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

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

Post by Salmoneus »

Parlox wrote: 31 May 2020 18:55 Hey it's been a while since I've been on.. And I have a quick question.

So a conlang I've been working on has no adverbs or adjectives, instead it uses nouns for both of these categories. My question is: What might be a good way to handle pro-adverbs like where/how/therefore/etc?

I was thinking of just using nouns like typical, but "the reason you did it?" or "He did it in a unknown location." for "Why did you do it?" and "He did it somewhere." just doesn't sound right to me.
Why does it sound odd to you to say "He did it somewhere", but not "he did it here"? Or "Because of what did you do it?" but not "he did it because of his hope to eat"? Are you sure you're not just being informed by English's idiosyncracies?

Regarding the example in your next post: surely, if "speed" is marked for tense and voice and modifies the verb, it IS an adverb? Or at least a verb? I don't see why it's a noun in your example?


[and yes, it seems much more likely to me to have a language with few adverbs than to have one with none. After all, saying "once" and "now" and "maybe" is SO much easier than saying "on one occasion", "during the current period of time" and "in some but not all possible worlds"...]


-----

Pabappa: why wouldn't "reason" be an atomic word? It's - particularly in this sense, of 'cause' or 'motive' - a very basic word conceptually. I know English has a loanword, but that shouldn't lead us to think that it's somehow a word that languages won't often have some very basic word for - after all, you can't have many conversations without it! [it is, however, in a semantic area that's prone to shifts, precisely because it's so basic and yet not concrete - so it's prone to a lot of idioms forming. Like words for 'stuff' and 'thing' (which can also mean 'reason' in many languages, of course), which similarly are prone to invention, despite it being an extremely basic concept.

[Irish, FWIW, has fáth, meaning simply cause or reason, and it has meant that as the primary meaning since Old Irish (in OI it could also apparently mean 'prophecy'...). "Why?" is simply Cén fáth/, literally "what reason?". And cén is from cé+an, so even more literally "who the reason?"; similarly, "how?" is simply "what (/who the) path?"]

But of course, 'why' is open to idiomatic alternatives. In English, for instance, we often ask "what were you thinking?"...
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Parlox »

Salmoneus wrote: 31 May 2020 22:52 Why does it sound odd to you to say "He did it somewhere", but not "he did it here"? Or "Because of what did you do it?" but not "he did it because of his hope to eat"? Are you sure you're not just being informed by English's idiosyncracies?

Regarding the example in your next post: surely, if "speed" is marked for tense and voice and modifies the verb, it IS an adverb? Or at least a verb? I don't see why it's a noun in your example?


[and yes, it seems much more likely to me to have a language with few adverbs than to have one with none. After all, saying "once" and "now" and "maybe" is SO much easier than saying "on one occasion", "during the current period of time" and "in some but not all possible worlds"...]
Well Gondolan doesn't really have any true stand-alone adjectives, it has nouns that can be used as them. And those examples just sound "odd" to me because they're more unwieldly.

It is essentially an adverb in this case, it's just that most "adverbs" are formed from nouns.
:con: Gândölansch (Gondolan)Feongkrwe (Feongrkean)Tamhanddön (Tamanthon)Θανηλοξαμαψⱶ (Thanelotic)Yônjcerth (Yaponese)Ba̧supan (Basupan)Mùthoķán (Mothaucian) :con:
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Reyzadren »

Unless y'all are referring to "adverbs" in the meta-linguistic sense, fyi that other natlang that I speak as well as my conlang has no adverbs (as its own class/category), and they seem to work fine. If a language sees itself having no adverbs from its own perspective, I don't see what's the big deal, and I'm quite sure that you can have ways to handle such constructions in your conlang.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Parlox wrote: 31 May 2020 23:01
Salmoneus wrote: 31 May 2020 22:52 Why does it sound odd to you to say "He did it somewhere", but not "he did it here"? Or "Because of what did you do it?" but not "he did it because of his hope to eat"? Are you sure you're not just being informed by English's idiosyncracies?

Regarding the example in your next post: surely, if "speed" is marked for tense and voice and modifies the verb, it IS an adverb? Or at least a verb? I don't see why it's a noun in your example?


[and yes, it seems much more likely to me to have a language with few adverbs than to have one with none. After all, saying "once" and "now" and "maybe" is SO much easier than saying "on one occasion", "during the current period of time" and "in some but not all possible worlds"...]
Well Gondolan doesn't really have any true stand-alone adjectives, it has nouns that can be used as them.
Sorry, do you mean adverbs?
And those examples just sound "odd" to me because they're more unwieldly.
But my point is, there's nothing actually unwieldy about an expression like "he did it a place" or "what reason you do it?" (or "for what you do it?" for that matter). It's just not something English does, but that needn't limit what your conlang does!

