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

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

Post by Vlürch »

Frislander wrote: 12 Dec 2017 16:40
Dormouse559 wrote: 12 Dec 2017 05:23I'd dispute the idea that languages have a tendency to become more "messy". Certainly, sound changes and other alterations can cause older systems to break down, but new systems develop all the time because of processes like analogy.
Actually according to Trudgill's Sociolinguistic Typology, there are actually both complexifying and simplifying tendencies, and which ones are active depends on both the size and complexity of the speakerbase as well as the amount of contact a language is under. So high-contact societies with large speakerbases (e.g. English) tend towards simplification, high-contact societies with small speakersbases tend towards complexification by the addition of categories (e.g. Tariana gaining evidentials from Tucanoan contact) while low-contact languages tend towards more complex and irregular exponence of existing categories. The book goes into more detail as to why, and also assesses the repercussions of these ideas. It's a book I'd really recommend taking a look at, it's very readable and isn't soaked through with heavy abstract theory.
I wish books on linguistics were sold anywhere around here, but they're not... every time anyone mentions any book that sounds interesting, I get annoyed knowing that I'll never be able to read it. Ordering stuff online is something literally nobody I know does or even knows how to do, so that's not an option either; at least as far as I know, you need a physical credit card or whatever that you have to pay crazy taxes or something for owning; that was the reason it wasn't worth it to get one at least in the early 2010's, but I'm not sure if it's true anymore. Fuck, why is Finland such a backwards shithole when it comes to this one thing when it's one of the most advanced countries in just about every other thing...

...but really, the bigger thing that annoys me is that linguistic research and other scientific stuff is not published for free for everyone to read online. I guess I'm too much of a leftist idiot to realise that it wouldn't work in practice, because for some reason nobody would have any motivation to do any kind of research or anything if they weren't paid for it, because apparently nobody actually cares about anything except money. Almost every day, I run into paywalls or student walls or other bullshit online when I try to find resources for learning languages, or anything else like history books, etc. and even though there are freely available resources, they always cite payshit. [>_<]

It's so frustrating that "educated" and "uneducated" are categories that want to be upheld by academia and whatnot, and to get access to lots of interesting information one would have to go to a university or something. I barely made it through primary school for fuck's sake, but everyone tells me I should apply for some higher education if I actually am interested in linguistics or history or anything. Like, how does that even make sense? It's not possible to just walk into a school and be like "yo, give me books" no matter how "privileged" you are, let alone if you couldn't even TRY to get into any fucking school because you were too unintelligent... yet Americans sometimes tell me that I'm so privileged I have no right to complain, as if my social anxiety and learning difficulties were my fault (but I don't have any learning disability, so I can't even pull that card... I'm just stupid). Fucking hell, all this ranting over a mention of a book... I'm seriously pathetic, and not in the cool way that would get me victim points...

Anyway, I just wish there was a change in global society so that self-study would be encouraged and made possible. The only reason for that, though, is honestly that I'm selfish, like every spoiled leftist brat. I'd like to think I'm at least one little bit more mature than the majority of spoiled leftist brats since I can admit that it's all about being selfish rather than the greater good or some other bullshit like that, but according to just about everyone that makes me even more immature because apparently for literally nobody else is it about wanting free stuff on any level. Oh well. :roll:

...but really, I guess I'm ranting because I am privileged; I mean, only people in the first world even have computers and internet access and know English so that they could rant about this pointless shit. Out there, in some African countries and whatnot, a lot of people don't even have electricity. They probably don't even know that such a thing as linguistics exists, and in North Korea many people most likely don't even know that other languages exist. And if anyone in non-first world countries found out that conlanging is a thing, they'd probably be extremely offended. But I still complain as if I had problems, and I'm officially retired for my social anxiety and depression and shit, meaning my life is literally the easiest existence anyone on this planet has... the only thing I lack is shit tons of money to buy cool shit that I don't even deserve to have, but I still complain. Fuck.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Davush »

Don’t debit cards exist in Finland? I buy nearly all my books online and don’t own a credit card. Also I’m sure people here wth university access would be happy to send over the odd pdf... 🙂

(I also think non-first world peoples would likely be perplexed/bemused about conlanging rather than offended like most other non-conlangers.)
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Post by Frislander »

Well the main issue with academic paywalls (which is a problem in pretty much every field as far as I'm aware, not just linguistics) is with journal access, which I agree is stupid and should be removed, particularly considering I happen to be a student at an institution where members can access these articles completely freely through our own internal system anyway because Cambridge (I don't know how common this is among Universities in general; given how much academic dislike there is around this I've a feeling probably not).

