Cinw'ono language

[Omzinesý]

Hi. I've logged into the new page.
I just try this, by posting my smallest conlang.

Cinw'ono is spoken by a little tribe in a jungel. It has been my try to create an analytic language. I failed and I became agglutinative, but after all it has fewer morphemes than most of my conlangs. Maybe it's only poor now. Same roots are oftem used as nouns and werbs like in English.

The name Cinw'ono ['ʨinwono] caome from the words cin 'to speak, speaking, language], u a possessive suffix, con 'people, tribe' o name suffix.

I tried to include all most common sounds in the language, but keep the amount of the phonemes as small as possible.
There are the normal 5-vowel system in Cinu'ono: a, e, i, o, u. Then there is one diphtong y [aI]. The closed phonemes: e, i, o and u appear long,having an semi-vowel after them , but they are analysed as vowel-consonant combinations: ej, ij, ow and uw.

There are 8 consonant phonemes in the language, but no velars.
bilabials: p, m, w
alveolars: t, s, n
palatal: j
and: c before front vowels [ʨ] and before back vowels [h], in word end assimilated with the following vowel.

The nouns often get an demostrative suffix. I did invent it for this language but now has spread in all my conlangs. e 'this', a 'that, the' i 'generally' o 'name' and u 'possessed'
tewp 'a house'
tewpe 'this house, my house'
tewpa 'the house'
tewpo 'the house' the title of the matriarcha of the tribe'
tewpu 'his/her/its house, the house of...'
like Cinw'ono 'the language of the (name) tribe'

Conwono is a topic language with a word order: TopV(S)(O)
The verb oftem repeats the demostrative prefix of the topic. Topic drop is possible. For example cine means I speak.
E.g. Cono cina ciw'ono. 'The tribe, they speak Cinw'ono.'
The werbs get particles or prefixes, for expressing tense, aspect and mode. (e)t 'perfective past' non 'inmperfective past, not oftem used' ca 'hypotetical future' cu 'sure future' p 'potential'... The verb stem s 'to be' can be used to pattern stative aspect. E.g. ca-p-cine 'I may like to speak (in the future)'

Adjectives follow their correlate and are never inflected or used as nouns. E.g. pot at 'a good man' lit. 'man good'

Pronouns: y 'I' nothing to do with the English counterpart that happens to be pronounced rather similarly. Y comes from demonstrative stems a 'that and e 'this' like this one (person) = I) [ae] had become [aI]. ta 'you'
a 'he/she/it/that' moj 'we exlusive' noj 'we inclusive' (mo)ta 'you(all)' (m')a 'they'.

[LusorVerbo4]

Hi. I've logged into the new page.
I just try this, by posting my smallest conlang.

Cinw'ono is spoken by a little tribe in a jungel. It has been my try to create an analytic language. I failed and I became agglutinative, but after all it has fewer morphemes than most of my conlangs. Maybe it's only poor now. Same roots are oftem used as nouns and werbs like in English.

The name Cinw'ono ['ʨinwono] caome from the words cin 'to speak, speaking, language], u a possessive suffix, con 'people, tribe' o name suffix.

I tried to include all most common sounds in the language, but keep the amount of the phonemes as small as possible.
There are the normal 5-vowel system in Cinu'ono: a, e, i, o, u. Then there is one diphtong y [aI]. The closed phonemes: e, i, o and u appear long,having an semi-vowel after them , but they are analysed as vowel-consonant combinations: ej, ij, ow and uw.

There are 8 consonant phonemes in the language, but no velars.
bilabials: p, m, w
alveolars: t, s, n
palatal: j
and: c before front vowels [ʨ] and before back vowels [h], in word end assimilated with the following vowel.

The nouns often get an demostrative suffix. I did invent it for this language but now has spread in all my conlangs. e 'this', a 'that, the' i 'generally' o 'name' and u 'possessed'
tewp 'a house'
tewpe 'this house, my house'
tewpa 'the house'
tewpo 'the house' the title of the matriarcha of the tribe'
tewpu 'his/her/its house, the house of...'
like Cinw'ono 'the language of the (name) tribe'

Conwono is a topic language with a word order: TopV(S)(O)
The verb oftem repeats the demostrative prefix of the topic. Topic drop is possible. For example cine means I speak.
E.g. Cono cina ciw'ono. 'The tribe, they speak Cinw'ono.'
The werbs get particles or prefixes, for expressing tense, aspect and mode. (e)t 'perfective past' non 'inmperfective past, not oftem used' ca 'hypotetical future' cu 'sure future' p 'potential'... The verb stem s 'to be' can be used to pattern stative aspect. E.g. ca-p-cine 'I may like to speak (in the future)'

Adjectives follow their correlate and are never inflected or used as nouns. E.g. pot at 'a good man' lit. 'man good'

Pronouns: y 'I' nothing to do with the English counterpart that happens to be pronounced rather similarly. Y comes from demonstrative stems a 'that and e 'this' like this one (person) = I) [ae] had become [aI]. ta 'you'
a 'he/she/it/that' moj 'we exlusive' noj 'we inclusive' (mo)ta 'you(all)' (m')a 'they'.

