adjective phrase
DP: determiner phrase (I assume the "DP-Hypothesis")
NP: noun phrase
PP: pre-/postpositional phrase
CP: complementizer phrase
TP: tense/inflection phrase
VP: verb phrase
NegP: negation phrase (where negation is the head)
vP: voice phrase (also just called 'little VP')
PolP: polarity phrase (negation, contrastive positive, etc.)
The language is syntactically mixed-headed, meaning a group of phrases are head-final while another group of phrases are head-initial, like German.

Code: Select all

Head-initial: CP, AP, PolP
Head-final:   DP, TP, vP, VP, AspP
Edit: added PolP & AspP to the head-initial/final chart above.

It also has multiple wh-movement, in that all question words such as what, why move to the left edge of the clause. English moves only one wh-item and leaves the others where they are, (ex: Where did who go?) but there are other languages that move all wh-items such as Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, etc. If you have JSTOR access or any other way to get to it, Katherine Rudin's article called On Multiple Questions and Multiple WH Fronting could be a good place to look if you want to see what subtypes of mutliple wh-movement are attested even within Slavic.

A few examples:

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lanimu putapa tini?
lani-mu  puta-pa ti-ni-0
what-ACC eat-PFV PAST-1-SG
“What did I eat?”

Code: Select all

laninala lanimu putapa tini?
lani+nala lani-mu  puta-pa ti-ni-0
when      what-ACC eat-PFV 1-PAST-SG
"When did I eat what?"

Code: Select all

lanikumi laninala lanimu putapa ti?
lani+kumi-0 lani+nala lani-mu  puta-pa ti-0-0
who-NOM     when      what-ACC eat-PFV PAST-3-SG
"Who ate what when?"
Last edited by Santophrin on 22 Jun 2018 23:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Činlimli Nujmil Proto-Morphology

Post by Santophrin »

Proto-Language Morphology

Nouns

Nouns get suffixes for definiteness + number, and case. The proto-lang has three case-markings: nominative, accusative, and oblique. Oblique serves for locative, dative, genitive, and other meanings.

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Schema: root - def&num - case

indef:  -0
def.sg: -li
def.pl: -la

nom: -0
acc: -mu
obl: -ma
Verbs

Verbs have aspect marking: perfective and imperfective.

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Schema: verb - aspect

impfv: -0
pfv:   -pa
Tense, Number, Person

Tense is not expressed on the verb, but in a separate word. The morpheme realizing tense shows number and person agreement with the subject.

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Schema: [verb - aspect] [tense - person - number]

1: -ni
2: -tu
3: -0

SG: -0
PL: -ta

So, the tense-word is:

  |  SG  |   PL   |
-------------------
1 | tini | tinita |
2 | titu | tituta |
3 |  ti  |   ti   |
Polar questions (yes/no questions) are expressed by an affix on the tense-word. This suffix is:

Code: Select all

neg: -ŋu

The tense-words for polar questions will then be:

  |   SG   |    PL    |
-----------------------
1 | tiniŋu | tinitaŋu |
2 | tituŋu | titutaŋu |
3 |  tiŋu  |   tiŋu   |
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Činlimli Nujmil Sound Changes

Post by Santophrin »

Sound Changes
  1. Raising & Frontness Harmony: Low vowels raise before syllables containing high vowels and match frontness.
    a --> e / _Ci
    a --> o / _Co
  2. Apocope: Word-final Vowels are deleted.
    V --> 0 / _#
    This is quite a common change crosslinguistically, and has a phonetic & phonological motivation because the language doesn't stress final vowels and they are pronounced reduced and short. This simple change, however, triggers the phonemicization of /e o/ because some some of the high vowels that trigger these allophones are lost.
    Ex:

    Code: Select all

    *pana --> [pana] --> /pan/
    *panu --> [ponu] --> /pon/
    *pani --> [peni] --> /pen/
    
  3. Palatalization:
    t,k --> č / _{i,e}
  4. Syncope:
    V --> 0 / VC_CV
    This medial vowel dropping puts consonants in contact, and also obscures palatalization environments, phonemicizing /tʃ/.
  5. Prenasal Assimilation:
    pm --> mm
    pn --> mn --> mm
    pŋ --> mŋ --> ŋŋ
    tm --> nm
    tn --> nn
    tŋ --> nŋ --> ŋŋ
    km --> ŋm
    kn --> ŋn --> ŋŋ
    kŋ --> ŋŋ
  6. Pre-sonorant Voicing: Obstruents voice before consonantal sonorants.
    p,t,k,č --> b,d,g,j / _[+cons, +son]
  7. Word-final Lenition: Obstruents lenide into fricatives word-finally.
    p,t,k,č --> f,s,x,š / _#
  8. Minimum Phonological Word became 3 moras (either disyllabic CVCV or a heavy syllable CVCV)
    This is realized as vowel lengthening in words/bare-stems that have one open syllable (CV)
    Ex: 'hand' *ta --> taa
These sound changes operate to obscure allophony environments via syncope and apocopy, generating new consonant and vowel phonemes. The new phonology is very different:

stops: p t č k
fricatives: (f s š x) (word-final allophones)
nasals: m n ŋ
liquids: l

vowels: i e a o u

Syllable: CVC
Stress: Word-initial

These phonological changes distrupt the regularity of morphological paradigms, with many consonant and vowel alternations, and various irregular forms. So, the ground is ripe for analogical change. My next post will probably be about analogical change levelling some paradigms.

Some example changes in verbs:

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to eat
IMPFV *puta --> pus
PFV   *putapa --> pusaf
to hit
IMPFV *patapa --> pataf
PFV   *patapapa --> patpaf
to bite
IMPFV *kaliti --> čelis
PFV   *kalitipa --> čelčif
And an example from nouns:

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water /*ta-/
INDEF.NOM *ta --> taa
INDEF.ACC *tamu --> tom
INDEF.OBL *tama --> tam
DEF.SG.NOM *tali --> čel
DEF.SG.ACC *talimu --> čelim
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Činlimli Nujmil Analogical Changes

Post by Santophrin »

Analogical Change

Morphology

The sound changes shape the morphological system. The Vowel Alternations triggered by high vowels have led to alternations in the same paradigm.

I will call stems that ended in /a/ A-stems (ex: *puta-), /i/ I-stems (ex: *kaliti-), and /u/ U-stems (ex: *pupu-).

