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

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

Post by Creyeditor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Does the accent tend to be based on syllables or moras? Wikipedia's article and many other articles I could find focus on the syllable, but I know Japanese is more mora focused.
I think there are more descriptions of mora based systems because it's easier to find evidence.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Do things like peak delay only apply to the previous syllable, or can it also apply to a previous mora within the same syllable?
Both and since it can be phonetic, probably also to phonetic duration differences.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Are there any tendencies among pitch accent languages? Should I be thinking more about moras or syllables when it comes to how the accent affects adjacent moras or syllables?
I think you should think about both.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 I also don't have a clear melodic structure for my accent aside from simple stuff like: if the accent occurs within the first syllable, it is realized as a falling tone. If it is within the final syllable, then it is a rising tone.
Alternative formulation: If there is a high tone on the first syllable, it's on the first mora of that syllable. If it is on the last syllable, it's on the last mora of the last syllable. (Assuming both are heavy in the respective cases.)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Creyeditor wrote: 16 Mar 2022 18:37
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Does the accent tend to be based on syllables or moras? Wikipedia's article and many other articles I could find focus on the syllable, but I know Japanese is more mora focused.
I think there are more descriptions of mora based systems because it's easier to find evidence.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Do things like peak delay only apply to the previous syllable, or can it also apply to a previous mora within the same syllable?
Both and since it can be phonetic, probably also to phonetic duration differences.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 Are there any tendencies among pitch accent languages? Should I be thinking more about moras or syllables when it comes to how the accent affects adjacent moras or syllables?
I think you should think about both.
LinguoFranco wrote: 16 Mar 2022 17:08 I also don't have a clear melodic structure for my accent aside from simple stuff like: if the accent occurs within the first syllable, it is realized as a falling tone. If it is within the final syllable, then it is a rising tone.
Alternative formulation: If there is a high tone on the first syllable, it's on the first mora of that syllable. If it is on the last syllable, it's on the last mora of the last syllable. (Assuming both are heavy in the respective cases.)
For your last answer, I have settled on a lexical system rather than one that is weight sensitive
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Even better, maybe high tones can only be the first or the last tone in a word?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Would a lexical pitch accent automatically make a conlang seem Indo-European, as it supposedly existed in PIE and languages descended from it (Ancient Greek, Sanskrit?)

Japanese seems to be the one exception I can think of. I have heard of some African languages being described as having pitch accents, although some also argue they are tonal languages?

I know I just asked a question previously about pitch accents, but my current focus with conlanging is prosody, so I have been reading up on anything and everything I could find about stress, pitch accents and tones.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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No, pitch accent systems are found all over the world. They exist in Papuan languages, languages of South and North America, Mesoamerican languages, Basque, African languages (East, West, South) and probably also in some other Eurasian languages. Somali is a famous African example. If you look at the work on word prosody by Larry M. Hyman, you will probably find a lot more examples.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Creyeditor wrote: 22 Mar 2022 20:36 No, pitch accent systems are found all over the world. They exist in Papuan languages, languages of South and North America, Mesoamerican languages, Basque, African languages (East, West, South) and probably also in some other Eurasian languages. Somali is a famous African example. If you look at the work on word prosody by Larry M. Hyman, you will probably find a lot more examples.
A good demonstration of this is Europe: we have pitch-accent in the Indo-European Baltic, North Germanic, West Germanic (in Franconian), Celtic (in Welsh) and South Slavic families, as well as in neighbouring Basque, formerly Finnic (in Livonian) and apparently arguably Turkish. However, only the Baltic and Slavic pitch accents reflect the inherited PIE accent (with the Slavic inheritance being complex and iirc not unanimously agreed upon).

From this, clearly pitch-accent is both easily lost and easily gained!
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LittleLynx_53 »

Quick question (per thread title.)
I am a little bit new to this and ears-deep in a syntax headache. If your syntax rules go like this:
N.Posp Dem.N N.Num Poss.N N.Adj Gen.N N.Rel

Can you still have prefixes?
I was planning to make the plural markers prefixes if I could.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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I think you have to explain your syntax rules a bit, because not everyone is familiar with that notation. For example, what is the difference between N.[some gloss] and [some gloss].N? Is this is a set of rules or just big conplex rule? If the former, what is the order between the elements mentioned in on of these rules?
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Post by LittleLynx_53 »

Sorry about that. It just shows the order of things in relation to the noun. I picked this set from a chart by a guy called Artifexian on youtube, because he made a handy spreadsheet for word order universals. Like I said, I'm new to this, but I'm determined to learn. I thought it might be safer to pick from that spreadsheet than to fiddle out every single little thing when I don't (yet) entirely know what I'm doing.

