How to make a phonology

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Dezinaa
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How to make a phonology

Post by Dezinaa »

This is a guide to making a naturalistic phonology. I'm assuming the reader knows IPA. I didn't plan any of this out, so the posts might seem a little out of order.

What is phonology?

Phonology is, basically, how a language is pronounced. It includes, but is not limited to, a phonemic inventory, syllable structure, and allophony. This guide will focus mostly on phonemic inventories.

Tendencies and universals

While there is no single phoneme that every language has, these are some tendencies that most natlangs follow. Even though there are exceptions to some of these, it is usually a good idea to follw these tendencies to get a naturalistic (or at least plausible) phonemic inventory.

Consonants
  • Almost all languages have /p/, /t/, and /k/.
  • Most languages have nasals. /m/ and /n/ are the most common. If you decide not to give your conlang nasals, you should be able to explain how that happened diachronically. Maybe the nasals turned into voiced plosives and nasalized surrounding vowels.
  • Very few languages distinguish bilabials from labiodentals. Ewe is one of the few languages to have /ɸ β/ and /f v/. The labiodentals are “stronger” than the bilabials, making them more distinctive. Kukuya, AKA Southern Teke, is the only known language with /ɱ/.
  • Nasals do not have more places of articulation than obstruents.
Vowels
  • Almost all languages have /a/, /i/, and /u/. Edit: Some languages, including many North American languages, have /o/ without /u/.
  • Front vowels are prototypically unrounded, and back vowels are prototypically rounded. Some languages, like Alekano, have no rounded vowels at all.
  • Back vowels (almost) never have more height contrasts than front vowels. I’ve stumbled across some languages with /a ɔ i u/, but I assume /ɔ/ can also be pronounced /ɒ/. The following vowel system would be very unlikely and implausible:

Code: Select all

i    u
     ʊ
 e   o
     o̞
     ɔ
   a ɑ
[/size]
  • Lower vowels usually do not have more backness distinctions than higher vowels. A big exception is /ə/. Having /ə/ doesn’t imply /ɨ/ or/ʉ/.
  • Low vowels usually do not have more than two backness distinctions. Even in languages with only two low vowels, the more front vowel is usually /æ/, a near-low vowel.

The next post will probably be about making sense of all of this and designing a phonemic inventory.
Last edited by Dezinaa on 23 Mar 2015 20:16, edited 1 time in total.
Sumelic
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by Sumelic »

Maybe you can add more detail about nasals: overwhelmingly, nasal consonants are orally obstruent, although semivowels are also seen occasionally, and flaps or fricatives are not entirely unknown. In contrast to the situation with purely oral stops, voiced nasals are more common than voiceless ones; most languages only have voiced nasals and the presence of voiceless nasals usually implies the existence of a voiced counterpart.

"Nasals do not have more places of articulation than obstruents" might or might not be universally true, depending on how strict you're getting. Most dialects of Irish have /pˠ pʲ t̪ˠ tʲ c k/ and /mˠ mʲ n̪ˠ nʲ ɲ ŋ/ but according to Wikipedia some dialects also distinguish between fortis coronal nasals [n̪ˠ] [n̠ʲ] and lenis [nˠ] [nʲ], giving the nasals 2 more places of articulation. In general the principle seems true, though. You might note that the places of articulation don't have to be the same: Portuguese has /p t k/ for voiceless oral stops but /m n ɲ/ for nasals (although the palatal nasal is actually phonetically an approximant in many varieties) and some dialects of Hawaiian have /p k/ but /m n/.

Edit: I'm sorry if this messes up the flow of your thread; I didn't think about that before posting. Tell me if you want me to delete my post once you've read it!
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Dezinaa
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by Dezinaa »

Sumelic wrote:Maybe you can add more detail about nasals: overwhelmingly, nasal consonants are orally obstruent, although semivowels are also seen occasionally, and flaps or fricatives are not entirely unknown. In contrast to the situation with purely oral stops, voiced nasals are more common than voiceless ones; most languages only have voiced nasals and the presence of voiceless nasals usually implies the existence of a voiced counterpart.

"Nasals do not have more places of articulation than obstruents" might or might not be universally true, depending on how strict you're getting. Most dialects of Irish have /pˠ pʲ t̪ˠ tʲ c k/ and /mˠ mʲ n̪ˠ nʲ ɲ ŋ/ but according to Wikipedia some dialects also distinguish between fortis coronal nasals [n̪ˠ] [n̠ʲ] and lenis [nˠ] [nʲ], giving the nasals 2 more places of articulation. In general the principle seems true, though. You might note that the places of articulation don't have to be the same: Portuguese has /p t k/ for voiceless oral stops but /m n ɲ/ for nasals (although the palatal nasal is actually phonetically an approximant in many varieties) and some dialects of Hawaiian have /p k/ but /m n/.

Edit: I'm sorry if this messes up the flow of your thread; I didn't think about that before posting. Tell me if you want me to delete my post once you've read it!
Thank you, I didn't think about other types of nasal consonants besides stops. I'll update the first post when I have time. And your post didn't mess up the flow, I'm open to suggestions.
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Ahzoh
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by Ahzoh »

I think you should mention the phoneme inventory of vowels on how they are described in shapes like "triangle", "square", and "cube" (for vowel harmony), that makes it easier to memorize that you can't have an larger amount of back vowels than front, etc.
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kanejam
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by kanejam »

Because you've mentioned vowel systems, here are examples of attested sound systems. I don't think you have to talk about square etc as long as you mention that nearly all languages have high and low vowels and tend not be too uneven (and tend not to have a lot more back vowels than front vowels).
Systemzwang
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by Systemzwang »

Someone really needs to write a guide to phonology that goes beyond 'phonological inventories' soon. I am just getting the daunting feeling that it'll have to be me. :(
HoskhMatriarch
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Re: How to make a phonology

Post by HoskhMatriarch »

Systemzwang wrote:Someone really needs to write a guide to phonology that goes beyond 'phonological inventories' soon. I am just getting the daunting feeling that it'll have to be me. :(
Yeah. "Phonology" is so much more complex than phoneme inventories. I think I want to make a sketchlang with the exact same phones as English but make it have completely different phonological processes and show how not-English it is.
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