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

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

Post by Omzinesý »

Ahzoh wrote: 20 Dec 2021 17:22
However this will produce undesirable results for my pronouns where the singulars will end up being mīm/mūm and kīm/kūm; mīs/mūs and kīs/kūs; mīk/mūk and kīk/kūk while the plurals stay mīnam/mūnam and kīnam/kūnam; mīnas/mūnas and kīnas/kūnas; mīnak/mūnak and kīnak/kūnak.

I don't like this but I don't know what to do. I can't just say the pronouns don't change this way because pronouns are said to be even more likely to adhere to a sound change than not. The self-similar consonants ones like mīm/mūm and kīk/kūk are especially undesirable
What would be the desirable forms?
What if those forms are created but then analogy / some sporadic shortening of plurals changes them more?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

Omzinesý wrote: 21 Dec 2021 11:45 What would be the desirable forms?
What if those forms are created but then analogy / some sporadic shortening of plurals changes them more?
Well, this:
Image
It isn't too uncommon for liquids to persist in conditions that would otherwise elide them, but commonly-used words tend to be more undergoing of the changes and I'm not sure analogizing with the other members of the paradigm is a strong enough motivator against change.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

The suggested word structure of my short(?) project is (P).(C)(G)V(N)(ʔ)

P {b d g m n ŋ l}
C {pʰ tʰ t͡s kʰ qʰ p t k q f ɬ s}
G {m n j w}
V {ɑ ɒ ə i u}
N {m n ŋ j w}

But I'd like to include aspirated nasals /mʰ/ and /nʰ/ in the onset, as well. How could they be nicely included in the system and how should it be described?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Omzinesý wrote: 04 Jan 2022 13:18 The suggested word structure of my short(?) project is (P).(C)(G)V(N)(ʔ)

P {b d g m n ŋ l}
C {pʰ tʰ t͡s kʰ qʰ p t k q f ɬ s}
G {m n j w}
V {ɑ ɒ ə i u}
N {m n ŋ j w}

But I'd like to include aspirated nasals /mʰ/ and /nʰ/ in the onset, as well. How could they be nicely included in the system and how should it be described?
By writing "mʰ nʰ" in the list of phonemes in your categories P, C or G.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Salmoneus wrote: 04 Jan 2022 14:47
Omzinesý wrote: 04 Jan 2022 13:18 The suggested word structure of my short(?) project is (P).(C)(G)V(N)(ʔ)

P {b d g m n ŋ l}
C {pʰ tʰ t͡s kʰ qʰ p t k q f ɬ s}
G {m n j w}
V {ɑ ɒ ə i u}
N {m n ŋ j w}

But I'd like to include aspirated nasals /mʰ/ and /nʰ/ in the onset, as well. How could they be nicely included in the system and how should it be described?
By writing "mʰ nʰ" in the list of phonemes in your categories P, C or G.
Should I interpret your answer that you don't understand my question or that you consider it spam?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

*shrug*

I thought I answered the question you asked. Was there another, hidden question I should have answered instead?

Or more specifically: in what way did that not answer the question? Was my answer ambiguous in some way?

EDIT: sorry, I'm not being sarcastic here. The question you asked seemed clear and straightforward, but since you didn't like the answer I assume you meant something else by it - but I do not understand what.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

Omzinesý wrote: 04 Jan 2022 13:18 The suggested word structure of my short(?) project is (P).(C)(G)V(N)(ʔ)

P {b d g m n ŋ l}
C {pʰ tʰ t͡s kʰ qʰ p t k q f ɬ s}
G {m n j w}
V {ɑ ɒ ə i u}
N {m n ŋ j w}

But I'd like to include aspirated nasals /mʰ/ and /nʰ/ in the onset, as well. How could they be nicely included in the system and how should it be described?
C feels the most realistic slot for them cause that's where the other aspirates are; although in that case I'd kinda expect plain nasals to be in there too. Also does P represent some sesquisyllabic thing?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

I'm kind of with Sal here. Like, do they act like the other C consonants? Can they be preceded by (some set of) P and followed by (some set of) G? If there are any restrictions regarding what G can follow what C, then you could do something like the wikipedia article for Khmer does and have a big table covering all of the permitted clusters, and then something similar for any restrictions on what P might be permitted before what C

If you're wanting to add them as an aspirated G, then you could do it allophonically, as versions of /m/ and /n/ after the aspirated plosives, and then, yeah, follow the some sort of description regarding permitted clusters as you might have otherwise done.