It's harder to make the same argument with full books (which is what this is), because the authors have to make their money somehow. There the issue shifts so that it's more a case of poor infrastructure with libraries and bookshops (like I read this book after borrowing it from the University subject library which is like 5 minutes walk from where I live when I'm there). I would offer to send a PDF but there isn't an online version of the full book I can access through the university - all I can find that's online is other journal articles on the same topic he's written.
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Post by Davush »

I don’t think many academic authors actually make much from books at all? Or at least certainly not enough for it to be a main source of income (apart from the small number which also fall into semi-popular stuff) It’s mostly only other university libraries which buy a copy and maybe the odd specialist, especially since a lot of recently published academic works can be £50+
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Post by eldin raigmore »

Ehesh wrote: 12 Dec 2017 02:11 On Noun Class systems there tends to be a "catch all" class where stuff that doesn't fit on other languages tend to end up on. Is this a process of languages where Noun Classes tend to become obsolete? I would believe so but not sure. Languages tend to move out from orderly things into messy ones
(I'm not disputing others' answers to your question. Or at least I don't intend to, and don't think I am.)
No.
Languages with noun-class systems tend to have a "default" or "emergency" or "Lord High Everything Else" or "workhorse" class.
That's not correlated with their starting to lose noun-classes; nor with their growing a noun-class system.
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Post by sangi39 »

Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 21:15 I don’t think many academic authors actually make much from books at all? Or at least certainly not enough for it to be a main source of income (apart from the small number which also fall into semi-popular stuff) It’s mostly only other university libraries which buy a copy and maybe the odd specialist, especially since a lot of recently published academic works can be £50+
I would have assumed that most academic authors have a main source of income in the form of research grants, either privately or at universities, or paid work as a lecturer/professor, which is then supplemented by their published works and any paid talks they might give at various other universities or conferences.

"The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World", for example, can cost anywhere between £30 and £150 depending on where you buy it and whether it's a paperback or a hardback copy, but the authors are, IIRC, both full-time lecturers at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Idaho, where they likely receive a regular income of several tens of thousands of Pounds a year (with their continued employment subject to whatever might be in their contracts).

I don't know about more publicly well-known authors, though, like Joann Fletcher or Neil Oliver who also make semi-regular appearances on TV. Many of them seem to still keep their foot in university work as visiting professors of certain universities, which I assume comes with some sort of income, and then also write regularly for various newspapers and magazines. So while they don't draw their income predominantly from universities, they don't rely entirely on published works either.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Reyzadren »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 18:57...but really, the bigger thing that annoys me is that linguistic research and other scientific stuff is not published for free for everyone to read online. I guess I'm too much of a leftist idiot to realise that it wouldn't work in practice, because for some reason nobody would have any motivation to do any kind of research or anything if they weren't paid for it, because apparently nobody actually cares about anything except money. Almost every day, I run into paywalls or student walls or other bullshit online when I try to find resources for learning languages, or anything else like history books, etc. and even though there are freely available resources, they always cite payshit. [>_<]
Have you tried open access journals? Though minimal, they are free.

Also, you don't need to be a leftist to want things for free (other political/belief systems may also support this idea). Additionally, there are people out there who would do things for free, without money as motivation [:O]
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Post by gach »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Dec 2017 18:57 ...but really, the bigger thing that annoys me is that linguistic research and other scientific stuff is not published for free for everyone to read online.
This is an issue that bothers working scientists as well. Even if you are working at an institute that has a decent library and subscriptions to the major journals, it's fairly common to encounter important papers in obscure journals that you can't access. Buying an individual access to such a paper can in the worst cases cost upwards of 30€. And to twist the knife, the subscriptions to such journals are typically bundled by the publishers like cable TV channels, so convincing the library to buy one new subscription means convincing them to subscribe to a bunch of journals that no one's interested in. It's a seller's market where the losers are both the scientific community and the general public.

There's been discontent to this state of affairs for a while and it's produced a growing number of fully open access journals plus several more traditional journals turning their older papers into open access after an initial closed access period (e.g. 12 months after the publication). People also commonly upload free copies of their papers to offprint services like Adacemia.edu or arXiv.org either to get comments while still writing the paper or to simply make sure that a free copy exists for the public to read. arXiv.org is geared more towards the mathematical sciences but Academia.edu does contain a wide selection of linguistic categories.

