A small phonology and short grammar...

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reizoukin
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A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

...Because I like to have input.

So hey, I'm back. Anybody remember me?

There's been an idea in my head for a story. It is a fantasy (surprise!) with magic (no way!). Magic will definitely be a small part of the story, but for the few parts that it plays I want it to be symbolic. It takes the form of a language, and I need to get back into my conlanging groove anyway.

I won't be satisfied with a completely "normal" language, and it will be an isolated proto language, to avoid the nasties. It will have some cliche fantasy themes (Very Euro-centric, Fantasy-style, etc.) because the point of the story isn't the setting. I'll be taking ideas from Latin/Romance, Greek, and Mandarin Chinese languages.

So, without further ado...

PHONOLOGICAL NONSENSE
Spoiler:
Inventory
[m n] <m n>
[l r] <l r>
[p t k] <b d g>
[pʰ tʰ kʰ] <p t c>
[x s] <h s>

[i ɛ a ɔ u ɨ] <i e a o u y>

Other phonological Stuff
  • Word Initial clusters: (Nasals, Unaspirated Plosives, Fricatives + Liquid)
  • Word Medial clusters: (Unaspirated Plosives + Aspirated Plosive) (Nasals, Unaspirated Plosives, Fricatives + Liquid) (Nasal + Nasal)
  • Word Final clusters: (Nasal + Unaspirated Plosive, Aspirated Plosive, ) (Unaspirated Plosive + ) (Liquid + Unaspirated Plosive, Aspirated Plosive, )
  • [ɛ] <e> becomes [e] <e> in stressed position.
  • [.i] <i> becomes [ɪ] <i> word-initially
  • [ɔ] <o> becomes [o] <o> in stressed position.
  • Nasals are geminated intervocalically. In a (Nasal + Nasal) cluster, the first nasal consonant is geminated, the second is not.
  • [x] <h> becomes [h] <h> intervocalically.


"Syllable/Stress Harmony"
If anyone knows the actual term for this, please tell me. I don't know how to describe it.

If possible, a stressed syllable will always take the consonant. Eg. Baromna is always [pa.'rɔm:.na], never [par.'ɔm:.na]. If a similar conflict occurs in another consonant, the syllable closer to the stressed syllable takes the consonant.

Stress is penultimate. If a single syllable word has a word-final cluster, it is pronounced and treated as part of the next word. There are some additional rules for this I will describe. For example, if we had (gibberish) sentence Pits Baromna, it would be pronounced as [pʰits.pa.'rɔm:.na].

Example Words:
Pids [pʰits]
Baromna [pa.'rɔm:.na]
Hranalg ['hran.alk]
Gorint ['kɔr.intʰ]
Mah [max]
Srudebols [sru.tep.ɔls]


I'll wait to add more...I'm trying to work out just how I want the grammar. I want it to be similar to music...I'm just trying to figure out how to incorporate that.
Last edited by reizoukin on 08 Feb 2011 14:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Micamo
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by Micamo »

Your aspirated consonants are marked with voiced letters. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the fortis/lenis pairs match?

No /j/?
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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reizoukin
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

Micamo wrote:Your aspirated consonants are marked with voiced letters. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the fortis/lenis pairs match?

No /j/?
I got those backwards, I meant the aspirated to be p/t/c. How did I not notice? Thanks.

I'm still considering whether to add /j/ as an independent sound or to just make it part of /i/+vowel.
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Tanni
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by Tanni »

Srudebols [sru.tep.ɔls]
This feels just wrong!
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by roninbodhisattva »

reizoukin wrote:I want it to be similar to music...I'm just trying to figure out how to incorporate that.
You want the grammar to be similar to music?
reizoukin
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

roninbodhisattva wrote:
reizoukin wrote:I want it to be similar to music...I'm just trying to figure out how to incorporate that.
You want the grammar to be similar to music?
I'm still working out what that means...but yes. Not in a literal sense, like tones, but in the way that it is structured. A sentence is a song; each part of the sentence can be broken up into smaller parts--chords, then notes. You can modify them with flats and sharps, you can change a single note to make a different chord, but by changing one note you are changing the whole sentence and structure of it. Or something more complicated. I dunno.