I suppose with knowing exactly where you want them to go, and how they behave, it's kind of hard not to be broad about it, like Sal was
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

In terms of which category to put them in, it's ultimately just a question of which category you want them to be in. And that might be informed by how you want them to be diachronically generated - though not necessarily, of course, since they could switch to another category by analogy anyway. But both those things are entirely your choice. We also don't know - but presumably you do - the diachronic reasons for the existing phonotactic constraints, which would presumably be relevant for thinking about how the same diachronic processes would have dealt with the aspirated nasals. We don't even know whether the aspirated nasals are meant to be generated prior to and externally to modern phonotactic constraints, or whether they've been generated 'internally' within the clusters at a later stage (and, if so, how). So you can literally do anything you want.


I find this sort of question kind of like asking "hey guys, what should I buy?" - well, firstly, the underlying and true answer is "whatever you want, that's really up to you", and, secondly, we can't even GUESS what you might want to buy unless we have some idea of the context. Why are you buying anything? Who or what are you buying things for? What shop are you in? How much money do you have?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Maybe the idea was to include aspirated nasals as simple onsets only? I so, I would just write to formula:

(P).(C)(G)V(N)(ʔ)
(P).MV(N)(ʔ)

where M includes only aspirated nasals.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

I see the question was badly formulated. Probably the best answer is just to tell me that I'm far from as clear as I think I am.

I made up a nice pattern for words. Then I, for some reason, decided that it has to have aspirated nasals. But it wasn't easy to add them and still make the system look nice.

They cannot appear as G because it is the sonorant position, but if they appear as C, aspiration of nasals works differently from aspiration of stops. Clusters of aspirated nasal + unaspirated nasal are stange and should be forbidden by a new rule. Making them not appear in any cluster should, on the other hand, be explained historically and it would make phonotactic rules less elegant.

So I was basically asking if someone has ideas for including those phonemes, afterwards, and still making the system "nice".

😂 Of course, everybody reads all of this in my first message. 🤣
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by cedh »

Omzinesý wrote: 06 Jan 2022 02:07 I made up a nice pattern for words. Then I, for some reason, decided that it has to have aspirated nasals. But it wasn't easy to add them and still make the system look nice.

They cannot appear as G because it is the sonorant position, but if they appear as C, aspiration of nasals works differently from aspiration of stops. Clusters of aspirated nasal + unaspirated nasal are stange and should be forbidden by a new rule. Making them not appear in any cluster should, on the other hand, be explained historically and it would make phonotactic rules less elegant.
If you're willing to add a phoneme /h/ that would appear in the C column, you could explain the sounds [mʰ nʰ] quite naturally as realizations of underlying clusters /hm hn/. This would also explain why aspirated nasals don't appear in most other clusters.

The only issue with this is that one might expect /h hj hw/ to also occur. If you don't want that, you could posit that there was a historical *h which once patterned with C, but was then lost before vowels and semivowels. (*hj *hw might also have merged into /s f/ or /sj fw/as an alternative.)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

cedh wrote: 06 Jan 2022 10:35
Omzinesý wrote: 06 Jan 2022 02:07 I made up a nice pattern for words. Then I, for some reason, decided that it has to have aspirated nasals. But it wasn't easy to add them and still make the system look nice.

They cannot appear as G because it is the sonorant position, but if they appear as C, aspiration of nasals works differently from aspiration of stops. Clusters of aspirated nasal + unaspirated nasal are stange and should be forbidden by a new rule. Making them not appear in any cluster should, on the other hand, be explained historically and it would make phonotactic rules less elegant.
If you're willing to add a phoneme /h/ that would appear in the C column, you could explain the sounds [mʰ nʰ] quite naturally as realizations of underlying clusters /hm hn/. This would also explain why aspirated nasals don't appear in most other clusters.