Open access for books is trickier but you can for example always pay a visit to a university library near you and browse books for notes even without leaving the library. It's also possible to find good deals on second hand academic books on Amazon if you have a bit of patience. For many years during my university studies this was pretty much the only major use I had for my credit card.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16Don’t debit cards exist in Finland? I buy nearly all my books online and don’t own a credit card.
I don't even know what the difference is. [>_<]
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16Also I’m sure people here wth university access would be happy to send over the odd pdf...
But then they could get kicked out of wherever they are studying, and I could be arrested for piracy. Like, I'm obviously not going to claim that I don't pirate shit at all (anyone who insists that they never pirated anything is lying or genuinely believes that they got everything legally), but requesting someone to break the law by sharing something they aren't supposed to share is a whole another thing than passively downloading something that someone already uploaded to begin with.
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16(I also think non-first world peoples would likely be perplexed/bemused about conlanging rather than offended like most other non-conlangers.)
You may be right, but there's always someone getting offended by something, including indigenous peoples of non-first world countries: Fijians were offended that accurate canoes were used in the Disney film Moana and demanded to be compensated, which... I... I can't even...
Reyzadren wrote: 13 Dec 2017 00:25Have you tried open access journals? Though minimal, they are free.
I've never even heard of the term "open access journal" before as far as I can remember... maybe I use them already but just don't know it. I mean, I generally google anything interesting and have hoarded PDFs from wherever I can, but I often don't know if they're from legal sources that had the right to publish them (nor do I care).
Reyzadren wrote: 13 Dec 2017 00:25Also, you don't need to be a leftist to want things for free (other political/belief systems may also support this idea).
Well, I guess that's true, but wanting people to get anything they didn't "earn" and/or don't "deserve" is generally a leftist idea.
Reyzadren wrote: 13 Dec 2017 00:25Additionally, there are people out there who would do things for free, without money as motivation [:O]
As far as I know, at least, that's a tiny minority. Nobody would travel to the Himalayas to document some language isolate spoken by five people or something like that and then publish all their research for free.
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 01:06Adacemia.edu
Yeah, I go on that site every once in a while to download something. There's a whole bunch of weird shit that's obviously pushing nationalist agendas or pseudoscience, etc. which is funny. Since I only have a free account, it's annoying that I keep getting these emails saying there are papers that mention my name (like wtf?) which I know is just a scam to get people to pay for accounts (I mean, c'mon; nobody would cite my shitty posts on forums in their shit... or anything) so I ignore them, but it's annoying anyway. I like the shite, though.
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Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00 Well, I guess that's true, but wanting people to get anything they didn't "earn" and/or don't "deserve" is generally a leftist idea.
...No, the fact that you equate "free" with "didn't earn" or some sort of "deservedness quotient" has more to do with just how much the money-making capitalist machine has infected the way we think about things. I'm not communist or radical socialist, but I do think this way of thinking is inherently flawed. There's no logical reason that knowledge needs to be so goddamn expensive and exclusionary. The phrase "ivory tower" exists for a reason, and not solely due to how disconnected folks in academia can be from reality. (One can easily draw a parallel with the rich and how they blithely assume to understand how the poor live and what they need.) I'm gonna start rambling if I go on much longer here... and since I think I have been incoherent enough as it is... yeah.
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Post by gach »

Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00 As far as I know, at least, that's a tiny minority. Nobody would travel to the Himalayas to document some language isolate spoken by five people or something like that and then publish all their research for free.
I have to disagree on that. As a researcher you aren't going to see any of the money that the publishers make with your science. If anything, you may have to pay them a fee just to get your work published. What publishing your results will give you is visibility and scientific impact. These are vital things to gather when competing for research grants or positions or in other words your future salary. Publishing your work so that accessing it is cheaper or completely free does make an impact into how visible your research is, provided that it's still in a place that people will find and view as reputable. It has thus in fact a positive impact to your income.
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 01:06Adacemia.edu
Yeah, I go on that site every once in a while to download something. There's a whole bunch of weird shit that's obviously pushing nationalist agendas or pseudoscience, etc. which is funny. Since I only have a free account, it's annoying that I keep getting these emails saying there are papers that mention my name (like wtf?) which I know is just a scam to get people to pay for accounts (I mean, c'mon; nobody would cite my shitty posts on forums in their shit... or anything) so I ignore them, but it's annoying anyway. I like the shite, though.
It's always good to keep track of which authors produce the most solid science. If you read everything critically, this isn't that difficult of a skill to develop. You'll also start noticing that the traditional refereed journals are full of half baked ideas and flawed argumentation. The refereeing and editorial practices exercised by scientific journals do still guarantee a certain level of credibility, though, so it's always worth checking which free preprints correspond to accepted refereed journal papers.