The resulting paradigm for I- & U-stems are:

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I/U-Stem | NOM | ACC | OBL |
INDEF    | -0  |    -m     |
DEF.SG   | -l  |   -lim    |
DEF.PL   | -l  |   -lam    |
As you can see, there is no ACC-OBL distinction, and no number distinction in NOM. But, A-stems, because the vowel interactions of different affixes affected the stem differently, has many more distinctions (<E> and <O> mean /e/ and /o/ are the mutation to the last vowel of the stem):

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A-Stem |  NOM  |  ACC  | OBL  |
INDEF  |  -0   | -<O>m |  -m  |
DEF.SG | -<E>l |   -<E>lim    |
DEF.PL |  -l   | -lam  | -lom |
A-stems keep the ACC-OBL distinction in the more complex DEF.PL but not the more base form (by Kuryłowicz's laws of analogy, the pattern we expect to be copied) DEF.SG. So, analogy levels this, and gets rid of the ACC-OBL distinction in all DEF nouns in the language, making it more like the regular I- & U-stems.

The final paradigm is:

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A-Stem |  NOM  |   ACC  | OBL  |
INDEF  |  -0   | -<O>m  |  -m  |
DEF.SG | -<E>l |    -<E>lim    |
DEF.PL |  -l   |      -lam     |
Lexical Analogy

The sound changes also affect forms of some lexical items very drastically. For example, look at what it does to *lituŋu-:

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*lituŋu- |  NOM   | ACC & OBL |
INDEF    | lituŋ  |  liŋŋum   |
DEF.SG   | liŋŋul | liŋŋulim  |
DEF.PL   | liŋŋul | liŋŋulam  |
Well, for this stem, all the forms except the INDEF.NOM seem to have the stem /liŋŋu-/, while the INDEF.NOM is highly irregular. Analogy reinterprets the stems for some of the non-frequent ones that show such difference. So, /*lituŋu-/ becomes the stem/liŋŋu-/, replacing the irregular INDEF.NOM form /lituŋ/ with /liŋ/ (no coda-clusters allowed, so simplified coda #liŋŋ# --> #liŋ#).

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*lituŋu- |  NOM   | ACC & OBL |
INDEF    |  liŋ   |  liŋŋum   |
DEF.SG   | liŋŋul | liŋŋulim  |
DEF.PL   | liŋŋul | liŋŋulam  |
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Činlimli Nujmil Phonology

Post by Santophrin »

Phonology

Phonemes

stops: /p t ʧ k/ <p t č k>
nasals: /m n ŋ/ <m n ŋ>
liquids: /l/ <l>

vowels: /i e a o u/ <i e a o u>

Allophones

stops: [b d ʤ g] <b d j g> (before liquid /l/)
fricatives: [f s ʃ x] <f s š h> (word-finally)
liquids: [lj ɫ] <l l> (palatalized before front vowels /i e/, velarized elsewhere)

Phonotactics: CV(C)

Smallest valid phonological word is a heavy syllable (CVC or CVV). So CV stems and words lengthen to CVV when left without affixes.
ex: 'hand.indef.nom' /ta/ --> [taa]

Due to the historical apocope, all words have lost word-final vowels, leading to heavy CVC syllables at the end of words. However, the apocope rule has long stopped being productive, so new open-syllable functional words and affixes have started turning up. An example is postpositions:

LOC: =či
GEN: =li
DAT: =na

These attach phonologically to nouns, creating CVC.CV phonological words. Still, since all old functional words, along with all lexical words have undergone apocope and syncope, a great majority of the syllables in the language are heavy.

Word-level Stress: Initial stress.

Sentence-level Stress: Under canonical word order, the object bears sentential stress. However, if there is a focused word, either contrastive focused (it also moves to a special position), or question words (what, where, ...), that item bears the sentential stress. Conversely, if there is no object, for example in intransitives, the verb is stressed.
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil

Post by Clio »

I've really enjoyed following this thread! I particularly liked the bits of information you've already given about the proto-language's syntax (replete with bibliography no less) and the derived language's prosody. Those are definitely two aspects that don't seem to get much of the limelight in many conlangs (including my own, I must admit). You clearly have a great deal of knowledge about linguistics, and you work it in nicely. Your style of writing is pretty good, too, although I occasionally found myself wishing you might slow down and provide a few more examples or some commentary around the tables. Looking forward to your coming posts!
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil

Post by shimobaatar »

I'll try to leave some more specific comments as well, but I just wanted to start by commending you for how thorough you've been in this thread, and to express how impressed I am by the speed at which you've been updating. I quite like what you have so far, and I look forward to seeing more.
Santophrin wrote: 19 Jun 2018 17:22

Code: Select all

stops  | *p *t *k
nasals | *m *n *ŋ
liquids|    *l
high V | *i    *u
low V  |    *a

Syllable: CV
Primary stress is word-initial. Secondary stress is the first syllable of each disyllabic foot.

See some examples below (each σ represents a syllable, ' is primary stress, " is secondary stress)
ex: 'σσ, 'σσσ, 'σσ"σσ, 'σσ"σσσ, 'σσ"σσ"σσ
Nice starting phonology. It has a pleasantly "simple" aesthetic, so to speak.
Santophrin wrote: 19 Jun 2018 18:22 Here is a glossary of the abbreviations for the types of phrases I assume, with some links if you are interested:
Spoiler:
AP: adjective phrase
DP: determiner phrase (I assume the "DP-Hypothesis")
NP: noun phrase
PP: pre-/postpositional phrase
CP: complementizer phrase
TP: tense/inflection phrase
VP: verb phrase
NegP: negation phrase (where negation is the head)
vP: voice phrase (also just called 'little VP')
PolP: polarity phrase (negation, contrastive positive, etc.)
The language is syntactically mixed-headed, meaning a group of phrases are head-final while another group of phrases are head-initial, like German.

