Dealing with Conlanger's Block

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Ælfwine
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Re: Dealing with Conlanger's Block

Post by Ælfwine »

Salmoneus wrote: 03 Aug 2018 23:33 FWIW, I struggled with exactly the same issues with Wenthish, which likewise is a Germanic language that had influence from Old Irish. It's ended up not looking that Irish at all - other than some loanwords and maybe some spelling conventions - but I've gone through several phases of Celticising it, including toying with mutations. [and this thread make me want mutations again, damnit!]

In the end, what (mostly) resolved it for me was that I decided to have mutations, and couldn't work out how. The way the obvious culprits had developed, mutation just couldn't have had a sufficiently significant burden for it to have become systematic.

[a particular problem: Celtic had nice -s endings on things. But Germanic has weak little -z instead, and final -z drops entirely outside north germanic (and monosyllabics in irmionic). So, for instance, the masculine and feminine articles are likely to trigger the same mutation. And the feminine singular and plural must do as well. And so on.]
That's your problem, you should have made it North Germanic like me!

Which articles have -z? In North Germanic you get three articles, two of which end in nasal consonants.

I partially solved this problem by adopting Irish "na" for the feminine while keeping masculine en (<hinn). The neuter et causes t-prothesis (ett hús > et tú(s)) "DEF.N house" although it seems that the neuter is slowly losing out.

(Nb I'm not quite sure whether I want to leniting final s and whether it'd also apply to -z. Likely it would unless continental influence is strong enough to prevent it. )
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Salmoneus
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Re: Dealing with Conlanger's Block

Post by Salmoneus »

Ælfwine wrote: 04 Aug 2018 00:50 That's your problem, you should have made it North Germanic like me!

Which articles have -z? In North Germanic you get three articles, two of which end in nasal consonants.

I partially solved this problem by adopting Irish "na" for the feminine while keeping masculine en (<hinn).
Well, in this case I was thinking of an, the article reflex of *ainaz. [hinn of course originally had -z too: *jainaz > *?jinr > *inn... is the 'h' just orthographic?]

But why adopt 'na', the plural, for feminines only?


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Ælfwine
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Re: Dealing with Conlanger's Block

Post by Ælfwine »

Salmoneus wrote: 04 Aug 2018 03:06
Ælfwine wrote: 04 Aug 2018 00:50 That's your problem, you should have made it North Germanic like me!

Which articles have -z? In North Germanic you get three articles, two of which end in nasal consonants.

I partially solved this problem by adopting Irish "na" for the feminine while keeping masculine en (<hinn).
Well, in this case I was thinking of an, the article reflex of *ainaz. [hinn of course originally had -z too: *jainaz > *?jinr > *inn... is the 'h' just orthographic?]
Icelandic pronounces /hın:/. Spelling pronunciation or analogy perhaps?
But why adopt 'na', the plural, for feminines only?
I thought it also worked as the posessive singular?

Of course, I could change this. If Irish can get away with no gender marking on their definite article, maybe so can I with en <hinn and en <hin
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Salmoneus
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Re: Dealing with Conlanger's Block

Post by Salmoneus »

Ælfwine wrote: 04 Aug 2018 04:34
Salmoneus wrote: 04 Aug 2018 03:06
Ælfwine wrote: 04 Aug 2018 00:50 That's your problem, you should have made it North Germanic like me!

Which articles have -z? In North Germanic you get three articles, two of which end in nasal consonants.

I partially solved this problem by adopting Irish "na" for the feminine while keeping masculine en (<hinn).
Well, in this case I was thinking of an, the article reflex of *ainaz. [hinn of course originally had -z too: *jainaz > *?jinr > *inn... is the 'h' just orthographic?]
Icelandic pronounces /hın:/. Spelling pronunciation or analogy perhaps?
Don't know...
But why adopt 'na', the plural, for feminines only?
I thought it also worked as the posessive singular?
Feminine genitive singular, yes. But unlikely to be borrowed from there (like borrowing 'of' to mean 'the'...)
Of course, I could change this. If Irish can get away with no gender marking on their definite article, maybe so can I with en <hinn and en <hin
Sure. But that's where the mutations come in in Irish - the feminine singular article lenites, but the masculine singular doesn't.
Curlyjimsam
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Re: Dealing with Conlanger's Block

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Seen this thread a hundred times; finally thought of something to say!

Most of my conlanging arises from conworlding. I'm working on some aspect of the culture, and I need a word, or a phrase, and it all takes off from there ... So maybe laying languages aside and focusing on other aspects of the world would actually help you work on those languages.
The Man in the Blackened House, a conworld-based serialised web-novel
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