I went for a "Europeanesque" feel for Roderan, though it is, as always, entirely a priori. I dare say it is my most elaborate conlang so far, and hope you will enjoy the result of multiple hours of work. Once again, I aim for naturalism, but I don't mind having poorly attested or entirely unattested features. That said, I tried to justify them and make them work, at least better than in my previous conlangs that exhibited unnecessarily over-the-top quirks, in my opinion.
This first post will describe the phonology in detail, as well as some basic grammatical features that I will develop more thoroughly in future posts.
Phonology
Consonants
- In order to have a more aesthetic-looking table, I intentionally placed some phonemes in the wrong categories: the affricates /tʃ dʒ/ and fricatives /ʃ ʒ/ are alveolo-palatal.
- Similarly, the rhotics and the approximants are in a single line. /r/ is an alveolar trill. /ɹʷ/ and /w/ alternate in free variation, and the choice depends mainly on the speaker. /ɹʷ/ is perceived to be more agressive and is generally used to intimidate, or to assert social dominance (as in a speech by the King, or in a conversation between a noble and a peasant). It is also deemed to be an "unwomanly" sound by Roderan society.
- The labio-dental fricatives are indeed labio-dental (unlike the German <pf>), with the upper teeth pressing against the bottom lip.
- /cɕ ɟʑ/ are sometimes realised as /cç/ and /ɟʝ/ to differentiate them from their alveolo-palatal counterparts. The same applies to /ɕ/ and /ʑ/, respectively pronounced /ç/ and /ʝ/.
- /j/ is extremely rare and is usually found is some loanwords.
- All the nasals, except /m/, have a lateral approximant allophone, with which they are interchangeable in the context of consonant harmony.
- You may notice the nearly perfect consonant alternative: voiced and unvoiced. Roderan has consonant harmony: a word can only have either voiced, or unvoiced consonants. Affixes change accordingly, as well as compound words (the second word of the compound changes). As for the aforementioned nasals, they interchange with the lateral approximants in "voiceless" words. A more colloquial trend is to simply devoice the nasals (as well as /r/ and /w/), but this is not proper for "educated" speech.
Roderan has 6 basic vowel qualities /a e i y o u/, which respectively reduce to /ɑ ɛ e ʉ ɔ o/ in unstressed positions, and to /ə/ when word-final. /i/ reduces to /ɨ/ when word-final.
Thus, the basic vowels of Roderan are as such:
With the exception of the schwa, all of the above vowels can be either long or short. Old Roderan had a set of pre-aspirated consonants; while the aspiration disappeared, it triggered a lengthening of the preceding vowel.
That said, Old Roderan also had phonemic vowel length, which was lost before the pre-aspiration. There were three contrasts: short, semi-long, and long. Over time, the (semi-)long vowels broke down into diphthongs and triphthongs, which then simplified and merged.
a aˑ aː → a ə̯a e̯ai̯
e eˑ eː → e ei̯ ɛ̯ei̯
i iˑ iː → i ə̯i ə̯ɨ̯i
y yˑ yː → y ʉ̯y ə̯ʉ̯y
o oˑ oː → o ɔ̯o ɔ̯ou̯
u uˑ uː → u ə̯u ə̯uə̯
This unstable clump of vowels quickly simplified and merged. Modern Standard Roderan has the following diphthongs and triphthongs:
/u̯a ei̯ œ̯ʏ u̯o o̯u/
/e̯ai̯ u̯œ̯ʏ/
Any other combination of vowels is forbidden and the vowels must be separated by an epenthetic <n>. This happens mostly through compounding and affixing.
Phonotactics
The typical vowel structure is: (C1)V(C2).
C1 is any consonant. All consonants are allowed word-initially.
V is any vowel, diphthong or triphthong that the phonology allows. Due to the diachronics of Roderan vowels, long vowels only occur if they are followed by a consonant.
C2 can be:
- a single consonant (stop, affricate, nasal, fricative, ...)
- a CC cluster consisting of a fricative and a plosive/affricate
- a CC cluster consisting of a nasal and a plosive/affricate
Some fricative+plosive clusters also follow that rule, though not always. Clusters considered easy to pronounce will not be changed, but those deemed awkward by the speakers will be assimilated into affricates. The fricative thus changes to accomodate for the plosive. Compounding can also, in some cases, make two affricates meet. Because such a cluster would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to pronounce, they simplify into a single affricate. There is no absolute rule, but it is common for the affricate with a more fronted place of articulation to prevail. The same rule applies for fricatives clusters. For example:/nb/ → /mb/
/mc/ → /ɲ̊c/ or /ʎc/
/ŋdʒ/ → /ndʒ/
Clusters of plosives abide by different rules. They are for the most part not simplified and pronunciation will not be altered. The only exception will be a cluster involving a palatal and an alveolar or velar plosive: the palatal plosive prevails and is geminated. For example:Tynitsćaku /ˈtyneˌtsakə/, lit. "horse-rider": a knight.
Geröydžbvunei /ˈgerœ̯ʏˌb̪vunei̯/: the feeling one gets when coming home to the smell of food cooking
Basic grammar factsPactytšo /ˈpaˌcːytʃə/, literally "sleep-plant": a plant that produces opium; a poppy.
As said in the beginning of this post, I will develop the grammar in more detail in upcoming posts. Nevertheless, here are some "appetisers":
- Basic word order is SOV, with postpositions and adjectives that may be placed before or after the noun depending on several rules.
- The negation is constructed with a suffix on the verb. There are no words for yes and no, instead, the copula is conjugated.
- Verb alignment is active-stative. There are 3 categories of verbs, with Cat1 & 2 requiring respectively an agentive and a patientive subject. Cat3 may have either depending on what the speaker implies. Turning a Cat2 verb into a Cat3 verb forms a causative: "I sleep" vs "I sleep him" which translates to "I caused him to sleep".
- There are three genders: human male, human female and non-human. There is no default gender (unlike French that uses masculine by default); instead, each noun will individually require a masculine, or a feminine, when gender is unknown or unspecified.
- Verbs inflect in tense and mood, and have polypersonal agreement. Ditransitive verbs agree with the three arguments.
- There are 6 cases in total: active, passive, dative, combined comitative/instrumental, combined locative/genitive, and benefactive.
- There are two numbers: singular and plural.