Code: Select all

Head-initial: CP, AP
Head-final:   DP, TP, vP, VP
This is probably nit-picky, but there are a few types of phrases that are listed in the glossary but aren't listed below. Are they head-initial or head-final?
Santophrin wrote: 19 Jun 2018 18:22 It also has multiple wh-movement, in that all question words such as what, why move to the left edge of the clause. English moves only one wh-item and leaves the others where they are, (ex: Where did who go?) but there are other languages that move all wh-items such as Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, etc. If you have JSTOR access or any other way to get to it, Katherine Rudin's article called On Multiple Questions and Multiple WH Fronting could be a good place to look if you want to see what subtypes of mutliple wh-movement are attested even within Slavic.
Interesting. I'll have to take a look at that.
Santophrin wrote: 21 Jun 2018 14:23 Analogical Change
It's nice to see an explanation of your process here.
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil

Post by Santophrin »

Clio wrote:I've really enjoyed following this thread! I particularly liked the bits of information you've already given about the proto-language's syntax (replete with bibliography no less) and the derived language's prosody. Those are definitely two aspects that don't seem to get much of the limelight in many conlangs (including my own, I must admit).
Thanks!
Clio wrote:although I occasionally found myself wishing you might slow down and provide a few more examples or some commentary around the tables. Looking forward to your coming posts!
Thanks for the feedback, I did notice that some parts are a bit rushed. I'll try to tackle less in each post, and hopefully be less scattered. I appreciate it.
shimobaatar wrote:This is probably nit-picky, but there are a few types of phrases that are listed in the glossary but aren't listed below. Are they head-initial or head-final?
I was meaning to post the syntax part of the daughter language these days and explain how PolP, AspP, etc work, but got sidetracked by some phonology ideas. In the proto-language, and the daughter, PolP is head-initial, AspP is head final. The linear order of a canonical sentence is:

[ [wh wh wh] C [contr.] Pol [indir-obj] [subj] [obj] [V-Asp] [T-agreement] ]

Edit: There is no NegP in this language, but it is a common analysis for negation in most languages. For example in English, the NegP is "not go home" or the like, where "not" is the Neg head in the syntax. However, there are languages with "higher" negation too, for example Irish negation is at the very left edge of the clause, right next to the complementizer (or according to some analyses, at the complementizer). Russian has also been argued to have a "high negation" at Pol (unpronounced) based on the semantics under ellipsis and other things, while the overt and pronounced negation is a low Neg that is only there because a "high negation" Pol allows it. Long story short, there seem to be at least two places for negation cross-linguistically, and I quite liked the idea of "high negation" at Pol, so this language doesn't have a NegP, and instead a PolP. I included NegP in the glossary for completeness.

Here, wh is a wh-phrase (whether it be a noun "whose brother", or a PP "from which university"). Contr is a contrastive item, something stressed and denoting a contrast with the expectation in the dialogue, for example "He brought cheese to the party! (as opposed to champagne)". This contrastive item shows up to the left of the Pol head, when it is overt (such as when there is negation, or in subjunctives and other constructions that have a pronounced Pol word). Indir-obj is PP indirect object, such as "to John", or "by the committee". The obj is not necessarily a noun, it can also be a PP "look at him" or a full embedded clause "say that the food is ready".

I'll probably do a post on the syntax quite soon, but I'm having to fight the urge to not make a kitchen-sink syntax and add all the cool things like VP-ellipsis, serial-verb-constructions, low and high object positions that interact with specificity, raising predicates, nominalized embedded clauses, and so forth.

So hopefully my recent phonological extravaganza and syntax ponderings will not be too overboard, and I'll have them up soon. Thanks for the comments.

PS: If anybody reading this wants a free crash-course in syntax, UPenn has a quite nice intro book online here. If you have the basics, and want some more modern syntactic theory, some good keywords for new resources could be "Minimalism", the operations that are fundamental are "Merge" & "Agree", movement is reformulated as "Internal Merge". It is an attempt to go to the bare bones of theoretical assumptions and still model syntax accurately. Of course, there are some theoretical discussion you could look at. There is "A-movement vs. A-bar movement", "Tough-movement", generally "Clitics" are a big mess, the great and daunting topic of "Ellipsis", etc.

I am by no means an expert, but if you have any questions about syntax that interest you, comment/message/reply and I'll see if I have some reading & resources I could share.
Last edited by Santophrin on 22 Jun 2018 23:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Činlimli Nujmil: More Phonological Change

Post by Santophrin »

More Sound Change

I had high hopes for myself, and sticking with a relatively simple phonology, but you know how it goes. I didn't quite aesthetically like the crushingly overwhelming CVC syllables, so I got nasalization and compensatory lengthening to get rid of CVN syllables and turn them into CV:.

So, historically, these would work out as below:
1) Nasalization: VN --> V~N --> V~: / _σ

And then, because I do not like nasal vowels that much, I denasalized all medial vowels, leaving nasal long vowels only word-finally.
2) Denasalization: [-cons, +nas] --> [-nas] / C_C

ex:

Code: Select all

'face-def.sg.acc' publim --> publįį
'home-def.pl.acc' molnontulam --> molnootuląą
And, some other changes:
  • Final Syncope: V --> 0 / V.CVL_T#
    Short vowels are deleted after a sonorant (L), and before an obstruent (T), where the previous syllable is an open syllable (otherwise it would create 3-consonant clusters, which are not allowed).
    ex: 'home-indef' molnonus --> molnons
    ex: 'do.impfv' lelis --> lels
    ex: 'see.pfv' čenif --> čenf
  • Coda Lenition: [-son] --> [+del.rel.] / V_)σ
    i.e. stops become fricatives in the coda.
    ex: 'subjunctive' /nuj.la/ --> nužla
    ex: 'hit.pfv' /pat.paf/ --> paspaf

    Edit: Added the next two points
  • Tense becomes phonologically clitic to the verb.
  • A new rule of Clitic Lenition: obstruents on the morpheme boundary of clitics is lenided.

    Code: Select all

    'soil.indef.obl=loc'		/nutųų/ + /=či/	-->	nutuu=ši
    'water-def.sg.obl=instr'	/nižlįį/ + /=ta/-->	nižlii=sa
    
This changes nominal paradigms quite a bit, with now nasals disappearing and long/short vowel alternations alongside the consonant and vowel alternations that already existed. But, it totally decimates the pronouns, which were quite weird to begin with. I had not yet posted them, so they are below, with the new ones following the old ones:

Note: Apparently tab works in "code" too, so you don't have to counts spaces to make tables while posting. Really late discovery on my part.

