Typological voting game
Posted: 18 Nov 2020 17:16
This was something I once tried on Tumblr, though it did not meet with much success there. I decided it would be fun to try it out here. My apologies if something like this has already been tried out here!
My idea is that we build a sketch of a conlang by going through the World Atlas of Language Structures feature-by-feature and voting on which value/category will apply to the conlang. In general, we will vote on one feature a week.
However, some weeks, I may have us vote on more than one feature at once, and other times may have us vote on a non-WALS item to clarify an issue. For example, once we have gone through the phonological categories, there will be a week in which anyone can submit a final consonant inventory proposal, after which they will be voted on. Thread participants may also raise non-WALS issues to be voted on, provided that two people second their issue. The issue will then go to vote alongside the following week's question.
For some voting outcomes, certain future chapters of WALS will be redundant or ruled out and thus not voted on.
For the first week, we will actually start out with three items, to broadly define the typological profile of the conlang. We will vote on WALS Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio, Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology, and Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb.
Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio
The value produced by the size of the consonant inventory divided by the number of distinct vowel qualities.
A) Low (equal to or below 2.0)
B) Moderately low (above 2.0 but below 2.75)
C) Average (2.75 or above, but below 4.5)
D) Moderately high (4.5 or above, but below 6.5)
E) High (equal to or above 6.5)
Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology
A) Consistently head-marking
B) Consistently dependent-marking
C) Consistently double-marking
D) Consistently zero-marking
E) Inconsistent marking or other type
Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb
A) Subject-object-verb (SOV)
B) Subject-verb-object (SVO)
C) Verb-subject-object (VSO)
D) Verb-object-subject (VOS)
E) Object-verb-subject (OVS)
F) Object-subject-verb (OSV)
G) Lacking a dominant word order
Voting will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, November 25.
Next week we will proceed into the phonological features, simultaneously voting on Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories, though with the possible answers constrained by the results of this week's consonant-vowel ratio vote.
Also, some of these are not absolute propositions. There can always be exceptions to word order and locus of marking, etc. Just to keep that in mind.
My idea is that we build a sketch of a conlang by going through the World Atlas of Language Structures feature-by-feature and voting on which value/category will apply to the conlang. In general, we will vote on one feature a week.
However, some weeks, I may have us vote on more than one feature at once, and other times may have us vote on a non-WALS item to clarify an issue. For example, once we have gone through the phonological categories, there will be a week in which anyone can submit a final consonant inventory proposal, after which they will be voted on. Thread participants may also raise non-WALS issues to be voted on, provided that two people second their issue. The issue will then go to vote alongside the following week's question.
For some voting outcomes, certain future chapters of WALS will be redundant or ruled out and thus not voted on.
For the first week, we will actually start out with three items, to broadly define the typological profile of the conlang. We will vote on WALS Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio, Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology, and Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb.
Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio
The value produced by the size of the consonant inventory divided by the number of distinct vowel qualities.
A) Low (equal to or below 2.0)
B) Moderately low (above 2.0 but below 2.75)
C) Average (2.75 or above, but below 4.5)
D) Moderately high (4.5 or above, but below 6.5)
E) High (equal to or above 6.5)
Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology
A) Consistently head-marking
B) Consistently dependent-marking
C) Consistently double-marking
D) Consistently zero-marking
E) Inconsistent marking or other type
Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb
A) Subject-object-verb (SOV)
B) Subject-verb-object (SVO)
C) Verb-subject-object (VSO)
D) Verb-object-subject (VOS)
E) Object-verb-subject (OVS)
F) Object-subject-verb (OSV)
G) Lacking a dominant word order
Voting will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, November 25.
Next week we will proceed into the phonological features, simultaneously voting on Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories, though with the possible answers constrained by the results of this week's consonant-vowel ratio vote.
Also, some of these are not absolute propositions. There can always be exceptions to word order and locus of marking, etc. Just to keep that in mind.