The only issue with this is that one might expect /h hj hw/ to also occur. If you don't want that, you could posit that there was a historical *h which once patterned with C, but was then lost before vowels and semivowels. (*hj *hw might also have merged into /s f/ or /sj fw/as an alternative.)
That is one possibility. Not a bad idea at all. /h/ could also realize as palatal/velar before /j/ and /w/.
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Post by Nortaneous »

Omzinesý wrote: 06 Jan 2022 02:07 I see the question was badly formulated. Probably the best answer is just to tell me that I'm far from as clear as I think I am.

I made up a nice pattern for words. Then I, for some reason, decided that it has to have aspirated nasals. But it wasn't easy to add them and still make the system look nice.

They cannot appear as G because it is the sonorant position, but if they appear as C, aspiration of nasals works differently from aspiration of stops. Clusters of aspirated nasal + unaspirated nasal are stange and should be forbidden by a new rule. Making them not appear in any cluster should, on the other hand, be explained historically and it would make phonotactic rules less elegant.

So I was basically asking if someone has ideas for including those phonemes, afterwards, and still making the system "nice".

😂 Of course, everybody reads all of this in my first message. 🤣
OK, so you have a syllable structure of (b d g m n ŋ l)(P F)(m n j w)V(N j w), and you want to add voiceless nasals.

Are you entirely sure that's your syllable structure? Is /d.tn-/ allowed? Does it contrast with /d.tʰn-/?

How is the aspiration contrast realized? Why do voiced plosives only appear in preinitial position?

Why not just allow (P F)(j w) and (P F N N̥)(j w)? Was there some kind of *r (or *l) such that *mr- *nr- > mn- n-?

You could just add an h slot and prohibit hF (or Fh; maybe there's no good way to determine the order). For example, /d.ʰtna d.ʰna d.tna d.na/ [tə̥t̚n̥ʰa tə̥n̥a dəd̚na dəna], or even [tə̥ˀn̥ʰa ˀt̚n̥̩na dəd̚na dn̩a], where the initial prevents the medial nasal from absorbing the preinitial schwa to produce a syllabic consonant, although I think this would imply a dispreference for stressed open syllables of the sort you see in English and Aslian and you'd probably want final stops.

It's also possible for glottals to condition vowel lowering, so maybe you do have these clusters and /d.ma d.m̥a d.m̥ma/ are [dəma dḁm̥a tḁma]. This would be a fairly deep analysis, though, and would need to be justified somehow by some phonological process. (Or maybe just reference to /mn- nm- clusters, which could exist.)

I'm not sure if this analogy will make any sense, but the phonetics-phonology boundary, especially under conditions of high compression and complex root structure, is a little like graphics programming targeting composite displays - there are 'smearing' processes that exploit the structure of the signal to intensify contrasts. Think about how the noncontrastivity given by the structure of the signal can be leveraged to increase articulatory ease and/or contrast salience. (For another example, in some English dialects /æw/ flattens to [æ] in specifically the environments in which /æ/ is raised to [eə].)
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Post by Omzinesý »

