(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2020]

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Znex
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Znex »

Thrice Xandvii wrote: 19 Nov 2017 08:39 A bit... Since an average citizen prolly wouldn't know what phonotactics are.

(And i would mos def call that setting "modern.")
Unless in Griuskant society, citizens are routinely taught linguistics in school and hear about it on TV and the news.

If an average citizen can know vaguely about special relativity, they can potentially know vaguely about linguistics.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

I am thinking about starting a hatelang, like Creyeditor's Omlut... what do people think of such a thing, and what do you think of the first few sentences that I have translated from "the North Wind and the Sun"?

Code: Select all

north-GEN wind and  sun   argue-PST-PLR  about two  he~PLR which    more  strong. 
Djbar-b   fteef s   khoon streckang-b-ek djya  næ̃s  ta~ta  heetoong goosh flarbnee.
/dʒɑ˞b    ftif  s   xun ˈ stɹɛkɑŋbɛk     dʒjɑ  næ̃s ˈtɑtɑ   ˈhituŋ   guʃ  ˈflɑ˞bni./

While he~PLR dispute-PST-PLR with   much   heat      and  bluster, 
 Nai  ta~ta  gweezd-b-ek     rgar   dloana sheesheef s    broodgyoo,
/naj ˈtɑtɑ  ˈgwizdbɛk        ɚˈ̆gɑ˞ ˈdlɔːnə ʃiʃif     s    ˈbɹudgju/

travel-nominalizer   passed-along-PST that wrap-PASS  in    cloak.
 froogn-orbl         dweel-b          ta   shkeek-n   bzar  gbooboa. 
/ ˈfɹugnɔ˞bl̩         dwilb            ta ˈ ʃkikn̩      bzɑ˞  ˈgbubɔː/
Unfortunately, I am light on ideas for syntax, so the sentence structure is a bit closer to English than I want it to be at the moment (which is something I dislike, I guess, but that's a bit too meta a way of being a hatelang). I wonder if I am overdoing it a bit with the phonology, but I would be interested in knowing if anyone thinks there are parts of it that sound nice despite my efforts.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by DesEsseintes »

@Smtuval: I think hatelangs are a great way to realise that it’s actually quite difficult to find a feature that you continue hating once you get into it and explore its possibilities. That even goes for things that at first glance seem awful, such as the cluster fl (which incidentally is the only thing I actively dislike in your sample, so you scored a point there.) So that was my half a penny’s worth.

My own question:

Here’s a phonology I had the idea for a good while back. It’s a clicklang to be spoken in my conworld Áánene and it’s meant to by typologically unusual, perhaps somewhat excessively so.

/m n ŋ/
/p t ʔ/
/h/
/ɾ w/
/ᵑʘ ᵑǀ ᵑǁ/
/ʘˀ ǀˀ ǁˀ/

/i ɨ u e o a/

Clicks only occur word-initially and /ŋ/ only occurs in coda (and I may remove it or make it an allophone of /n/).

I want to keep the click inventory minimal (but I do want the bilabial clicks, Creyeditor!), so I wanted opinions on whether I get away with just a nasalised vs glottalised series? All ideas on how to improve on it are welcome, but I’d rather not increase the number of clicks drastically.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Sumelic wrote: 21 Nov 2017 08:03 I am thinking about starting a hatelang, like Creyeditor's Omlut... what do people think of such a thing, and what do you think of the first few sentences that I have translated from "the North Wind and the Sun"?

Code: Select all

north-GEN wind and  sun   argue-PST-PLR  about two  he~PLR which    more  strong. 
Djbar-b   fteef s   khoon streckang-b-ek djya  næ̃s  ta~ta  heetoong goosh flarbnee.
/dʒɑ˞b    ftif  s   xun ˈ stɹɛkɑŋbɛk     dʒjɑ  næ̃s ˈtɑtɑ   ˈhituŋ   guʃ  ˈflɑ˞bni./

While he~PLR dispute-PST-PLR with   much   heat      and  bluster, 
 Nai  ta~ta  gweezd-b-ek     rgar   dloana sheesheef s    broodgyoo,
/naj ˈtɑtɑ  ˈgwizdbɛk        ɚˈ̆gɑ˞ ˈdlɔːnə ʃiʃif     s    ˈbɹudgju/

travel-nominalizer   passed-along-PST that wrap-PASS  in    cloak.
 froogn-orbl         dweel-b          ta   shkeek-n   bzar  gbooboa. 
/ ˈfɹugnɔ˞bl̩         dwilb            ta ˈ ʃkikn̩      bzɑ˞  ˈgbubɔː/
Unfortunately, I am light on ideas for syntax, so the sentence structure is a bit closer to English than I want it to be at the moment (which is something I dislike, I guess, but that's a bit too meta a way of being a hatelang). I wonder if I am overdoing it a bit with the phonology, but I would be interested in knowing if anyone thinks there are parts of it that sound nice despite my efforts.
I don't think you are overdoing it, because it looks like English with some weird new consonant clusters to me.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