Old ones:

Code: Select all

	SG			PL
	NOM	ACC	OBL	NOM	ACC	OBL
1	man	mif	maŋ	tul	tus	toŋ
2	nal	nis	naŋ	kom	kux	kaa
3	tan	čis	toŋ	loo	kus	laŋ
New ones:

Code: Select all

	SG			PL
	NOM	ACC	OBL	NOM	ACC	OBL
1	mąą	mif	mąą	tul	tus	tǫǫ
2	nal	nis	nąą	kǫǫ	kux	kaa
3	tąą	čis	tǫǫ	loo	lus	ląą
Now NOM and ACC forms can be homophones, 1st and 3rd person have nasal singular nom. forms while the 2nd has the only nasal plural nom. form, etc. It is now very irregular, which I think I appreciate at the moment.

With so much more sound change, it's kinda fun to look at the change over time (I have changed orthography a bit, and let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, the syntax and words didn't change much, which I am considering):

Ex:

Code: Select all

Current:	Lenįį kaf nužla mąą lels’šinųų nužmilii’na pulee’notus?
		[ˈle.nĩː kaf nuʒ.la mãː lelʃ.ʃi.nũː nuʒ.mi.liː.na pu.leː.no.tus]
Middle:		Lenim kaf nujla man lelis'činun nujmilim'na pulen'notus?
		[ˈle.nim kaf ˌnudʒ.la man ˈle.lis ˌtʃi.nun ˌnudʒ.miˌlim.na ˌpu.len ˌno.tus]
Old:		Lanimu kapa nutilaʔ mana lalita tinuni nutimilima-na pulani natuta?

lenįį		kaf	nužla	mąą	lelis=činųų	nužmi-lįį=na		puleni=notus
what-acc	C.Q	subj	1s.nom	do=1s.subj	feeling-def.sg.acc=dat	believe=npast.2p
'What do y'all want me to do?'
And, the syntax, along with all the Tense-Aspect-Mood lot will be quite soon.

Do you like the nasal vowels, do you hate it? I'm not yet sure about them, so tell me if you have strong (or not strong) opinions.
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Činlimli Nujmil: Syntax 1

Post by Santophrin »

Syntax 1: Clausal Structure

So, before I explain it, let me put in a diagram that shows the whole clausal structure:

Image

First, let me explain what each phrase and syntactic head are, and then describe them in Činlimli Nujmil:

CP: complementizer phrase

CPs are clauses, which can be sentences ("I went to the store"), or subordinate clauses ("for him to be happy"). In most syntactic analyses of natlangs, it is assumed that there are different C heads for declarative sentences vs. yes-no questions vs. wh-questions, root/matrix clauses (the main sentence) vs. embedded/subordinate clauses, and sometimes even more. Some are phonologically null, such as the complementizer in English declarative (root) sentences, such as "Ø I went to the store", and sometimes a phonologically pronounced word, such as 'that' is "I know [that he will be late today]".

Činlimli Nujmil has phonologically null matrix/root clause complementizers, except for yes/no questions, which acquired a new overt C after the last set of sound changes some of the polar question cues that marked the tense + agreement were obscured.

Code: Select all

/Ø/	root clause declarative
/Ø/	root clause wh-question		[moves wh-items]
/luuš/	root/embed. clause yes/no question
/kal/	embed. clause declarative
/kaf/	embed. clause wh-question	[moves wh-items]
Here are some examples:

1) [Ø mąą neŋįį pus’nęę.]
"I am eating bread."

2) Loo [kal mąą neŋįį pus’nęę] nuu’nas.
"They know that I am eating bread."

(1) & (2) show the declarative complementizer in root and embedded clauses. Now for demonstration of wh-movement

3) lenįį leekųų Ø lels’naa?
what-acc who-nom C do.impfv=npast.3s
“Who is doing what?”

4) Loo [lenįį leekųų kaf lels’naa] kuulečif’šis
3p.nom [what-acc who-nom C do.impfv=npast.3s] ask.pfv=past.3p
“They asked who was doing what.”

PolP: polarity phrase

This is where some languages such as Irish and Russian house negation. It also sometimes is realized as contrastive positives (like "I DID do it, contrary to your portrayal...")

In Činlimli Nujmil, Pol plays an important part. Negation is housed and realized only in Pol, along with irrealis mood (the subjunctive, and conditional). It's specifier position (one slot to the left of the Pol word) is reserved for a contrastive item. For example:

5) Neŋįį Ø mąą pus’nęę.
bread-acc Pol 3s.nom eat.impfv=npast.1s
"I am eating some bread. (not lobster or anything)"

Here is a list of the Pol heads:

Code: Select all

/Ø/	positive
/Ø/	positive contrastive	[moves contrastive item]
/nas/	negative
/nas/	negative contrastive	[moves contrastive item]
/nužla/	positive irrealis	[allows subjunctive or conditional]
/nazla/	negative irrealis	[allows subjunctive or conditional]
Here are some positive and negative Pol examples:

6)
a) Luuš Ø puvlįį čenf’šitųų?
Q Pol face-def.sg.acc see.pfv=past.2s.Q
"Did you see his face?"

b) Nas čis čenf’šįį.
neg 3s.acc see.pfv=past.1s
"No. I didn’t."

(6a) has asks a positive-valency question via the positive Pol /Ø/. The answer in (6b) is a negative-valency statement, with the negative Pol /nas/. Below are examples of the irrealis Pol with a subjunctive in (7), and a conditional in (8).

7) Nužla tąą molnootulii’na kuŋf'šįį.
irrealis 3s.nom home-def.sg.obl=dat go.pfv=subj.3s
“S/He should go home.”

8) [Nužla nal kutas’tuu] mąą kutas’nęę
[irrealis 2s.nom happy=cond.2s] 1s.nom happy=npast.1s
“If you are happy, I’ll be happy”

TP: tense phrase

TPs, or IPs (inflectional phrase), have been a big turn in syntax. It is a strong case of assuming the surface structure of a sentence can be different from the underlying framework that builds it up. What does that mean? Well, it is a claim that Tense, although mostly marked on the verb (in English and some other languages), is not something that is part of the verb. The discussion for it is long and different for different languages, but it seems that there are languages where tense (T) is realized independent from the verb, and weird behaviors (like English do-support under negation) that suggest tense is syntactically higher than the verb, and just affects the marking of the verb. Long story short, tense is separate from the verb.