Nortaneous wrote: 07 Jan 2022 20:29 OK, so you have a syllable structure of (b d g m n ŋ l)(P F)(m n j w)V(N j w) [...]
No, I don't.
The syllable in question is (C)(G)V(N)(ʔ) , with my arbitrary symbols. The prestem does not matter here. (Of course, it is possible to make it matter but ...)
Why do voiced plosives only appear in preinitial position?
Because they are short and "syllabic". I think that is more or less "natural". They don't, of cource, contrast with the voiceless ones. Because they are voiced on the surface, I see no good reason for a deeper analyses. It probably has an epenthtic vowel in some phenetic contexts.
Is /d.tn-/ allowed? Does it contrast with /d.tʰn-/?
In the initial system all possible combinations are allowed. That's why I find it that elegant.
Are you entirely sure that's your syllable structure?
Not at all, that's why I'm asking. But solving the problem in Gordion style and changing everything is not my intention.
How is the aspiration contrast realized?
There is no phonemic distinction with voicing, so it does not have to be very strong, but the idea is that it is an (post-)aspiration contrast.
Why not just allow (P F)(j w) and (P F N N̥)(j w)?
You are basically suggesting C+glide clusters only?
That is what I do in most of my langs and I find it very boring.
Was there some kind of *r (or *l) such that *mr- *nr- > mn- n-?
Possibly, but they are not synchonically meaningful, at least what I thought.
You could just add an h slot and prohibit hF (or Fh; maybe there's no good way to determine the order). For example, /d.ʰtna d.ʰna d.tna d.na/ [tə̥t̚n̥ʰa tə̥n̥a dəd̚na dəna], or even [tə̥ˀn̥ʰa ˀt̚n̥̩na dəd̚na dn̩a], where the initial prevents the medial nasal from absorbing the preinitial schwa to produce a syllabic consonant, although I think this would imply a dispreference for stressed open syllables of the sort you see in English and Aslian and you'd probably want final stops.

It's also possible for glottals to condition vowel lowering, so maybe you do have these clusters and /d.ma d.m̥a d.m̥ma/ are [dəma dḁm̥a tḁma]. This would be a fairly deep analysis, though, and would need to be justified somehow by some phonological process. (Or maybe just reference to /mn- nm- clusters, which could exist.)
Those analyses are very abstract and should have reasons.
If the prestem consonants had voiceless realizations, it would be much easier to analyse them having voicing contrast.
They are nicely out-of-the-box. It could actually be interesting to utilize those ideas but I don't know much of the morphology yet.

Thank you for pointing out Aslian. That looks very interesting.
I'm not sure if this analogy will make any sense, but the phonetics-phonology boundary, especially under conditions of high compression and complex root structure, is a little like graphics programming targeting composite displays - there are 'smearing' processes that exploit the structure of the signal to intensify contrasts. Think about how the noncontrastivity given by the structure of the signal can be leveraged to increase articulatory ease and/or contrast salience. (For another example, in some English dialects /æw/ flattens to [æ] in specifically the environments in which /æ/ is raised to [eə].)
Couldn't those dialects just have /æ/ and /eə/?
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Post by Nortaneous »

Omzinesý wrote: 08 Jan 2022 00:17
Why not just allow (P F)(j w) and (P F N N̥)(j w)?
You are basically suggesting C+glide clusters only?
That is what I do in most of my langs and I find it very boring.
typo - should read (P F)(m n) etc
Couldn't those dialects just have /æ/ and /eə/?
some do, some don't - I think /æw/-flattening ends too far south to overlap with phonemic /eə/. I tried analyzing Southern Mid-Atlantic with phonemic /eə/ once, since there are some near-minimal pairs before [ŋk], but I think this is easier explained with syllabification, /-ænk.V- -æn.kV-/ [-æjŋkV- -eəŋkV-]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

I look on wiki about click consonants and see that there are no languages with two types of click POAs. They either only have 1 or they have 3 or more. Are there any languages that have two click POAs?

I don't know if my inventory of clicks is naturalistic or attested:
/ᵑǀ ᵑǀʲ~ᵑǂ /
/ǀ ᶢǀ ǀʲ~ǂ ᶢǀʲ~ᶢǂ
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Maybe I am wrong, but does your inventory really have two phonemic click POAs? Couldn't you say you only have phonemic dental clicks?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

Creyeditor wrote: 12 Jan 2022 16:03 Maybe I am wrong, but does your inventory really have two phonemic click POAs? Couldn't you say you only have phonemic dental clicks?
well apparently it's physiologically impossible to have palatal secondary articulation on clicks, so they'd phonetically absolutely have to be full palatal clicks. I don't know if speakers would phonemically identify them as palatalized dental clicks.
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Post by Creyeditor »

Did anybody ever conduct a typological study on their own conlangs? Maybe on basic word order or phoneme inventory sizes or the like?
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