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

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

Post by eldin raigmore »

Creyeditor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 14:40 Did anybody ever conduct a typological study on their own conlangs? Maybe on basic word order or phoneme inventory sizes or the like?
I only have three, so not a big enough sample size.
Even If I count in my more-worked-on sketchlangs I still don’t think I have a big enough sample size to conclude anything significant.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Creyeditor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 14:40 Did anybody ever conduct a typological study on their own conlangs? Maybe on basic word order or phoneme inventory sizes or the like?
Does a CALS profile count?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

CALS is members-only and I forgot my login [:S]
But have you looked at the distribution of features in your conlangs and noticed anything interesting? Is the distribution very different from *here*?
eldin raigmore wrote: 19 Jan 2022 19:03
Creyeditor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 14:40 Did anybody ever conduct a typological study on their own conlangs? Maybe on basic word order or phoneme inventory sizes or the like?
I only have three, so not a big enough sample size.
Even If I count in my more-worked-on sketchlangs I still don’t think I have a big enough sample size to conclude anything significant.
I think my sketch-langs provide a big enough sample size. I have vague plans for doing a study myself.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Creyeditor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 20:13 CALS is members-only and I forgot my login [:S]
Same story for me!

….

My sketchlangs usually either take an idea in one of my more worked-on conlangs to a(n il)logical extreme, or take an opposite idea to such an extreme.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Sequor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 19:04
Creyeditor wrote: 19 Jan 2022 14:40 Did anybody ever conduct a typological study on their own conlangs? Maybe on basic word order or phoneme inventory sizes or the like?
Does a CALS profile count?
I mispoke. CWS is members-only, CALS is great (and I remember my CALS login). CALS is actually a great place to start.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Shemtov »

For animacy based split-erg systems, how naturalistic would it be, for example, if an inanimate A triggers Ergativity, if the P is inanimate, it is unmarked, but if the P is animate, it is in the dative case? The A would take what is normally the acc marker in either case.
Also, can there be multiple triggers, ie, an inanim A only triggers erg if the verb is in the perfective stem? Can this be combined with the idea that a phrase with an anim A can also be erg if the VP is plain perfective, but not present perfective or perfective continuous?
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Okay, just to be clear. Is the following what you were trying to say? (I think there might have been a typo in your post).
Your S is marked with a nominative/absolutive (n/a/d) case in all contexts.
Your P is marked with the accusative case in all contexts.
A is in the dative/ergative case if
a) the verb is plain perfective and
b) the P is animate
c) the A in inanimate.
A is in the n/a/d case elsewhere.

All in all this sounds plausible. I am not too sure there is an actual ergative alignment here. In the elsewhere context you have a nom-acc alignment. In the specific context (A=inam, P=anim, V=pfv) you get a tripartite alignment where both A and P get a special case (dative and accusative respectively) that is different from the case that S gets (n/a/d).
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Shemtov »

Creyeditor wrote: 09 Feb 2022 20:12 Okay, just to be clear. Is the following what you were trying to say? (I think there might have been a typo in your post).
Your S is marked with a nominative/absolutive (n/a/d) case in all contexts.
Your P is marked with the accusative case in all contexts.
A is in the dative/ergative case if
a) the verb is plain perfective and
b) the P is animate
c) the A in inanimate.
A is in the n/a/d case elsewhere.

All in all this sounds plausible. I am not too sure there is an actual ergative alignment here. In the elsewhere context you have a nom-acc alignment. In the specific context (A=inam, P=anim, V=pfv) you get a tripartite alignment where both A and P get a special case (dative and accusative respectively) that is different from the case that S gets (n/a/d).
I've actually changed what I want to do to the following scheme:

My S is marked with a nominative/absolutive (n/a) case in all contexts.
My P is marked with the accusative case if the A is in the (a/e) case
A is in the accusative/ergative case if
a) the verb is plain perfective and
b) the A is animate
Or
c) the verb is in any perfective construction and
d)the A is inanim

For context, the language has verbs that have imperfective and perfective stems, and they can take auxiliaries to change the exact TA of the perfective stem (from a base of Past Perfective to Present Perfect or Past Continuous). The perfect stem triggers ergativity, however the combination of an anim A and an auxiliary block the ergativity.