Non-shorthand version:
Word order: VSO
Noun--postposition
Demonstrative clause-Noun
Noun--Numeral
Possessor--Noun (possessee)
Noun--Adjictive
Genative--Noun
Noun--Relative clause

Really I think the heart of my question is: given the rest of these rules and the fact that it has postpositions, would I still be able to do PRE-fixes or would that just be nonsensical? I'm not entirely sure of the relationship between them.

Here's the spreadsheet I picked from: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Nearly anything you are likely to think of is possible.
If you’re in doubt, the way to find out is to try to make a conlang with that combination of features.
If it turns out you can’t make one that’s usable, it might be impossible; but if you succeed, it’s possible.

Some combinations are extremely rare among natlangs; so it might be that these are very unlikely.
You can use WALS.info to look up features or combinations of two or three or four features.
(For word-order, features 81-97 and a few more; 104 and 143-144.
(For affixes, features 26, 51, 57, and 69.
(For adpositions, features 48, 85, and 95.
(90D and 90G for relative clauses.)

Or you can look in the Grammatical Rarity Cabinet and its associated Universals Archive.
https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/

(In my opinion if each two of a set of three features occur together in some natlang, all three together are probably not an impossible combination; and if each set of three out of some four of them all occur together in some natlang, all four together are almost surely possible.)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Yes, I agree that WALS is probably the right place to get a general feel for this question and to find some example languages you could look at for inspiration. But also keep in mind, as eldin said, that you should not give up on this idea if there is no natlang with this exact feature combination. You could really look at pairs of features and if some of these are attested that's already great.

A side note: I really prefer Artifexians worldbuilding to his conlanging [xD]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Just some random statistics, from memory (I’ll have to check in case I’m making errors).

See
https://wals.info/combinations/26A_81A#2/27.6/153.0

I can’t take the time at the moment to calculate from this, what the median numbers are; I hope you (or someone) can!

Languages in general prefer suffixes.
Verb-initial languages (VSO and VOS) average about as many prefixes as suffixes.
Verb-medial languages (SVO and OVS) average about 2 or 3 suffixes per prefix. (?)
Verb-final languages (SOV and OSV) average between 5 and 8 suffixes per prefix. (?)



From https://wals.info/combinations/26A_85A#2/21.0/153.0,
you can see that, out of the postpositional languages in their sample, 9 are strongly prefixing, 24 are weakly prefixing, 52 are equally prefixing and suffixing, 50 are weakly suffixing, and 214 are strongly suffixing.
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 20 Nov 2023 17:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Just because I have some time at hand, here are some number with feature 33A.

33A x 81A: 7 languages have plural prefixes and VSO.
33A x 85A: 8 languages have plural prefixes and postpositions.
33A x 86A: 8 languages have plural prefixes and prenominal possessors/genitives.
33A x 87A: 8 languages have plural prefixes and postnominal adjectives.
33A x 88A: 25 languages have plural prefixes and prenominal demonstratives.
33A x 89A: 67 languages have plural prefixes and postnominal numerals.
33A x 90A: 64 languages have plural prefixes and postnominal relative clauses.

Tepehuan (Northern) has a plural prefix, is VSO, has postpositions, has prenominal possessors/genitives, has prenominal demonstratives and has postnominal relative clauses.
Maricopa has a plural prefix, postpositions, postnominal adjectives and prenominal possessors/genitives, and postnominal numerals
Pare, Tunen, and Bakueri have a plural prefix, postnominal adjectives, prenominal demonstratives, postnominal numerals, and postnominal relative clauses.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

I think that it's important not just to ask how common something is, but why. And then instead of just knowing how unusual your language is, you can get ideas about why it might be like that.

In general, correlations in word order can be explained with a simple principle: the thing that creates the phrase usually has the same position. Adpositions create the adpositional phrase, nouns create the nominal phrase, and for the sake of argument we'll call a sentence a verbal phrase in some sense, created by the verb. [fwiw, linguistically, terms like "head", "govern" or "control" would probably be relevant but I'm trying to stay theory-agnostic here, since I don't remember the details of what governs what in the dogmas]. If the verb comes first, you'll probably get prepositions and noun-adjective order; if the verb comes last you'll probably get postpositions and adjective-noun order. Things are, to be fair, more complicated in SVO orders (since the other two situations don't have a third option, being binary choices), but it works pretty well for VSO/SOV and SOV/OSV.