I mean, just look how horrendously 'unwieldy' English can be! Compare:

conlang: a dan (su) la?
gloss: what cause (you) so

vs. English: why did you do it?

The conlang is unwieldy? The English has a pronominal adverb, the same dummy verb TWICE, once marked for tense and once in an infinitive, AND a dummy pronoun! Plus another pronoun that's obligatory despite it usually being entirely clear from context anyway. Or instead you could say "why is it you did it?", in which case you have two different dummy verbs, the same dummy pronoun twice (or you could replace the second 'it' with 'that', and have both a dummy personal pronoun AND a dummy demonstrative pronoun!), and an entire relative clause, the whole thing requiring two different tenses!
It is essentially an adverb in this case, it's just that most "adverbs" are formed from nouns.
This is perfectly reasonable, of course.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Parlox »

Salmoneus wrote: 01 Jun 2020 01:36 But my point is, there's nothing actually unwieldy about an expression like "he did it a place" or "what reason you do it?" (or "for what you do it?" for that matter). It's just not something English does, but that needn't limit what your conlang does!

I mean, just look how horrendously 'unwieldy' English can be! Compare:

conlang: a dan (su) la?
gloss: what cause (you) so

vs. English: why did you do it?

The conlang is unwieldy? The English has a pronominal adverb, the same dummy verb TWICE, once marked for tense and once in an infinitive, AND a dummy pronoun! Plus another pronoun that's obligatory despite it usually being entirely clear from context anyway. Or instead you could say "why is it you did it?", in which case you have two different dummy verbs, the same dummy pronoun twice (or you could replace the second 'it' with 'that', and have both a dummy personal pronoun AND a dummy demonstrative pronoun!), and an entire relative clause, the whole thing requiring two different tenses!
I suppose you're right, I might go in this direction with my conlang. Really my only problem with it is that it's already a rather unwieldy conlang. I've been trying to condense the language some.
:con: Gândölansch (Gondolan)Feongkrwe (Feongrkean)Tamhanddön (Tamanthon)Θανηλοξαμαψⱶ (Thanelotic)Yônjcerth (Yaponese)Ba̧supan (Basupan)Mùthoķán (Mothaucian) :con:
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Is liaison an appropriate name for the process in my setting's Elvish language that causes the events below across word boundaries? If not, what's an appropriate name for it? For context, [ʃ, ʁ, ʎ] are the only sounds that remain word-finally.

1. Usually pronounced final consonant deleting before a would-be duplicate (paech [pʰɛʃ] vs. paech chomra [pʰɛ‿ʃɔ̃ʁ])
2. Usually silent final consonant before a vowel (yn [ỹ] vs. yn oelune [yŋ‿œʎũ])
3. Usually silent final consonant other than [ʕ̞] before [ʕ̞], deleting [ʕ̞] (het [ɥe] vs. het qoech [ɥetʰ‿œʃ])
Last edited by yangfiretiger121 on 02 Jun 2020 18:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 02 Jun 2020 18:32 Is liaison an appropriate name for the process in my setting's Elvish language that causes the events below across word boundaries?
"Liaison" is a French-specific term. The broader phenomenon of sound changes at word boundaries is called sandhi. What you're describing in your conlang is sandhi.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Dormouse559 wrote: 02 Jun 2020 18:42
yangfiretiger121 wrote: 02 Jun 2020 18:32 Is liaison an appropriate name for the process in my setting's Elvish language that causes the events below across word boundaries?
"Liaison" is a French-specific term. The broader phenomenon of sound changes at word boundaries is called sandhi. What you're describing in your conlang is sandhi.
On the other hand, sandhi is a very general term, that often refers to any process occuring at some morphosyntactic boundary. Also, the German Wikipedia claims that Liaison is also used for other languages and the German term for the IPA symbol Linking [ ‿ ] is apparently Liaisonbogen. So maybe Linking (Segments) would be an alternative.
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Post by Dormouse559 »

Creyeditor wrote: 02 Jun 2020 22:13On the other hand, sandhi is a very general term, that often refers to any process occuring at some morphosyntactic boundary. Also, the German Wikipedia claims that Liaison is also used for other languages and the German term for the IPA symbol Linking [ ‿ ] is apparently Liaisonbogen. So maybe Linking (Segments) would be an alternative.
German and English don't necesssarily use "liaison" with the same meaning. To my Anglophone sensibilities, applying "liaison" to a language other than French (or a language closely related to it) feels liable to give the wrong impression, like describing metaphony as "umlaut". If it's very important to narrow the sandhi down immediately, it can be called "word-level sandhi".