Činlimli Nujmil doesn't mark tense on the verb. Instead, tense is realized as a separate word, with subject agreement on it. At least, that used to be the case in Middle Činlimli Nujmil (the one before the last batch of sound changes). Now, Tense + agreement is phonologically clitic to the verb, showing Obstruent Lenition as a sign of phonological cliticization (The initial obstruent lenides when cliticizing to the left, ex: noun=ta --> noun=sa, ex: verb=čįį --> verb=šįį)

Tense shows agreement with the subject in person and number. The tenses are past, non-past, subjunctive, & conditional. A polar question morpheme used to be attached into this complex in Old Činlimli Nujmil, but sound change has conglomerated all tense + person + number + polar question together. Here are the forms of tense:

Code: Select all

PAST			Y/N Q
*ti-	SG	PL	SG	PL
1	čįį	činis	činįį	čiitǫǫ
2	čis	čitus	čitųų	čistǫǫ
3	čii	čis	čįį	čitǫǫ

Code: Select all

PRES			Y/N Q
*na-	SG	PL	SG	PL
1	nęę	nenis	nenįį	neetǫǫ
2	nos	notus	notųų	nostǫǫ
3	naa	nas	nǫǫ	natǫǫ

Code: Select all

SUBJ			Y/N Q
*tinu-	SG	PL	SG	PL
1	činųų	čiinis	čiinįį	čiinitǫǫ
2	činus	čiitus	čiitųų	čiitutǫǫ
3	čįį	činus	činųų	čiitǫǫ

Code: Select all

COND
*Ø-	SG	PL
1	nii	nis
2	tuu	tus
3	Ø	taa


The left two columns are the declarative tense forms. In polar questions, the right two columns starting with "Y/N Q" are used. These forms are different, but very similar, because the only difference was the incorporation in Old Č.N. of /*-ŋu/.

AspP: aspect phrase

This is just a syntactic position for aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) which is realized on the verb.

For example, the verb for 'eat' has two forms; imperfective /pus/, and perfective /putaf/. In this case Asp either houses the impfv /-Ø/ or the pfv /-f/.

vP: voice phrase

I will not go much into what v is, because it is quite complicated and I don't quite understand all the reasons we want or don't want a separate functional head v in syntactic theory. I think the take-away is that the verb itself is housed in VP, while the argument structure (whether there is a subject and an indirect object, whether it is passive or active) is housed in v. I will just use it in diagrams, and refer to vP instead of VP, but as of yet, v does not have any special thing in Činlimli Nujmil. I justed wanted to say that I am going to use it, but in the end, it is not important, pay it no more heed than this paragraph does.

VP & arguments

VP is the good old verb phrase, which consists of the verb, and the object if the verb is transitive. As you can see from the diagram, the order of the arguments, as well the hierarchical positions is: [ indirect-object [ subject [ object verb ] ] ]

This is the canonical order. But, as you have read a little bit above in the PolP section, one of these arguments (or even an adverb or something) can move to the left of Pol to get contrastive focus. It doesn't matter which, any of these arguments, and also adjuncts, adverbs, etc can get contrastive focus and move. But only one element. There is only one position for contrastive items, so only one can move to the left of Pol.

Adjuncts: adverbs, time, manner, "because ...", "when ..."

Adjuncts are optional things that loosely do not change the core proposition of something, but add more meaning, such as adverbs. Syntactically parenthetical clauses such as "If he would open the door, he would see." or "When I try to turn it on, I first look at the safety switch." are also adjuncts. An adjunct in syntax is loosely something you can attach to certain points in the syntactic tree, without affecting all the stuff in the tree. They are optional, both "Yesterday I ate pizza" and "I ate pizza" essentially express that the consumption of pizza is complete, and the agent of the consumption was me.

So, in Č.N. manner adverbs such as "quickly", "fast", "slow", & "well" attach at the AspP level, with the linear order as:

[ wh-item C contr-item Pol manner-adv [ indir-obj subj obj verb-Asp ]AspP T=agreement ]

Temporal adverbs, more complex adjuncts such as "when ..." or "in order to ..." etc, conditionals, all attach at TP level (which is indistinguishable from AspP-adjunction for now, maybe I'll add some other stuff that will make is possible to tell apart in some situations), or at CP level.

[ CP-adjunct [ wh-item C contr-item Pol TP-adjunct [ indir-obj subj obj verb-Asp T=agreement ]TP ]CP ]

Scope

This language has surface scope. So, quantifiers, indefinites, negation, and all that jazz scope based of surface positions. So, if a quantifier such as 'every' scopes lover than negation as long as the DP it doesn't move to the left of (spec PolP to be exact) the negation at Pol.

Here are some examples with negation and everybody. Think about the English equivalent with this sentence, "Everybody didn't go". For the English sentence, there are two interpretations: the first is "It is not the case that everyone went", just a logical negation of all persons involved going, the second one is "For each person in question, that person did not go." This is because of English allowing different scopes for quantifiers like every, some, etc.

In Č.N. the surface position determines the scope of quantifiers, negation, and other semantic functions. The first example is the canonical word-order, without movement to the left of Pol:

9) Nas moskųų činaa’na kuŋf’naa.
neg everyone road.indef.obl=dat go.pfv=npast.3s
¬ [ ∀x [ go(x) ] ]
“It is not the case that everybody went.” [neg >> every]

The negation in (9) scopes over everything else, i.e. negates the truth value of the statement "Everyone went." So, half of the people might have left, or everyone could have stayed, or everybody except Jeff could have went along. This is the only interpretation for this sentence.

Now, if everyone had moved to the specifier of Pol, then the interpretation would be different:

10) Moskųų nas činaa’na kuŋf’naa.
everyone neg road.indef.obl=dat go.pfv=npast.3s
∀x [ ¬ [ go(x) ] ]
“Nobody left.” [every >> neg]

In (10), the interpretation is that "Nobody left." Because everyone is higher up on the syntactic tree, it serves as a "for all people, the following is true" kind of meaning.

So, scoping interacts in a really cool way with the clausal structure. I have to say, I'm feeling really proud of this scope interaction, so thank you Irish for having scope interactions with negation on Pol. You're the language!