1.Conlangs have a way of gaining their own life in certain aspects.
2. Am I right in assuming that /a/ is a back vowel for the pronunciation of /c/.
3. If /c/ is the last sound of the utterance, which pronunciation is the default? Does /c/ occur before consonants, and if so, what is its default pronunciation?
4. Why is the imperfective past not often used? Is the perfective becoming the default 'past tense'?
5. I like the idea of the 'sure future'. How sure does one have to be in order to use it?

[Omzinesý]

1.Conlangs have a way of gaining their own life in certain aspects.
2. Am I right in assuming that /a/ is a back vowel for the pronunciation of /c/.
3. If /c/ is the last sound of the utterance, which pronunciation is the default? Does /c/ occur before consonants, and if so, what is its default pronunciation?
4. Why is the imperfective past not often used? Is the perfective becoming the default 'past tense'?
5. I like the idea of the 'sure future'. How sure does one have to be in order to use it?

It may be clear that c comes from earlier /k/ A change from /k/ to /h/ before back wovels has happened for example in Hungarian and from /k/ to /ʧ/ in Italian. I decided that there are no velars in the language, and because c should have stay /k/ before consonants I just decided there are no that kinds of circustances.
2. Yes. A is a middle vowel but back for c.
3. An interesting notice. I think it's kind of glottal stop or zero.
4. The particles before a verb are primarily aspect particles, and the imperfective aspect is generally expressed without any particle, even in the past.
5. Sure future, it's up to speaker, what s/he considers sure.

[Yačay256]

Is Cinw'ono per chance inspired by Pirahã? I see some similarities: lack of velars, small phonology yet one rather unusual (though) in [ʨ] (and how could that be an allophone of /h/, a phoneme with a completly different place and manner of articulation from [ʨ]?), gatherer-hunters in the rainforest.

This is not to be critical, and from what I have seen, the lang is quite good so far, though I would need to see more before I could make a complete judgement.

I will say I like the demonstrative suffix, though.

[teh_Foxx0rz]

Personally I think the /ʨ/ should just be /ɕ/, which would also work as an "allophone" of /h/, since in many langs /h/ may turn to /ɕ/ (or something near at least) before front vowels and also /j/. You could also then spell it <h> if you wanted and would make it easier for novices to read a little more accurately.

It seems an interesting lang though, I'd love to see where it goes :-)

[Omzinesý]

Pirahã, in away. I don't know much about it, but there are many similarities between the languages, and it's not an axident.

/h/ and /ʨ/ are both natural followers of /k/. Maybe they are not the most common allophones but not impossible. Furthermore, I just decided that alveolars /t//s//n/ may be palatalized before front vowels i and e.

I try to collect some lexicon and syntax in the near future.

[LusorVerbo4]

Pirahã, in away. I don't know much about it, but there are many similarities between the languages, and it's not an axident.

/h/ and /ʨ/ are both natural followers of /k/. Maybe they are not the most common allophones but not impossible. Furthermore, I just decided that alveolars /t//s//n/ may be palatalized before front vowels i and e.

I try to collect some lexicon and syntax in the near future.

"The only stable language is a dead language."

It's not impossible but it may need some in-world justification. In this case, the contrast between /h/ and /ʨ/ could be justified as a gradual spread for maximal phonological distinction, and /C/ is the middle of the range. Since the Cinwono (correct ethnic?) hear /h/ and /ʨ/ as allophones, maximal distinction would be subconscious, but important.

The palatalization of /t//s/ /n/ is a good, natural phenomenon. Does the /s/ change to /S/ or just /s_j/?

[Omzinesý]

S becomes s_j (im not good in X-samba) before front vowels. Maybe I could change c to become tS, but i don't know. Which one would be more natural.
Cinwono doesn't mean a person. (the+language+of+tribe) I think the correct word for a person (Cinw'ono has no proper lexicon yet)would be aws po Cinw'ono '(a) person with the language of the tribe'

I don't know if a person can hear [ʨ] and [h] similarly, but after all, their variation is spontan.
For example the word, meaning tree is nac
nac pot [nap pot] 'a palm tree'
nace [naʨe] 'this tree'
naca [naha] 'the tree'

[Omzinesý]

Creating words. 'nac pot' I forgot pot meaned man, so the palm may now be the man tree, wow. Exactly, pot is an old and contextual word, means more a warior, of is fitting in expressions like potu tmeca ' a man of god'. A better word for man would be ows twom 'a male person' and for woman ows emp 'a female person'.

Conwono is a topic language with a word order: TopV(S)(O)
The verb oftem repeats the demostrative prefix of the topic. Topic drop is possible. For example cine means I speak.
E.g. Cono cina ciw'ono. 'The tribe, they speak Cinw'ono.'
Adjectives follow their correlate and are never inflected or used as nouns. E.g. pot at 'a good man' lit. 'man good'

If the topic is subject the sentrence is easy: TopVO
Owsa twom netwa ausa emp. 'The man loves the woman.'
But if the object is the topic, there is an object preposition before the verb.
Owsa emp na netwa owsa twom. 'The woman is loved by the man.' woman+the her love man+the
The same way:
Ta po cin y. 'You are the one with whon I speak.' you with speak I
That kinds of preposition verbs can be used without a noun, as well. Po cin mean to discuss.