To the point of the examples yangfiretiger provided, only one of them appears directly analogous to French liaison (No. 2). There are no liaison processes that resemble the other two, in no small part because French doesn't delete initial consonants.
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Post by Salmoneus »

And yet, umlaut is very widely used for languages outside of Germanic. Indeed, it's probably more common than 'metaphony' (or, indeed, 'vowel affection').

Similarly, I don't see why 'liaison' can't be used for non-French languages. We don't need to have a special unique vocabulary just for French!

Personally, I would see 'liaison' as appropriate specifically for narrower process than 'sandhi': simple word-boundary changes, epenthesis, and particularly where the added segment is derived lexically. This could even allow 'sandhi' to be used only for purely morphophonemic processes (though I'd probably call very widespread lexical sandhi "mutation" or "gradation", myself...)

I'd call 2 and 3 examples of liaison, while I'd call 1 an example of sandhi proper; but if those are really the only three sandhi processes, I'd be happy to call them all 'liaison'; it seems like it might be less misleading than to call it 'sandhi', even if in a wider sense these are all sandhi processes.
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Post by Sequor »

I don't remember where it was that I recently read the observation that while Romance linguistics is fond of the term "metaphony", in linguistics as a whole you're more likely to come across "umlaut", or even (a very specialized and limited type of) "vowel harmony".

Naturally, specialized (morpho)phonological terms exist. Arabic has a term for the raising of historical [a a:] to [e e:] and occasionally [i i:], and it would be really funny to apply it to French for its own historical raise of [a:] > [æ:] > [e:] (cārum [ˈkaːɾu] > *[ˈkʲæːɾo] > chier [ˈtʃjeɾ]).
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Salmoneus wrote: 03 Jun 2020 01:03 And yet, umlaut is very widely used for languages outside of Germanic. Indeed, it's probably more common than 'metaphony' (or, indeed, 'vowel affection').

Similarly, I don't see why 'liaison' can't be used for non-French languages. We don't need to have a special unique vocabulary just for French!

Personally, I would see 'liaison' as appropriate specifically for narrower process than 'sandhi': simple word-boundary changes, epenthesis, and particularly where the added segment is derived lexically. This could even allow 'sandhi' to be used only for purely morphophonemic processes (though I'd probably call very widespread lexical sandhi "mutation" or "gradation", myself...)

I'd call 2 and 3 examples of liaison, while I'd call 1 an example of sandhi proper; but if those are really the only three sandhi processes, I'd be happy to call them all 'liaison'; it seems like it might be less misleading than to call it 'sandhi', even if in a wider sense these are all sandhi processes.
The deletion of vowels from certain determiners before vowels happens as well, as in noe liagnt [ŋœ ʎi.ɑ̃t] vs. n’aeho [ŋ‿ɛɥ]. There might be more sandhi, but the local term for these four linking variations is Tlyakae's [tly.ɑkʰ] Law, after the linguist who "discovered"/codified them. On a related note, should law's with local names in them be referenced as [Insert-name]'s [insert-pron] Law (1) or [Insert-name]'s Law [insert-pron] (2) the first time I mention them? Currently, I use (1) for clarity.

Additionally, I'm just about positive Common will have all open syllables with prenasalized consonants rather than nasal vowels. Is that derivation pattern weird at all when both parents, Elvish (exclusively) and Phoenixtongue (in combination with closed syllables ending in nasals), have nasal vowels?
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Post by Omzinesý »

I'm thinking about diachronic conlanging.

If the proto-language has /o:/, what could condition that the/o:/ changes to /u:/ in some environments and /uo/ in some environments?
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Post by Salmoneus »

Omzinesý wrote: 03 Jun 2020 12:58 I'm thinking about diachronic conlanging.

If the proto-language has /o:/, what could condition that the/o:/ changes to /u:/ in some environments and /uo/ in some environments?
Well, it's best to think of this sort of thing not as a phoneme changing to either X or Y depending on environment, but as the product of two discrete changes, one of which was context-dependent.

So, there's really two possible questions for you to look at here: what would cause /o:/ > /u:/ (remaining /o:/ then breaks); or what would cause /o:/ to break (remaining /o:/ then raises).