Coming soon is probably a lexicon, followed soon by the currently non-existent derivational morphology.
Last edited by Santophrin on 31 Oct 2019 08:25, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil

Post by Creyeditor »

This looks like a promising exploration of theory for conlanging.
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil: Syntax 1

Post by eldin raigmore »

Santophrin wrote: 23 Jun 2018 19:00 Syntax 1: Clausal Structure

So, before I explain it, let me put in a diagram that shows the whole clausal structure:
😲 wow 😯! 😎 cool 😎!
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Re: Činlimli Nujmil

Post by Santophrin »

Creyeditor wrote: 23 Jun 2018 19:36 This looks like a promising exploration of theory for conlanging.
I'm trying to use some historical sound change & analogical change to derive some weird irregularities, but mostly I wanted to toy with the idea of building a conlang from the syntax.
eldin raigmore wrote: 23 Jun 2018 21:22 😲 wow 😯! 😎 cool 😎!
Thanks!

Now, I couldn't fight the urge, and I derived a sister language via some other (and simpler) sound changes. I'll probably be toying with syntactic and morphological change instead of heavy-handed phonological change on that one. I have ideas about re-analysis of certain contructions such as the conditional as another functional head next to the verb, and some cross-category harmony (all functional heads want to be head-initial, so TP shifts to head-initial). I'll soon post about that.

But first, I think I need to post about the lexicon, so that's coming.
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Historical Picture

Post by Santophrin »

Proto-Language Lexicon

So, here is some more information about the proto-language, along with the whole current lexicon.

Proto-Language: Maluna

The proto-lang is called Maluna, [ˈma.lu.na]. It means 'rest'. It is only preserved in liturgical use, and the name comes from a main tenant of the religion, which uses the term 'rest' for attaining a calm of mind and peace.

The language has two descendants:
  • Činlim'li Nujmil: Literally, "the thoughts of the road", is a direct descendant of the language. As the name suggests, it was spoken by half-nomadic and fully nomadic tribes. Some of these tribes settled far away from the historical homeland of Maluna, in a mostly secluded farming community in the mountains, and their dialect developed into Čiilii'li Nužmil. Čiilii'li Nužmil preserves the name as the nomadic past is an eminent feature of the community's cultural identity and folklore.

    Over the nomadic history, Činlim'li Nujmil picked up some loanwords, most strikingly in the pronouns, and got a pronomial system quite expanded from the historical Moluna one. Also some innovations in clause structure led to new complementizers and polarity words in the newly brached-out Čiilii'li Nužmil. The most distinctive feature of Čiilii'li Nužmil, however, is probably the extent of sound change that has shaped the phonology into a very different picture than the ancestral Moluna, and even it's immediate ancestor Činlim'li Nujmil.
  • Tųda: Literally, "Words". It is a curios name given to the language by a traveler that passed through the distant land of the descendants of who fled from the Holy Lands and crossed the desert. When the elders were asked about their language, they said they spoke "words", nameless like them and their land. The traveler fancied the idea, and learned the word for "words", and wrote it down in his travel journal. So, it went into history with the name Tųda.

    What marks Tųda is the syntactic and morphological changes more than the phonology, which also has diverged quite a bit, especially in long & highly-inflected words. Now, TP is head-initial, there are new complementizers and Polarity heads, prepositions and pronouns are different from its sister Činlim'li Nujmil branch.
Maluna Lexicon

Complementizers:
/*Ø/ root clause, declarative
/*kala/ embed. clause, declarative
/*Ø/ wh-question
  • moves all wh-items to it’s specifier, i.e. all wh-items move to the left periphery of the clause
  • ex: [ what who to_whom how when C …]CP
/*Ø/ polar question
  • triggers a polar question particle /ŋu/ after tense and agreement
Pol heads:
/*Ø/ positive
/*nata/ negative (sentential negation)
/*Ø/ positive, topicalizing (A-movement)
/*nata/ negative, topicalizing (A-movement)
  • contrastive item moves to the specifier of Pol, i.e. shows up after the complementizer, and before the Pol word.
  • The topic position is structurally higher than Pol, therefore an indefinite or any semantic function that is at topic position semantically scopes higher than negation at Pol.
  • If an indefinite or any semantic function is lower than Pol, negation at Pol scopes higher than that indefinite or semantic function.
  • [everybody Neg …] means [ ∀x [ ¬ [ predicate(x) ] ] ] “for each person, that person did not [predicate]” effectively “Nobody [predicate]”
  • [Neg everybody …] means [ ¬ [ ∀x [ predicate(x) ] ] ] “it is not the case that every person [predicate].”
/*la/ irrealis mood
  • Triggers subjunctive or conditional tense
Tense:
/*ti/ past
/*na/ nonpast (pragmatically infer aorist, present, future)
/*tinu/ subjunctive
/*Ø/ conditional

Agreement: [ T – person - number ]
/*-ni/ 1
/*-tu/ 2
/*-Ø/ 3
/*-ta/ PL

Asp:
/*-Ø/ imperfective
/*-pa/ perfective

Noun Paradigm: [ N - definiteness - number case_particle ]
/*-Ø/ indef
/*-li/ def
/*-ta/ pl
/*mu/ acc
/*ma/ obl

Scoping:
There is surface scope, meaning something takes semantic scope based on structural height. If semantic element A is at a higher position on the syntactic tree than B, then A semantically scopes over B, with the semantic interpretation [ λy.λx [A [ B(x,y) ] ] ].

Nouns:
Spoiler:
/*naŋi/ bread
/*tina/ road
/*nutu/ soil
/*nala/ move
/*ta/ hand
/*maluna+nutu/ house
/*pupa/ dog
/*tuku/ father
/*tuta/ plant
/*ki/ sun
/*niki/ water
/*kumi/ living being
/*nukami/ feeling
/*pupu/ face
/*maluna/ rest
/*lituŋu/ ?
/*nama/ mother
/*munama/ child
/*ŋani/ meat
Predicative Adjectives: Maluna doesn't have adjectives that are attached to nouns, adjectives serve as predicates (as in "The book is green" instead of "the green book").
Spoiler:
/*kuta/ full
/*nami/ dead
/*tatu/ whole
/*pala/ strong
/*lula/ soft
Quantifiers: [ quantifier noun - indef - number case_particle ]
Spoiler:
/*matu/ all, every
/*munu/ most
/*panapa/ much, a lot
/*nita/ some
/*ŋama/ no
/*lutuka/ few
Verbs:
Spoiler:
/*puta/ eat
/*tu/ fall
/*nami/ kill
/*numi/ think
/*nutiku/ burn (with flames)
/*lalita/ do
/*maluna/ sleep
/*kuŋu/ go
/*pulani/ feel
/*patapa/ hit repeatedly
/*kumilati/ ask
/*kani/ see
/*kaliti/ bite, chew
Moluna Numbers: The monasteries took meticulous records, so the educated people used the following number system for accounting, the number system outside this specific context was not preserved in record, so this artificial system might not correlate to the vernacular.
Spoiler:
Notation:
<...> denotes deletion of the stuff in the angle braces
~ denotes reduplication