And don't worry about the adverts. They are just trying to sell useless extra services. Maybe switch your email to a span address, though.
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Post by Keenir »

Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16(I also think non-first world peoples would likely be perplexed/bemused about conlanging rather than offended like most other non-conlangers.)
You may be right, but there's always someone getting offended by something, including indigenous peoples of non-first world countries: Fijians were offended that accurate canoes were used in the Disney film Moana and demanded to be compensated, which... I... I can't even...
I could see how peoples might be offended that inaccurate canoes were used...but accurate ones? (and weren't the canoes Hawaiian anyway?)
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Post by Frislander »

Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16Don’t debit cards exist in Finland? I buy nearly all my books online and don’t own a credit card.
I don't even know what the difference is. [>_<]
iirc basically the difference is that a debit card is what you use to pay money directly from your account while a credit card means you're basically taking out a mini loan every time you make a purchase with it.
Keenir wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:49
Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16(I also think non-first world peoples would likely be perplexed/bemused about conlanging rather than offended like most other non-conlangers.)
You may be right, but there's always someone getting offended by something, including indigenous peoples of non-first world countries: Fijians were offended that accurate canoes were used in the Disney film Moana and demanded to be compensated, which... I... I can't even...
I could see how peoples might be offended that inaccurate canoes were used...but accurate ones? (and weren't the canoes Hawaiian anyway?)
Indeed, but the canoe design itself was so good that it is practically ubiquitous (like it's been basically unchanged since the Polynesian expansion, and has probably been around since a while before because I think similar designs are used in Micronesia and Melanesia as well).
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Post by Vlürch »

Thrice Xandvii wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:04
Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00 Well, I guess that's true, but wanting people to get anything they didn't "earn" and/or don't "deserve" is generally a leftist idea.
...No, the fact that you equate "free" with "didn't earn" or some sort of "deservedness quotient" has more to do with just how much the money-making capitalist machine has infected the way we think about things. I'm not communist or radical socialist, but I do think this way of thinking is inherently flawed. There's no logical reason that knowledge needs to be so goddamn expensive and exclusionary. The phrase "ivory tower" exists for a reason, and not solely due to how disconnected folks in academia can be from reality. (One can easily draw a parallel with the rich and how they blithely assume to understand how the poor live and what they need.) I'm gonna start rambling if I go on much longer here... and since I think I have been incoherent enough as it is... yeah.
Exactly, but the thing is that anyone criticising capitalism and whatnot is labelled "left-wing", just like anyone criticising immigration and whatnot is labelled "right-wing". They are flawed definitions and no such division can even be made, but it has been made and ordinary people can't challenge those definitions without being labelled something and losing any little credibility they may have had.
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:35As a researcher you aren't going to see any of the money that the publishers make with your science. If anything, you may have to pay them a fee just to get your work published.
What. The. FUCK!? [o.O] That's insane and makes even less sense than... well, pretty much anything else. I mean, it's the same way in a lot of music-related stuff from promotional things to stuff like collaborations and whatnot (for example, a lot of rappers especially won't feat on a song unless they're paid... that's why I haven't collabed with any) but at least that's "entertainment" and has no objective value; I hadn't realised science works the same way. I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm sure someone has told me that same thing before and I just forgot because it's a too derpessing reality to live in.
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:35What publishing your results will give you is visibility and scientific impact. These are vital things to gather when competing for research grants or positions or in other words your future salary. Publishing your work so that accessing it is cheaper or completely free does make an impact into how visible your research is, provided that it's still in a place that people will find and view as reputable. It has thus in fact a positive impact to your income.
So why is so much of linguistic research behind paywalls and schoolwalls? Just tradition? [:S]
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:35It's always good to keep track of which authors produce the most solid science. If you read everything critically, this isn't that difficult of a skill to develop. You'll also start noticing that the traditional refereed journals are full of half baked ideas and flawed argumentation. The refereeing and editorial practices exercised by scientific journals do still guarantee a certain level of credibility, though, so it's always worth checking which free preprints correspond to accepted refereed journal papers.
Yeah, but of course for a pseudoscientific Ural-Altaicist/Turanist/???? crackpot ass literal nobody like me that's a depressing skill to have, since it means discarding the most appealing stuff. [:P]
gach wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:35And don't worry about the adverts. They are just trying to sell useless extra services. Maybe switch your email to a span address, though.
Thankfully I only get them maybe once every six months or so, doesn't really warrant taking any measures against them.
Keenir wrote: 13 Dec 2017 22:49
Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16(I also think non-first world peoples would likely be perplexed/bemused about conlanging rather than offended like most other non-conlangers.)
You may be right, but there's always someone getting offended by something, including indigenous peoples of non-first world countries: Fijians were offended that accurate canoes were used in the Disney film Moana and demanded to be compensated, which... I... I can't even...
I could see how peoples might be offended that inaccurate canoes were used...but accurate ones? (and weren't the canoes Hawaiian anyway?)
All I know is that Fijians were offended. I'm so glad I managed to detach myself from SJW propaganda like the doctrine of cultural appropriation before it landed in Finland and was just something exposed to online, or I might have stopped conlanging and even lost interest in learning languages out of fear that I offend people. There are literally people out there who refuse to even try to learn any languages because they think it's cultural appropriation...
Frislander wrote: 13 Dec 2017 23:28
Vlürch wrote: 13 Dec 2017 21:00
Davush wrote: 12 Dec 2017 19:16Don’t debit cards exist in Finland? I buy nearly all my books online and don’t own a credit card.
I don't even know what the difference is. [>_<]
iirc basically the difference is that a debit card is what you use to pay money directly from your account while a credit card means you're basically taking out a mini loan every time you make a purchase with it.
Oh, ok.

