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A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 00:19
by Tyhoeciyh
As the legendary conlanger JRR Tolkein noted, it is such a shame that conlangers rarely work together. With the exception of the sharing of ideas and the occasional co-creation of a conlang, this seems to be the case here at the Conlanger BBoard. Therefore, I propose the following: a conlang in which we all put our ideas together to create. It will be interesting to see what can be done with multiple conlangers as opposed to a solely individual conlang. Be creative and have fun!

It will be democratically created and will work as following:
Proposing Ideas:
- Ideas must be either private messaged to the Conlang Director.
- The first fives ideas proposed will regarding to a topic (from syntax to phonology) will be put up for vote.
- No idea will be put to the vote if a vote regarding the topic has already been voted on except in certain cases. (i.e. The word pattern has been voted on, but someone proposes that all verbs must end in "ut".)
- No ideas may be proposed on Sunday or Monday (UTC).

Voting:
- Only registered conlangers may vote.
- Conlangers may vote only once per topic. (Changing one's vote is allowed.)
- If only one idea has been proposed regarding one topic, voters may simply choose to vote it down. This may not be done if the number of ideas is plural.
- Votes must be either private messaged to the Conlang Director.
- Voters may only vote for one idea per topic.
- No more than five ideas may be put up for vote per topic.
- The idea with the majority of votes per topic will be chosen. If there is a tie, it will be voted on in the next vote.
- Votes will be tallied sometime each Tuesday (UTC).

Membership:
- Anyone may join the conlang as a conlanger by private messaging the Conlang Director or posting on this thread.
- No one may be denied conlanger status or be expelled from the conlang after joining.


Other:
- The vocabulary will be created using the Awkwords word generator. It can be found here: http://awkwords.wsr3.net/
- Please post any suggestions.
- This post will be updated as needed.


Conlang Director:
Tyhoeciyh

Conlangers:
Itsuki Kohaku
ian9113
Sankon
roninbodhisattva
MrKrov
Omzinesý
conlangconstructor
milyamd

Current Votes: (Choose one for each topic.)
1. Phoneme Inventory (Full)
A. ʘ ǃ ǂ ǁ ʘʰ ǃʰ ǂʰ ǁʰ ᵍʘ ᵍǃ ᵍǂ ᵍǁ ˀʘ ˀǃ ˀǂ ˀǁ ᵑʘ ᵑǃ ᵑǂ ᵑǁ ᵑ̊ʘ ᵑ̊ǃ ᵑ̊ǂ ᵑ̊ǁ ʬ ʭ / ɘ ɵ
B. p p' m m' t'θ θ t t' s n n' ƛ' ł l l' č č' š y y' kʷ k'ʷ xʷ w w' q q' χ qʷ q'ʷ χʷ ʔ h / i u a ə ___ 4 votes
C. m n ɲ ŋ ɴ pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ qʰ p t c k q f s ç x χ r l j / a e i o ___ 1 vote

The Conlang Currently:
Phonotactics:
C(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)

Tone:
Binary high-low contrast for vowels.

Syntax:
Verb/predicate final; verbs carry pronominal arguments for subject, direct and indirect object; anything can be a predicate (including adverbials, etc) --- Nominative/accusative --- Very heavy morphology with verbs, some with nouns ---Internally headed relative clauses

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 00:22
by Itsuki Kohaku
I'll join this,

I use awkwords for my vocabulary as well. (Awkward..)


I have some nice grammatical idea that I've been thinking of for the Makurungou revamp.


(Maybe make a joint conworld anyone?)

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 00:28
by ian9113
I would like to join as well. :-)

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 01:12
by Sankon
why not

I'll join.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 01:20
by Tyhoeciyh
Just a notice for everyone: if you have joined please remain active. Thank you! :-)

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 01:26
by ian9113
How "active" is "active?" :-s

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 01:55
by Tyhoeciyh
ian9113 wrote:How "active" is "active?" :-s
Try to vote on everything that comes up. Propose an idea or two.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 05:30
by roninbodhisattva
Tyhoeciyh wrote:As the legendary conlanger JRR Tolkein noted, it is such a shame that conlangers rarely work together. With the exception of the sharing of ideas and the occasional co-creation of a conlang, this seems to be the case here at the Conlanger BBoard. Therefore, I propose the following: a conlang in which we all put our ideas together to create. It will be interesting to see what can be done with multiple conlangers as opposed to a solely individual conlang. Be creative and have fun!
Did you miss this thread completely?

That being said, I'll participate.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 05:53
by MrKrov
The Krov shall take this opportunity. Maybe this'll have more coherence and Krov can work in more sway?

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 05:58
by Micamo
Tolkien said that because he never tried to work on a collaboration himself. With collaborative conlangs, you get as many different conlangs as you get participants, then all the parts of them are blended together in a weird stew.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 06:08
by roninbodhisattva
Questions on the proposals:

How are you differentiating the proposals for word order and syntax?

What should we propose for phonology? An entire little sketch or just an inventory or something?

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 13:40
by Tyhoeciyh
roninbodhisattva wrote:Questions on the proposals:

How are you differentiating the proposals for word order and syntax?