Maybe I'm just playing too much piano lately.
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by Micamo »

Oh, THAT we can do. The first solution that comes to mind is to have clause-level modifiers and have the syntax and inflection change depending on the modifier. Mood sounds like a good use for this. A mood marker manifests in changing all the affixes.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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reizoukin
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

Micamo wrote:Oh, THAT we can do. The first solution that comes to mind is to have clause-level modifiers and have the syntax and inflection change depending on the modifier. Mood sounds like a good use for this. A mood marker manifests in changing all the affixes.
And to make it all flow? Ideally groups (chords) intersect:

"John threw the ball at Jenny"

This would contain chords
John threw
Threw the ball
Threw the ball at Jenny
John threw the ball

In this case, a "chord" must contain a verb, so it is a clause of sorts. The "notes" being
John
threw
The Ball
Jenny

But how do you make this all interconnect? The chord [John threw] would have to be exclusive with itself, but the chord [threw the ball] would have to be exclusive with ITSELF. I suppose it would be almost polypersonal--the verb must agree with every situation at once.
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reizoukin
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

Sorry to double post.

It might not be much like music anymore (Don't judge me, sleep deprivation does crazy things to a person. :P) but I'm liking where this is going. Just bouncing ideas around in my head, and using that last example...

VDIS order, where D is direct object and I is indirect object. The lang will probably use many genders of animacy.

John threw the ball at Jenny >
propel-DIR.TOOL-INDIR.HUMAN-PREP-SUBJ.HUMAN ball.DEF Jenny John

To describe that,
DIR.TOOL is an affix marking the direct object, with the "tool" gender.
INDIR.HUMAN is an affix marking the indirect object, with the "human" gender.
PREP is an affix marking the preposition "at".
SUBJ.HUMAN is an affix marking the subject, with the "human" gender.
ball.DEF is the ball with an affix marking that it is definite.

My only problem with this is that it doesn't do what I intended, making each "chord" it's own entity but keeping the sentence interconnected as a whole. So then there's the other option, where I mark each subject/object with the verb:

Ball.DEF-propel.DIR at Jenny-propel.INDIR John-propel.SUBJ

I actually like this way better. It would probably mean a smaller amount of verbs, with smaller verbs themselves, but it's at least more interesting.

Thoughts on all this?
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reizoukin
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Re: A small phonology and short grammar...

Post by reizoukin »

This won't die. I keep thinking about this lang and now I have to work on it.

The theme of this language will be that the verb is carried as an affix on every noun. The reasoning for this is because, as I said before, this is a "magic" language, which will contain many complicated "spells" where multiple verbs are used in one instance. For example, someone might write:

"This blade imbues the bearer with willpower and strengthens the might of the allies by encouraging them to overcome fear and accept bravery."

It'd be very easy to get lost in that using English. But this lang will make it more like this:

blade-imbue.SBJ-strengthen.SBJ-encourage.SBJ bearer.DEF-imbue.DOBJ with willpower-imbue.IOBJ and might.DEF-strengthen.DOBJ of allies-strengthen.IBOJ-overcome.SBJ-accept.SBJ by them-encourage.DOBJ to fear-overcome.DOBJ and bravery-accept.DOBJ

SBJ = Subject
DEF = Definite
DOBJ = Direct Object
IOBJ = Indirect Object

That looked less complicated in my head. To use a simpler example:

"He ate her."
He-eat.SBJ her-eat.DOBJ

or

"The man died."
Man.DEF-die.INTR
or
Man.DEF-die.SBJ


And I really like this system. Does anybody have a resource with different kinds of sentences so I can flesh out the grammar? There are a lot of different situations that a language needs to be able to express and I never know what to make next.

Also, just to get a feel for what the language will look like (this vocab is gibberish for now):

Mediob Tadiod
"He ate her."
Me-dio.b ta-dio.d
He-eat.SBJ her-eat.DOBJ


Galisleub
"The man died."
Gali.s-leu.b
Man.DEF-die.SBJ
:eng: Native | :esp: Almost Fluent | :zho: Intermediate | :ara: :fra: Interested | :kat: :cym: Very interested.
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