Now that I've tried saying it out loud, it sounds a whole lot like Simlish, from The Sims, especially "flarbnee" and "froognorbl". [:D]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

DesEsseintes wrote: 21 Nov 2017 16:54 @Smtuval: I think hatelangs are a great way to realise that it’s actually quite difficult to find a feature that you continue hating once you get into it and explore its possibilities. That even goes for things that at first glance seem awful, such as the cluster fl (which incidentally is the only thing I actively dislike in your sample, so you scored a point there.) So that was my half a penny’s worth.
Thanks! Interesting, word-initial /fl/ actually seems OK to me (in some contexts) while I dislike word-initial /fn/. It's funny how people's aural aesthetics vary so much. I agree about it being hard to find things that are really "hateable" once they're actually implemented as part of a working system.
DesEsseintes wrote: I wanted opinions on whether I get away with just a nasalised vs glottalised series?
I don't know very much about click consonants, but my impression is that the limited distribution of clicks in our world makes it a bit hard to determine what kind of shared characteristics of languages with clicks might be "universal" vs. areal or due to common descent. So I would guess that would be fine.
Creyeditor wrote: 21 Nov 2017 19:50 I don't think you are overdoing it, because it looks like English with some weird new consonant clusters to me.
Dormouse559 wrote: 21 Nov 2017 20:00 Now that I've tried saying it out loud, it sounds a whole lot like Simlish, from The Sims, especially "flarbnee" and "froognorbl". [:D]
Yeah, I think it sounds a fair amount like "generic weird alien language" from an English-speaker's perspective. The spelling is of course also English-based.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by gestaltist »

DesEsseintes wrote: 21 Nov 2017 16:54 the cluster fl (which incidentally is the only thing I actively dislike in your sample
You clearly have no taste. fl is an awesome cluster. :mrgreen:
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Post by gestaltist »

Does anybody know of a case where a consonant caused lenition of a neighboring consonant and then elided?

I have a process in mind where a prefix also lenites the stem-initial consonant but I have a hard time justifying why it doesn't happen language-wide, but only for a few specific prefixes.
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Post by Frislander »

gestaltist wrote: 22 Nov 2017 16:58 Does anybody know of a case where a consonant caused lenition of a neighboring consonant and then elided?

I have a process in mind where a prefix also lenites the stem-initial consonant but I have a hard time justifying why it doesn't happen language-wide, but only for a few specific prefixes.
Some ideas:
  • Nasals and sonorants causing following unvoiced consonants to voice
  • Fricatives causing spirantisaion of a following stop
e.g.

**an-paka > *ambaka > abaka
**al-paka > *albaka > a(u)baka
**as-paka > *asɸaka > aɸaka

(You are not restricted to this list of course: you could for instance have an alveolar or uvular trill)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Also Hungarian

mp > mb > b
nt > nd > d
ŋk > ŋg > g
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Post by gestaltist »

Thanks guys, that's more or less what I have in mind butI will need it to happen for some rare phoneme so it doesn't happen everywhere. I'll probably say it was ʕor something.
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Post by holbuzvala »

So, in Azvolaj, there is marking on verbs to agree with the subject and object depending on what noun class they fall into. The classes are:

1. human (e.g. man, writer, daughter)
2. human group (enemy, team, committee)
3. animate (dog, cat, river)
4. animate group (ants, bees, raindrops)
5. inanimate (boulder, tree)
6. inanimate group (leaves, pebbles, grapes)
7. abstract (heat, joy, wood)
8. places (Rome, the countryside, school)

And as we descend the list, we (I think) follow a descent in an animacy hierarchy.

Now, behold the following sentence: "The man and his dog ate a steak."

Here, the subject is 'The man and his dog', but this is of mixed noun class. Therefore:

1. Do you think the verbal agreement should agree with the man, or with his dog?
Or, more broadly,
1.b. Do you think the verbal agreement should agree with the most animate noun of a mixed-class argument, or should the verb agree with the least animate noun of a mixed-class argument?
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Post by DesEsseintes »

holbuzvala wrote: 23 Nov 2017 14:49 So, in Azvolaj, there is marking on verbs to agree with the subject and object depending on what noun class they fall into. The classes are:

1. human (e.g. man, writer, daughter)
2. human group (enemy, team, committee)
3. animate (dog, cat, river)
4. animate group (ants, bees, raindrops)
5. inanimate (boulder, tree)
6. inanimate group (leaves, pebbles, grapes)
7. abstract (heat, joy, wood)
8. places (Rome, the countryside, school)

And as we descend the list, we (I think) follow a descent in an animacy hierarchy.

Now, behold the following sentence: "The man and his dog ate a steak."

Here, the subject is 'The man and his dog', but this is of mixed noun class. Therefore:

1. Do you think the verbal agreement should agree with the man, or with his dog?
Or, more broadly,
1.b. Do you think the verbal agreement should agree with the most animate noun of a mixed-class argument, or should the verb agree with the least animate noun of a mixed-class argument?
It should agree with the most animate referent in my opinion.