Also note that language has inanim and anim acc allomorphs. So an additional question:
Can I say that if
a) The verb is perfective
b) the A is Inam
c) the P is inam
Then
The A is in the inam accusative/ergative case and the P is unmarked (n/a)
but of a) and b) hold but
d) the P in anim
then
the P takes he inam accusative/ergative case and the P takes the anim accusative?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

I think this system looks less naturalistic. First, is an ACC/ERG case attested? It does look strange to my eyes. If the case marker has different allomorphs based on animateness why not call it two different cases. They serve to different functions after all.

It does make sense though that the case marking of P and A interacts. Martin Haspelmath calls this a scenario in his more recent work.
.
I don't think that marking an A that is animate with the ergative makes a lot of sense. Usually A is marked with an ergative case if it is inanimate. This is because animate nouns are 'expected' to occur as an A and imanimate nouns as a P.

Also, you have included two contradictory statements about the case marking of P. Is it generally dependebt on the case of the A? Or is it also dependent on the animateness of P?

Trying to reformulate what you said without the stuff that I did not find naturalistic.
S is marked with a nominative/absolutive (n/a) case in all contexts.

A is in the ergative case if
a) the verb is in any perfective construction and
b) the A is inanim,
elsewhere A is in the n/a case.

P is in the n/a case if
a) the verb is in any perfective construction and
b) A is inam
c) P is inam,
elsewhere P is marked with the accusative case.
This would mean you have nom-acc alignment in non-perfective constructions. In the perfective aspect scenario A=inam and P=inam you would have erg-abs alignment. In the perfective scenario A=inam, P=anim you would get a tripartite alignment. This looks plausible to me. Also, it's nice to see a fresh take on split-alignment languages [:)]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

So, I hear that French puts stress on the final syllable of a sentence. Is that correct?

Are there any other natlangs that do something similar?

I'm asking because I intend to use something similar in a conlang.
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Some Western Austronesian languages are supposedly similar in stressing some right-oriented syllable/mora in a phrase. Here is an overview chapter.
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Post by Omzinesý »

LinguoFranco wrote: 11 Feb 2022 17:28 So, I hear that French puts stress on the final syllable of a sentence. Is that correct?
Last syllable of an utterance, it's not always a sentence. It would actually be interesting to see how long these utterance units are.
It's also a matter of analyses what is a syllable. Does être have one or two syllables.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Is it really the utterance though? Or is it a phonological or intonational phrase?
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Post by Omzinesý »

Creyeditor wrote: 17 Feb 2022 13:23 Is it really the utterance though? Or is it a phonological or intonational phrase?
Maybe. Their difference is a bit vague in informal speech. Anyways, it is not a sentence.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by caters »

Question, can a conlang be based on music? I’m just wondering as I compose music as a hobby and I have wanted to make a conlang. And the music conlang idea has come to me a few times now.
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There is Solresol for a start.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

caters wrote: 18 Feb 2022 23:59 Question, can a conlang be based on music? I’m just wondering as I compose music as a hobby and I have wanted to make a conlang. And the music conlang idea has come to me a few times now.
Languages can be based on anything that allows information to be transmitted. Music certainly falls into that category - there can be a vast amount of infomation in a piece of music.

However, no natural human language would be based on music. Whether a music-based language could be taught as a first language to a human is unknown, but I suspect it would be problematic. [unless you're teaching infant Mozart, maybe...]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by TwistedOne151 »

In terms of the ordering of IPA diacritics, if you have a syllabic creaky-voiced consonant, which diacritic goes before/above which? For example, if you have /m m̰/ which can both become syllabic, the former is denoted [m̩], but is the latter written [m̰̩] or [m̩̰]?
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I don't know if there are any hard and fast rules, but [m̰̩] looks better to me.
Like placing the nasality tilde below tone accents.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

So, I am working on a conlang with a pitch accent. Actually, it's two languages with different rules for the accent, since I am testing out which version I like better. One is based on Japanese's system, while the other has pitch falling on the stressed syllable (but there is weight sensitive stress.)

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.

Do things like peak delay only apply to the previous syllable, or can it also apply to a previous mora within the same syllable?

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 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.
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