And then a question about semblative case and how it's different from the English suffix -esque: how is it different, exactly? Wikipedia says that the difference is that the latter is not an inflectional case, so it's not a semblative case, but also says that the semblative case in Wagiman is identical in function to the English suffix "-like". Isn't that self-contradictory? Are there some other uses for a semblative case that aren't expressed by a suffix denoting similarity?
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Post by eldin raigmore »

May I ask that we put all the discussions about "cultural appropriation"* and "academic paywalls" and so on, on another thread than the Conlangs Q&A Quick Questions thread?
Not that they aren't worth discussing; just that they're off-topic for the Conlangs subforum, even moreso for this thread.
Could a moderator please move them to a thread in the Everything Else subforum?


*(About which I have my own opinions btw)
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Post by Omzinesý »

What could cause a word-initial resonant consonant to become prestopped (if there aren't prefixes to make to consonant not be initial).
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Post by Davush »

Trying to figure out what happened to Proto-Qutrussic plain unaspirated stops. Generally they remain as they are in bisyllabic words, but voiced when the previous (stressed) syllable contains an aspirate/ejective, or if a pretonic vowel precedes i.e. *tata > tata, *tʰata > θada, *atáta > ᵊdada BUT, there are very many instances where they voice or geminate unexpectedly, seemingly without one neat explanation. Would it be plausible to say that there were many competing sound changes regarding plain stops and so lots of inter-dialectal borrowing and unfinished sound changes lead to the current mess in Classical Qutrussan?
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Post by Frislander »

Omzinesý wrote: 23 Dec 2017 13:09 What could cause a word-initial resonant consonant to become prestopped (if there aren't prefixes to make to consonant not be initial).
Do you need a reason? Just prestop initial resonants.
Davush wrote: 23 Dec 2017 13:55 Trying to figure out what happened to Proto-Qutrussic plain unaspirated stops. Generally they remain as they are in bisyllabic words, but voiced when the previous (stressed) syllable contains an aspirate/ejective, or if a pretonic vowel precedes i.e. *tata > tata, *tʰata > θada, *atáta > ᵊdada BUT, there are very many instances where they voice or geminate unexpectedly, seemingly without one neat explanation. Would it be plausible to say that there were many competing sound changes regarding plain stops and so lots of inter-dialectal borrowing and unfinished sound changes lead to the current mess in Classical Qutrussan?
Dialect mixing, yay! I think you definitely could try it, though there are some additional things to consider. Mainly this has to do with geography; where is Classical Qutrussan thought to have originated. I would expect such a dialect situation to have arisen most likely in a city at the border of two or more dialect areas. Definitely go for it, just geography is an important consideration for it.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Frislander wrote: 23 Dec 2017 14:24
Omzinesý wrote: 23 Dec 2017 13:09 What could cause a word-initial resonant consonant to become prestopped (if there aren't prefixes to make to consonant not be initial).
Do you need a reason? Just prestop initial resonants.
Of course I do!
I want to create phonemes, not change all of them.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Post by Frislander »

Omzinesý wrote: 23 Dec 2017 15:06
Frislander wrote: 23 Dec 2017 14:24
Omzinesý wrote: 23 Dec 2017 13:09 What could cause a word-initial resonant consonant to become prestopped (if there aren't prefixes to make to consonant not be initial).
Do you need a reason? Just prestop initial resonants.
Of course I do!
I want to create phonemes, not change all of them.
Maybe just before oral vowels? Or maybe when glottalised?
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