What should we propose for phonology? An entire little sketch or just an inventory or something?
I didn't really know the word for things like "(C)VC(C(VV))". That's what I meant by word order.
For phonology, just present a list of every consonant and vowel you wish to see in this conlang.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 13:52
by Micamo
Tyhoeciyh wrote:I didn't really know the word for things like "(C)VC(C(VV))". That's what I meant by word order.
That's called phonotactics.
For phonology, just present a list of every consonant and vowel you wish to see in this conlang.
That's a phoneme inventory. Hardly the same as a phonology. There's allophony, affection...

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 14:20
by Omzinesý
These kinds of threads never succeed, but they are interesting. Of course, I'm with.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 15:50
by roninbodhisattva
Alright, since it seems like "word order" and "phonology" should be in the 'topic' I'm going to combine them into a single phonology sketch here. My sketchy syntax ideas (I assume the syntax is supposed to be very loose here) is below:

Phonology
I want to do something very Pacific Northwesty. So here is my juggernaut of an inventory

Image

Apostrophes represent glottalization. Phonotactics and root shape are as follows:

1) Roots have the shape CVC, CRVC, CVRC, or CV:C, where C is any consonant or sequence of any two obstruents (except /ʔ h/, see point 3), R a resonant, and : represents vowel length. Vowel length does not occur following the schwa. There might be some roots with the shape CVCVC for nouns.
2) Resonants must always occur after a vowel at the phonetic level. If they do not, a schwa /ə/ is epenthesized before the resonant.
3) The glottals /ʔ h/ must always adjacent to a vowel and never occur after another obstruent, except after fricatives across a morpheme boundary.
4) Roots may be stressed or unstressed. Stressed roots always keep the stress, unstressed nouns give it to suffixes.

The schwa is realized as /a/ adjacent to a unrounded uvular, as /u/ adjacent to a rounded velar, and /o/ adjacent to a rounded uvular. We'll obviously need to expand this entire thing if this proposal goes through.

Syntax
1) Verb/predicate initial; verbs carry pronominal arguments for subject and object; anything can be a predicate (including adverbials, etc)
2) Nominative/accusative or split ergative
2) Very heavy morphology with verbs, some with nouns
3) No robust distinction between independent and dependent clauses

Note the above 4 points are not four separate proposals, they're taken together as a whole.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 17:45
by Itsuki Kohaku
roninbodhisattva wrote:Alright, since it seems like "word order" and "phonology" should be in the 'topic' I'm going to combine them into a single phonology sketch here. My sketchy syntax ideas (I assume the syntax is supposed to be very loose here) is below:

Phonology
I want to do something very Pacific Northwesty. So here is my juggernaut of an inventory

Image

Apostrophes represent glottalization. Phonotactics and root shape are as follows:

1) Roots have the shape CVC, CRVC, CVRC, or CV:C, where C is any consonant or sequence of any two obstruents (except /ʔ h/, see point 3), R a resonant, and : represents vowel length. Vowel length does not occur following the schwa. There might be some roots with the shape CVCVC for nouns.
2) Resonants must always occur after a vowel at the phonetic level. If they do not, a schwa /ə/ is epenthesized before the resonant.
3) The glottals /ʔ h/ must always adjacent to a vowel and never occur after another obstruent, except after fricatives across a morpheme boundary.
4) Roots may be stressed or unstressed. Stressed roots always keep the stress, unstressed nouns give it to suffixes.

The schwa is realized as /a/ adjacent to a unrounded uvular, as /u/ adjacent to a rounded velar, and /o/ adjacent to a rounded uvular. We'll obviously need to expand this entire thing if this proposal goes through.

Syntax
1) Verb/predicate initial; verbs carry pronominal arguments for subject and object; anything can be a predicate (including adverbials, etc)
2) Nominative/accusative or split ergative
2) Very heavy morphology with verbs, some with nouns
3) No robust distinction between independent and dependent clauses

Note the above 4 points are not four separate proposals, they're taken together as a whole.

Fairly awesome inventory right here. We should have it be very consonant heavy, Somewhat like Salishan languages.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 17:55
by roninbodhisattva
Fairly awesome inventory right here. We should have it be very consonant heavy, Somewhat like Salishan languages.
[/quote]I mean, that inventory could be a Salish inventory (it's actually almost exactly Comox, lacking some voiced stops). That's why I proposed it and said this:
roninbodhisattva wrote:I want to do something very Pacific Northwesty
So does that mean you're voting for mine or are you saying you're going to propose your own very consonant heavy one?

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 17:57
by Itsuki Kohaku
roninbodhisattva wrote:
Fairly awesome inventory right here. We should have it be very consonant heavy, Somewhat like Salishan languages.
I mean, that inventory could be a Salish inventory (it's actually almost exactly Comox, lacking some voiced stops). That's why I proposed it and said this:
roninbodhisattva wrote:I want to do something very Pacific Northwesty
So does that mean you're voting for mine or are you saying you're going to propose your own very consonant heavy one?[/quote]


Did you just quote yourself?

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 17:58
by roninbodhisattva
Itsuki Kohaku wrote:Did you just quote yourself?
Yeah, I was showing you that I meant it to be like Salish in that Salish languages conform to the Pacific Northwest's areal characteristics.

Re: A communal conlang - Join!

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 18:04
by roninbodhisattva
It confused as to whether you were saying "Yeah, that's cool but I'm going to propose something different" or "Yeah, that's cool and I'm throwing my vote behind it"