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

[WeepingElf]

Yes. Some Uralic languages (such as Nents, Nganasan, Khanty and Mansi) show object agreement only in number, while subject agreement is, as in all Uralic languages, in person and number. There is no gender in these languages.

[LinguoFranco]

So, does the morphological typology of a language and the complexity of tone melodies show any correlation?

Like, is an analytic language more like to just have HL and LH, while an agglutinative language has LHL?

[Creyeditor]

In terms of strict universals, the answer is probably no. You could check WALS for tendencies.

Diachronically, the shortening of words (by vowel elision etc) often leads to contours or floating tones. The same processes often lead to a loss of affixes. This could lead to complex tone systems being more common in analytic languages.

[Knox Adjacent]

Absolutely reasonable, no correlation implied, but c.f. Oklahoma Cherokee.

[Creyeditor]

Also, tone melodies are part of a relatively abstract analysis and not easily comparable across languages.

[Omzinesý]

I don't remember if we have discussed this before.
Which languages have both incorporation and noun classes / genders?
How do they interact? What happens to noun class markers when the noun is incorporated?

[Trailsend]

I don't remember if we have discussed this before.
Which languages have both incorporation and noun classes / genders?
How do they interact? What happens to noun class markers when the noun is incorporated?

You could try to get ahold of a copy of Mithun's The evolution of noun incorporation; one of the four types of incorporation she posits is Classificatory Incorporation, but I can't remember how much the kind of noun classifiers she talks about are the sort you're interested in. Definitely not all of them, but there might be some useful examples?

[VaptuantaDoi]

I don't remember if we have discussed this before.
Which languages have both incorporation and noun classes / genders?
How do they interact? What happens to noun class markers when the noun is incorporated?

In general NI tends never to bring any modifiers, bound or otherwise, with the noun, so noun class markers will probably be dropped (NI nouns also quite often reduced from their free forms, or even suppletive). For instance there's the Australian language Bininj-gun-Wok:

baginjeŋ gunganj
3sg.SUBJ/3sg.OBJ-cook-PAST.PERF class:IV-meat
"S/he cooked (the) meat"

baganjginjeŋ
3sg.SUBJ/3sg.OBJ-meat-cook-PAST.PERF
"S/he meat-cooked" (="s/he cooked (the) meat")

I don't think it's actually all that common for polysynthetic languages to have noun classes; they're characteristic of dependent-marking languages, while polysynthetic languages tend to be strongly head-marking. But as Bininj-gun-Wok shows, it's still possible.

[Creyeditor]

I don't think it's actually all that common for polysynthetic languages to have noun classes; they're characteristic of dependent-marking languages, while polysynthetic languages tend to be strongly head-marking. But as Bininj-gun-Wok shows, it's still possible.

But Bantu languages have noun classes and are strongly head-marking right?

[VaptuantaDoi]

I don't think it's actually all that common for polysynthetic languages to have noun classes; they're characteristic of dependent-marking languages, while polysynthetic languages tend to be strongly head-marking. But as Bininj-gun-Wok shows, it's still possible.

But Bantu languages have noun classes and are strongly head-marking right?

True. It's not a very strong corellation.

[Omzinesý]

In general NI tends never to bring any modifiers, bound or otherwise, with the noun, so noun class markers will probably be dropped (NI nouns also quite often reduced from their free forms, or even suppletive).

I was looking for something else but found a Coptic example. The gender marker t- is preserved.

a-f-kô n-t-sêfe
PST-3SGM-put ACC-DEF.FSG-sword
'He put the sword.'

a-f-ka-t-sêfe
PST-3SGM-put-DEF.FSG-sword
'He put the sword.'

The author seems to see ka as a derivational affix (though he speaks about a lexical affix.) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... zP2tiuQN9i

[Shemtov]

If a language only has a singular/plural distinction, but descended from a proto-lang that marked dual and Paucal (3-5) on the noun, how naturalistic would it be to say that if a noun phrase has 2-5 as a numeral, the language does not require plural marker on the noun? Or is the opposite more natural? Or would it be up to the conlanger?

[Salmoneus]

If a language only has a singular/plural distinction, but descended from a proto-lang that marked dual and Paucal (3-5) on the noun, how naturalistic would it be to say that if a noun phrase has 2-5 as a numeral, the language does not require plural marker on the noun? Or is the opposite more natural? Or would it be up to the conlanger?

*shrugs*

What happened to the dual and paucal? If they merged phonologically into the singular, then of course you'd use the singular where previously you'd used dual and paucal. If they merged phonologically into the plural, then you'd use the plural. If they simply became less popular and were replaced by the plural spreading its function, then the plural would have spread its function to the situations where previously you'd have used the dual and the paucal.

I find it hard to imagine people simply replacing the paucal with the singular for no reason.

However, perhaps the dual might be replaced by the singular, given that its use is often restricted to natural pairs, which form a natural entity.

[LinguoFranco]

How unusual would it be for a language to have phonemic breathy voiced stops, but no regular voiced nor aspirated stops?

[Creyeditor]

This sounds unusual but not impossible. One way to think of it would be that voicing is contrastive and breathy voice is just an allophonic process that applies to voiced stops before vowels, which is still unusual but maybe not as unusual.
IMHO, it would be easier to say that vowels are contrastively breathy or non-breathy but this contrast is neutralized after certain consonant (i.e. all non-[voiced stops]).

[Ahzoh]

How unusual would it be for a language to have phonemic breathy voiced stops, but no regular voiced nor aspirated stops?

Would basically be the opposite of languages that contrast between aspirated voiceless and unaspirated voiced stops

Instead of stop[+aspirated][-voiced] vs stop[-aspirated][+voiced], you'd be having stop[-aspirated][-voiced] vs stop[+aspirated][+voiced]

[GoshDiggityDangit]

Any suggestions on where to take the vowels from here?

[Creyeditor]

Like diachronically?

[GoshDiggityDangit]

Yeah, like where could I go from the 2440 vowels? They aren't set in stone, they're just what I have now.

[Flavia]

I don't think this looks like 416 years' worth of sound changes... most of them are pretty minuscule. Maybe some contextual changes? With every lexical set remaining undivided and only one merger, it just looks like a slightly weird 2024 English accent.