For example, from WALS:
- among verb-initial languages, 96 have prepositions, while only 6 have postpositions
- whereas among verb-final languages, 377 have postpositions, while only 11 have prepositions
and:
- among verb-initial languages, 98 have the noun precede the genitive, while only 5 have the genitive precede the noun
- whereas among verb-final languages, 401 have the genitive precede the noun, while only 26 have the noun precede the genitive
and likewise:
- of the 120 languages that regularly have the relative clause precede the noun, 113 are verb-final, and 0 are verb-initial

The exact details of specific correlations vary, of course (adjective and noun order correlates more weakly iirc, and numerals go the opposite way around to where you might think), and there are inherent tendencies skewing things (prefixes are just much rarer than suffixes regardless of word order). But this is a good first approximation.



In your language, the bizarre thing is that having postpositions despite being verb-initial. So then I'd suggest you ask: why is this!?

I actually think there's quite a simple possibility: your language was previously SOV. This fits neatly with everything except maybe Noun-Adj order, and even that's not exactly bizarre. At a later time, your verb shifted to the front. This may even have created the postpositions, which could previously have been verbs, reanalysed as postpositions when main verbs were fronted. Although it's equally possible you just had postpositions all along anyway.

This wouldn't fit that well with prefixes in general, since those would generally require that adpositions at some point preceded the noun. However, since adj-noun order is a bit looser, it's possible to imagine a plural prefix having begun as an ordinary adjective ("numerous", "gathered", etc) at a point when the adjective preceded the noun. Tying this to the above, maybe your language used to be adj-noun, but has started shifting to noun-adj under the influence of the new initial verbs? In that case, perhaps there are some relics of noun-adjective order, as in English (attorneys general, the states assembled, bread alone, etc)?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LittleLynx_53 »

Thank you to everyone who answered my question: the answers were amazingly helpful. Especially the theorizing on what kind of history might have caused the prepositions and it's previous word order and the pointer to WALS.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

I'm thinking of making a conlang that uses vowel harmony. Despite all the years I have been conlanging and studying linguistics, it was never something I really messed with, but now I kinda want to use it in a conlang.

I have an idea for a height-based system with /e a o/ for the low vowels and /i ə u/ for high vowels. However, I want some exceptions in place, or maybe a neutral vowel that blocks the spread of vowel harmony.

So, are there any other vowels I could throw in?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

LinguoFranco wrote: 03 May 2022 07:49 I'm thinking of making a conlang that uses vowel harmony. Despite all the years I have been conlanging and studying linguistics, it was never something I really messed with, but now I kinda want to use it in a conlang.

I have an idea for a height-based system with /e a o/ for the low vowels and /i ə u/ for high vowels. However, I want some exceptions in place, or maybe a neutral vowel that blocks the spread of vowel harmony.

So, are there any other vowels I could throw in?
I think Chukchi has these six vowels and height harmony, /i e u/ vs. /e a o/ vs. /ə/. The two /e/s are pronounced the same, but one triggers the high vowels in a word to lower, while the other doesn't, and /ə/ is a "neutral" vowel in most cases, in that /e a o/ doesn't cause it to lower (sometimes it acts like it's in the /e a o/ group though, causing /i u/ to lower)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Gaahmg seems to have this system, even though they call it ATR harmony, judging from this abstract.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

Creyeditor wrote: 03 May 2022 14:31 Gaahmg seems to have this system, even though they call it ATR harmony, judging from this abstract.
Think I found the full paper here, with vowel harmony stuff starting on page 56. It actually seems pretty interesting in that while there's no "weirdness" in the vowels (like, no neutral vowels, no "merged" vowels like in Chukchi, all the vowels act one way or the other, etc.), the direction of the spread can depend on what affixes appear in a word, and there's rounding harmony for some affixes as well, but not all of them
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by teotlxixtli »

How do applicatives form? I’ve got a proto-lang and I want it’s daughter to have benefactive, locative, and instrumental applicatives but I’m not sure from what they descend or how they get attached to the verb
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