I think the latter is more likely, probably. And why would /o:/ break? Well, the obvious culprits would be a following low vowel [ko:ta > koata > kuot] or less likely some sort of following coda consonant (ko:ht > ko@ht > /ku@ht > /kuoht/). You could also have /uo/ come from /oe/ - ie from a fronting or derounding (ko:ti > koeti > kueti > kuoti). And you could have breaking be due to a preceding raising element (jo:ta > juota)

With the plain raising of /u:/, the most likely thing would be an adjacent raised element (palatals, palatoalveolars, approximants, etc), before or after the segment (ones before could alternatively trigger breaking). However, /u:/ is usually also more rounded than /o:/, so it could be an adjacent rounding element. Or, of course, some sort of vowel affection or harmony (ko:tu > ku:tu).

Finally, in both cases, issues around stress and syllable weight may be relevant. Particularly if /o:/ > /u:/ is a merger, which could easily be more common in unstressed syllables. Breaking could happen only in stressed syllables (perhaps via an overlong allophone). It's less likely but conceivable it might only happen in unstressed syllables for syllable shape reasons (if long vowels are only allowed in stressed syllables, unstressed /o:/ could break into bisyllabic /o.o/, which could then remerge as /uo/).
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Post by Omzinesý »

Salmoneus wrote: 03 Jun 2020 14:54
Omzinesý wrote: 03 Jun 2020 12:58 I'm thinking about diachronic conlanging.

If the proto-language has /o:/, what could condition that the/o:/ changes to /u:/ in some environments and /uo/ in some environments?
Well, it's best to think of this sort of thing not as a phoneme changing to either X or Y depending on environment, but as the product of two discrete changes, one of which was context-dependent.

So, there's really two possible questions for you to look at here: what would cause /o:/ > /u:/ (remaining /o:/ then breaks); or what would cause /o:/ to break (remaining /o:/ then raises).

I think the latter is more likely, probably. And why would /o:/ break? Well, the obvious culprits would be a following low vowel [ko:ta > koata > kuot] or less likely some sort of following coda consonant (ko:ht > ko@ht > /ku@ht > /kuoht/). You could also have /uo/ come from /oe/ - ie from a fronting or derounding (ko:ti > koeti > kueti > kuoti). And you could have breaking be due to a preceding raising element (jo:ta > juota)

With the plain raising of /u:/, the most likely thing would be an adjacent raised element (palatals, palatoalveolars, approximants, etc), before or after the segment (ones before could alternatively trigger breaking). However, /u:/ is usually also more rounded than /o:/, so it could be an adjacent rounding element. Or, of course, some sort of vowel affection or harmony (ko:tu > ku:tu).

Finally, in both cases, issues around stress and syllable weight may be relevant. Particularly if /o:/ > /u:/ is a merger, which could easily be more common in unstressed syllables. Breaking could happen only in stressed syllables (perhaps via an overlong allophone). It's less likely but conceivable it might only happen in unstressed syllables for syllable shape reasons (if long vowels are only allowed in stressed syllables, unstressed /o:/ could break into bisyllabic /o.o/, which could then remerge as /uo/).
Thank you!

Those are very similar ideas that I thought.
At last, I was boring and took the Italian/French sound change and conditioned it just with openness of the syllable.
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Post by Odkidstr »

I'm trying to create a new conlang. It's VSO (mostly) and I'm wanting to use auxiliary verbs to indicate aspect. However my verbs are fairly bare and don't have things like number, gender, or mood attached to them (it's a very isolating language). What I'm trying to figure out is if what I'm trying to do is more of an auxiliary verb or perhaps an aspect particle. It seems like an auxiliary verb would necessarily need to be declined with something, otherwise it'd be more of a particle.

Also I'm wondering if it'd be odd for verbs to take a tense & mood suffix, but still use an auxiliary verb for aspect?

And one last question: Would switching the word order from VSO to SVO be a reasonable way to create the passive?

If it matters at all, I haven't fully decided on a case system, but was thinking of using prepositional clitics.

Hopefully I used all of the right terms; I'm a bit rusty as I haven't had time for a long while to conlang.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Odkidstr wrote: 04 Jun 2020 01:33 It seems like an auxiliary verb would necessarily need to be declined with something, otherwise it'd be more of a particle.
So the question is what makes some word a verb.
If the main verb still inflects in tense/mood and the auxiliary does not, yes, I think the main verb is the verb and the auxiliary is a particle. If the main verb appears in the infinitive, it probably has a head. That does not mean the head is a verb. Some English grammars speak about "auxiliaries" without stating is "can" is a verb or not.