Here’s an alternative strategy: the less animate participant is demoted to an oblique argument and you get sth like:

“The man [with his dog]* ate-1 a steak”

*You then may need some oblique-marking strategy here like a comitative case or similar.
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Post by holbuzvala »

Thanks, Des. I was leaning towards having the agreement be with the most animate too.

The oblique-argument structure would be sort of hard in terms of case-marking as there aren't 'cases', so to say, in Azvolaj. However, I could just use a preposition meaning 'with', but have it be a very specific 'with'. Having just written this, though, I think I'll just have the agreement go with the most animate member of the argument because the current way I have of binding elements in an argument together is using a special noun-linker (like the Latin "_que" e.g. Senatus Populusque Romae), thus rendering:

"The man and his dog ate a steak"

man NOUN.LINKER-dog steak 2-5-ate

(N.B. the subject-agreement on the verb is with the 'human group' class (class 2) because the man and his dog are doing the action together. If it were the class 1 agreement, it would mean "The man and his dog ate a steak (each)".)
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Post by Davush »

Do you like to be able to pronounce your conlangs more or less accurately and fluidly? I am asking because I have always tended to only make languages which I can pronounce easily. I am trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit, but I find it frustrating when the language is difficult to pronounce. E.g. recently I came up with something like /ʁobz maʔt ʂakʈʊɽʈaʁ/ which I find difficult because of retroflexes and clusters.
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Post by DesEsseintes »

Davush wrote: 24 Nov 2017 00:21 Do you like to be able to pronounce your conlangs more or less accurately and fluidly? I am asking because I have always tended to only make languages which I can pronounce easily. I am trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit, but I find it frustrating when the language is difficult to pronounce. E.g. recently I came up with something like /ʁobz maʔt ʂakʈʊɽʈaʁ/ which I find difficult because of retroflexes and clusters.
Yes, I like to be able to pronounce them, but at the same time I’m mindful not to insist on being able to pronounce them as an L1 speaker would, because I have no one to imitate. Mimicking another person is far easier than reading out a string of IPA symbols.

I’ve spent quite some time practicing sounds that I wanted to use in my conlangs. Híí distinguishes between all of [nˀ nʔ nˀn nʔn] and I practiced this for a good while before I felt comfortable including it. I also went through a phase where I kept practicing TLFKAT uvulars with nasal and lateral release ([q͡ɴ q͡ʟ̝̠̊ q͡ɴʷ q͡ʟ̝̠̊ʷ] along with their aspirated and ejective/glottalised counterparts) and I’d get weird looks when I forgot that I was in public.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Davush wrote: 24 Nov 2017 00:21 Do you like to be able to pronounce your conlangs more or less accurately and fluidly? I am asking because I have always tended to only make languages which I can pronounce easily. I am trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit, but I find it frustrating when the language is difficult to pronounce. E.g. recently I came up with something like /ʁobz maʔt ʂakʈʊɽʈaʁ/ which I find difficult because of retroflexes and clusters.
Yes, I generally like to. That's why I practice pronouncing different kinds of consonants so I can get comfortable including them in conlangs.
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Post by gestaltist »

Davush wrote: 24 Nov 2017 00:21 Do you like to be able to pronounce your conlangs more or less accurately and fluidly? I am asking because I have always tended to only make languages which I can pronounce easily. I am trying to step out of my comfort zone a bit, but I find it frustrating when the language is difficult to pronounce. E.g. recently I came up with something like /ʁobz maʔt ʂakʈʊɽʈaʁ/ which I find difficult because of retroflexes and clusters.
I don't. I like knowing how a given sound is pronounced, though. E.g., I don't use epiglottals because I can't figure out how they work. I don't mind using pharyngealization, though, although I have trouble pronouncing, because I feel that I understand the underlying process.
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Post by Frislander »

I definitely prefer to go for things I can pronounce, though given how much I trained myself over the years to be able to pronounce nearly every sound in any language on earth that does cover a fairly wide spectrum, so I could for instance make a language with 60-odd consonants and clustered ejectives and I'd be confident I'd be pronouncing it at least close to what I was aiming at.
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Post by Davush »

Frislander wrote: 24 Nov 2017 13:36 I definitely prefer to go for things I can pronounce, though given how much I trained myself over the years to be able to pronounce nearly every sound in any language on earth that does cover a fairly wide spectrum, so I could for instance make a language with 60-odd consonants and clustered ejectives and I'd be confident I'd be pronouncing it at least close to what I was aiming at.
I am the same - I have trained myself over the years to be able to pronounce most sounds (although clicks still remain on my 'to learn' list...). Although I am able I can do most words in isolation, I find it a bit annoying when the language has lots of unfamiliar clusters and the likes and I want to read a sentence smoothly.
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