/*ta/ one
/*nila/ two
/*laki/ three
/*muna/ four
/*mupa/ five
/*mupa+ta/ six
/*mupa+ni<la>/ = /*mupani/ seven
/*mupa+la<ni>/ = /*mupala/ eight
/*mupa+mu<na>/ = /*mupamu/ nine
/*lalu/ 10
/*lalu ta/ 11
/*lalu nila/ 12
/*lalu laki/ 13
/*lalu muna/ 14
/*lalu mupa/ 15
/*lalu mupa+ta/ 16
/*lalu mupa+ni/ 17
/*lalu mupa+la/ 18
/*lalu mupa+mu/ 19
/*ni~nila/ 20
/*la~laki/ 30
/*mu~muna/ 40
/*mu~mupa/ 50
/*mu<pa>ta/ = /*muta/ 60
/*mu<pa>ni/ = /*muni/ 70
/*mu<pa>ni/ = /*muni/ 80
/*mu<pa>mu/ = /*mumu/ 90
/*kalama/ 100
/*nila kalama/ 200
/*lalu kalama/ 1,000
/*ka~kalama/ 10,000
/*lalu ka~kalama/ 100,000
/*kalama ka~kalama/ 1,000,000
Question Words:
/*lani/ what (n.indef)
/*lani+nala/ when (adjunct)
/*lani+nukami/ why (adjunct)
/*lani+nala/ how (appearance, adjective)
/*lani+kumi/ who (n.indef)
/*lani+nutu/ where (n.indef)
/*lani+pupu/ how (manner, adjunct)
/*lani~lani/ how many/much (quantifier)

Pronouns: number is ıınmarked on pronouns
/*ma/ 1
/*na/ 2
/*ta/ 3

So, here is some stuff about the historical language family, and the current lexicon of the proto-language Maluna. I will be infrequently updating this lexicon as I add more vocabulary. Of course, I am missing important things such as coordinations, which needs to be fixed soon. But next up is the historical changes to the other descendant, Tųda.
Last edited by Santophrin on 24 Oct 2019 08:46, edited 1 time in total.
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Maluna to Tųda Changes & Tųda Phonology

Post by Santophrin »

Moluna --> Tųda Sound Changes

Here are the battery of sound changes.

Notation:
_ denotes the position of a phoneme
+ denotes morpheme boundary
# denotes phonological word boundary
## denotes phonological phrase boundary

Sound Change History:
1) Suffix Allomorphy: Raising across morpheme boundary:
*a --> e / i+C_
*a --> o / u+C_

2) Stem Allomorphy: Apocope: The final vowel of a stem drops before an affix:
V --> Ø / VC_+CV

3) Stress Change: The initial stress changes into:
a. If the penultimate syllable is heavy, stress the penultimate syllable.
b. If the penultimate syllable is light, stress the antepenultimate syllable.

4) Unstressed Syncope: unstressed vowels undergo syncope:
V --> Ø / VC_CV and unstressed

5) Post-sonorant Voicing: sonorant extend [+voi] to the following consonant:
C --> [+voi] / [+son, +voi]_

6) Nasalization & Vowel Change: First nasalization and then dropping of the nasal:
VN --> ṼN --> Ṽ / _C
With more detail on the phonetic character of the resulting phonemes.
aN --> ʌ̃: / _C
{e,i}N --> ɛ̃: / _C
{o,u}N --> ɔ̃: / _C

7) Debuccalization: Obstruents become a glottal stop [ʔ] before a sonorant (nasal or liquid)
V[-son] --> Vʔ --> V: / _C
Because of the phonology of the mother language *Moluna, this is in the coda before a syllable starting in a sonorant. Another formulation could be trying to increase sonority differences, according to the “Obligatory Contour Principle.” But then it goes the full way and compensatory lengthening takes place

8) Unstressed Onset Lenition: onsets of unstressed stops into fricatives intevocalically:
obstruent --> fricative / onset of unstressed syllable and intevocalic
[-son] --> [+del.rel.] / V._V(C). and unstressed
This is in a way preserving the strong marked phonetic features of a stressed syllable, and having a very cross-linguistically common lenition process highlight the stressed syllable by another phonetic cue. The underlying consonants will remain in consonant clusters.
(edit: added intervocalicitity to this change)

Tųda Phonology

And, the phonology of Tųda is a bit richer than Maluna. Here is the phonemic inventory:

Code: Select all

	labial	coronal	dorsal
stops	/p/ <p> /b/ <b>	/t/ <t> /d/ <d>	/k/ <k> /g/ <g>
fric.	/f/ <f> /v/ <v>	/s/ <s> /z/ <z>	/x/ <h> /ɣ/ <ğ>
nasals	/m/ <m>	/n/ <n>	/ŋ/ <ŋ>
liquids		/l/ <l>	
The vowel space is quite extended, with short - long - nasalized distinction:

Code: Select all

	+fr, -back		-fr, -back		-fr, +back
+hi,-lo	/i/ <i>/i:/ <ī> /ɛ̃:/ <į>			/u/ <u> /u:/ <ū> /ɔ̃:/ <ų>
-hi,-lo	/e/ <e> /e:/ <ē> /ɛ̃:/ <ę>			/o/ <o> /o:/ <ō> /ɔ̃:/ <ǫ>
-hi,-lo				/a/ <a> /a:/ <ā> /ʌ̃:/ <ą>	
The syllable structure depends on the location of the syllable. Final syllables can only be open and light (CV), but non-final syllables can be light (CV) or heavy (CVL, CV:, CṼ:). Here it is schematized:

Final syllable: CV
ex: tazu
Medial syllable: [C, +voi]V(L), [C, +voi]V:, [C, +voi]Ṽ:
ex: ta..mu, ta.zal.mu, ta.zal.mu.no
Initial syllable: [C, -voi]V(L), [C, +voi]V:, [C, +voi]Ṽ:
ex: ta.mu, .mu, .mu

Allophonic Rules:

1) Intervocalic voicing: Obstruents voice between vowels within a phonological word. Postpositional phrases (PP) and possessed (genitive) nouns are one phonological word for this purpose.

ex: /tana+ma=tiza/ --> tąma’diza [ˈtʌ̃:ma.di.za]
3sg-OBL=LOC
‘at/on him’ (edit: fixed derivation error)

ex: /kumi+ma=ki/ --> kųme’gi [ˈkɔ̃:.me.gi]
someone-OBL=ABL
‘from someone’

ex: /mana+ma=li pupu+li/ --> mąma’li būli [ˌmʌ̃:.ma.li‿ˈbu:.li]
1sg-OBL=GEN dog-DEF.SG
'my dog'

Stem Allomorphy Note:
Importantly, the word-level stress depends on the suffixes, and the syncope is dependent on stress. So, verbs nouns etc. alike have crazy stem variants (sometimes up to 3 or 4 different stem forms). It especially affects words that were historically more than 2-syllables. It's kind of a beautiful chaos if you ask me. I still haven't been able to find an easy way to determine which form in which situation, so i still use the historical stems and apply the sound changes, but that is on the maybe-to-come list.

EDIT: fixed derivation of intervocalic voicing examples (messed up the syncope and vowel alternations)
EDIT: modified unstressed onset lenition
Last edited by Santophrin on 24 Oct 2019 09:14, edited 5 times in total.
Clio
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Re: Činlim'li Nujmil: Conlang Family

Post by Clio »

I like the last two posts on daughter languages. A while ago, you asked whether people liked the nasal vowels, and I want to be the first to answer: I think they're a great addition. You've included a lot of interesting irregularities with nasalization and a few other sound changes. Most recently, it was pretty cool to see the examples of Tųda phrases containing /ma/ and the (at least two) different ways it could surface.
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Santophrin
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Tųda Syntax

Post by Santophrin »

After a long time of no conlanging, here we go again.
Here is a little more on Tųda syntax. More to come, hopefully, soon.

Tųda Syntax
  • TP has become left-headed in Tųda.
  • The highest verbal element (either main verb, or auxiliary) head-moves to T, yielding SVO orders in simple sentences. (This is in fact a movement chain V-to-v-to-Asp-to-T)
  • Focused phrased move to the specifier of Foc.
  • Multiple wh-movement: Wh-items move to the specifier(s) of C.
Image

Tųda Wh-Questions
  • There is T-to-C movement in wh-questions, so the main verb (or highest auxiliary) moves to the start of the sentence.
  • All wh-phrases move to the left edge of the clause.
(1) Paali kani’na mąmu.
Paali see=PRES 1sg-ACC
‘Paali is seeing me.’

(2) Lanigųmu kani’na Paali?
Lanigųmu_j kani’na_i Paali t_i t_j?
who-ACC see=PRES Paali
‘Who does Pali see?’

(3) Lanigųmu laniimi kani’na?
Lanigųmu_k laniimi_j kani’na_i t_j t_i t_k?
who-ACC who see=PRES
‘Who sees who?’

(4) Paali humilaabe’di [lanigųmu kani’nani mana].
Paali ask-PFV=PAST [who-ACC see=PRES-1sg 1sg]
‘Paali asked who I see.’

Tųda Polar Questions

Polar (yes/no) questions are formed by adding the polar question particle ŋu at the end of the sentence. The word order does not change from its declarative counterpart.

(5a) Paali kąve’di mąmu.
Paali see-PFV=PAST 1sg-ACC.
‘Paali saw me.’

(5b) Paali kąve’di mąmu ŋu?
Paali see-PFV=PAST 1sg-ACC Q
‘Did Paali see me?’

(6a) Paali nuula’na maluna.
Paali should=PRES sleep
‘Paali should sleep.’

(6a) Paali nuula’na maluna ŋu
Paali should=PRES sleep Q
‘Should Paali sleep?’

Tųda Scoping

Quantifier scope is based on the surface position. This is unlike English, where a sentence like (7) can have two different interpretations.

(7) Someone saw everybody.
∃x.∀y.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)
interpretation A: ‘A specific person saw everybody.’
∀y.∃x.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)
interpretation B: ‘Every person was seen by someone.’

In Tųda, however, scope is set by the surface form. So, (8) has a single interpretation.

(8) Nidaami kąve’di mazugųmu.
[Nidaami_i [t_i kąve’di mazugųmu]].
someone see-PFV=PAST everyone
‘Someone saw everybody.’ as in ‘One specific person saw everybody.’
∃x.∀y.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)

In (8), the the existential operator scopes over the universal operator because ‘someone’ is a higher position in the structure, gibing the interpretation where a single person did the seeing, as shown in the tree below:

Image

The other interpretation is only possible if the direct object ‘everyone’ moves leftward (higher in the structure), as in (9).

(9) Mazugųmu nidaami kąve’di.
[Mazugųmu_j [nidaami_i [t_i kąve’di t_j]]].
everyone someone see-PFV=PAST
‘Someone saw everybody.’ as in ‘Each person was seen by someone.’
∀y.∃x.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)

Image

Tųda Wh-Negation
Sentential negation is controlled by the particle na. It follows the main verb and precedes the direct object in canonical sentences.

(10a) Maduumi kani’na nizagųmu.
everyone see=PRES someone-ACC
∀x.∃y.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)
‘Everyone sees somebody.’ as in ‘For everyone, there is someone that they see.’

(10b) Maduuni kani’na na nizagųmu
everyone see=PRES NEG someone-ACC
∀x.∃y.person(x)∧person(y)∧¬see(x,y))
‘Everyone doesn’t see somebody.’ as in ‘For everyone, there is someone that they don’t see.’

(11a) Nizagųmu maduumi kani’na. (... Tana Paali.)
someone-ACC everyone see=PRES. (... 3sg Paali.)
∃y.∀x.person(x)∧person(y)→see(x,y)
‘Everyone sees somebody. (... His/her name is Paali).’ as in ‘There is a single person that is seen by everyone.’

(11b) Nizagųmu maduumi kani’na na. (... Tana Paali.)
someone-ACC everyone see=PRES NEG (... 3sg Paali.)
∃y.∀x.person(x)∧person(y)∧¬see(x,y))
‘Everyone doesn’t see somebody. (... His/her name is Paali).’ as in ‘There is a single person that isn’t seen by anybody.’
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