It nice that you think about terminology and distinguish the conlang and its description.
Odkidstr wrote: 04 Jun 2020 01:33Also I'm wondering if it'd be odd for verbs to take a tense & mood suffix, but still use an auxiliary verb for aspect?
I see no problem in that.
"I am drinking coffee." and "I drink coffee." have an aspectual difference, that of the progressive and non-progressive.
Odkidstr wrote: 04 Jun 2020 01:33 And one last question: Would switching the word order from VSO to SVO be a reasonable way to create the passive?
Yes, it is a very reasonable way to code one of the main functions of the passive. It codes that the clause is about (the topic if you wanna Google) the patient not about the agent like an English active clause. So you just decide that the position after the verb codes topicality, whether the participant is the agent, the patient or something else. Such languages usually have cases/case adpositions to code what role the participant has.

But it is not a passive. The passive is a much more complicated thing where semantic roles and topicality are coded by the same device.

If you are asking if those particular word orders can do that, I think they are not the most common ones, but I see no reson why not. The important thing is to decide what position codes topicality.
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Post by Salmoneus »

Odkidstr wrote: 04 Jun 2020 01:33 I'm trying to create a new conlang. It's VSO (mostly) and I'm wanting to use auxiliary verbs to indicate aspect. However my verbs are fairly bare and don't have things like number, gender, or mood attached to them (it's a very isolating language). What I'm trying to figure out is if what I'm trying to do is more of an auxiliary verb or perhaps an aspect particle. It seems like an auxiliary verb would necessarily need to be declined with something, otherwise it'd be more of a particle.
The first and most important thing to say is: it doesn't really matter. It's better to be clear on what a word does, than on what the word 'is'. If it seems questionable what something is, personally I think the best way is to pick an analysis and go with it, while noting the alternative analyses are possible.


But to the meat of the question: a word is a verb if it acts like a verb, and is not a verb if it does not act like a verb.

"Acting like a verb" can indeed include inflecting like a verb. But it can also mean being treated as a verb syntactically. Does the auxiliary go in the same place as an ordinary verb? What about in questions, and imperatives? Is it negated the same way as an ordinary verb? Where do adverbs go?

For instance, in Old-Fashioned English (not a linguistic term, but...), it's clear than "can" is a verb, despite not taking normal verbal inflections, because it patterns the same way syntactically.

Normal word order:
[the man] [likes] [to eat fish]
[the man] [can] [eat fish]
S V O

Questions:
[likes] [the man] [dogs]?
[can] [the man] [hunt]?
V S O

Negations:
[the man] [likes not] [dogs]
[the man] [can not] [hunt]
S V neg O

Adverbs:
[the man] [surely likes] [dogs]
[the man] [surely can] hunt

Other than 'can' not requiring 'to' before a verbal object, it's basically the same word order.

[You may notice, however, that in modern English it's rather less clearcut: 'can' retains the old question and negation forms but ordinary verbs don't, and adverbs now more often follow 'can' (due to confusion between [surely can] [hunt] and [can] [surely hunt]), but remain prohibited after ordinary verbs. Add in that auxiliaries can't take non-verbal objects, and that they can't be put in the imperative or infinitive, don't have participles and don't take the -s inflection or a regular productive past tense, it would certainly seem valid to say that 'can' is no longer a real verb in English. However, we usually say it is because a) it used to be, and b) it enables us to have to useful, simple rule, "every independent clause requires a finite verb".]


Also I'm wondering if it'd be odd for verbs to take a tense & mood suffix, but still use an auxiliary verb for aspect?
Not at all, I don't think. English of course does this with tense. And in general aspect is the most 'peripheral' part, frequently conveyed through periphrastic constructions that can easily become grammaticalised as auxiliaries.
And one last question: Would switching the word order from VSO to SVO be a reasonable way to create the passive?
A real passive cannot be SVO... because a real passive has no O. [discounting here the symmetrical 'voices' of Austronesian, which often coexist with a genuine passive].

Word order changes normally aren't enough to change voice. However, it could conceivably happen, in a language with no voice marking (or voice marking that erodes) and a system of either topicalisation or focusing. Alternatively, it could happen through zero-nominalisation of the verb - with the patient of the verb (i.e. the subject of a passive) being converted into the possessor of a verb. [as though English formed the passive of 'I ate the fish' by saying 'the fish's eating']
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Post by Odkidstr »

Thanks for the help. I've got a clearer idea of what I want to do now.
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Post by yangfiretiger121 »

I describe the vowel system of my Elvish language's abugida as follows: "[t]he native script is an abugida with an inherent [​i] and the remaining seven vowels arranged from first high-to-low, then front-to-back as diacritics—[y, u, e, ɛ, œ, ɔ, ɑ]". Are the descriptors in the correct order for the provided collation pattern?
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