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

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

Post by Creyeditor »

I would guess about as common as CV/CV: and CV/CV:/CVC languages with weight-depended stress. You might find this info in the book Phonological Typology by Matthew Gordon, which has a whole chapter on metrical typology, IIRC.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by loglorn »

LinguoFranco wrote: 11 Jan 2023 16:18 How unusual is it, cross-linguistically, to have syllable weight determine stress, but having no phonemic long vowels?
WALS has 18 of the 239 languages with weight-sensitive stress marked as "Coda Consonant" (as opposed to "Long Vowels" or "Long Vowels and Coda Consonants") while 65 are sensitive only to long vowels and 35 do both. So apparently not the most common option but definitely an option. I expected it to be a bit more common than it is, honestly, it doesn't strike me as odd at all.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

loglorn wrote: 11 Jan 2023 23:57
LinguoFranco wrote: 11 Jan 2023 16:18 How unusual is it, cross-linguistically, to have syllable weight determine stress, but having no phonemic long vowels?
WALS has 18 of the 239 languages with weight-sensitive stress marked as "Coda Consonant" (as opposed to "Long Vowels" or "Long Vowels and Coda Consonants") while 65 are sensitive only to long vowels and 35 do both. So apparently not the most common option but definitely an option. I expected it to be a bit more common than it is, honestly, it doesn't strike me as odd at all.
I have seen some natlangs analyzed as having stress on the next-to-last vowel if the word ends with a vowel, and on the final vowel if the word ends with a consonant. Would this technically be weight sensitive?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

Hugh_Capet wrote: 30 Dec 2022 10:19 I've mentioned this topic once before, but for those who don't know I've been endeavoring to create a language for the Windan tribe of Avari from Tolkien's legendarium. My progress has been slow but not entirely wasted. Yet I've reached a snag in that I'm not sure how to resolve a specific consonant cluster.

It originates in the primitive word *kʰadmā, meaning "seat." I have some aspects of its development figured out, such as the aspirate becoming a voiceless stop (in-keeping with the real-life example of an initial asperate becoming a voiced stop in Proto-Germanic). However, I don't know what to do with the cluster -dm-, as there's no apparent equivalent in Proto-Germanic that I'm aware of. Would the -d- devoice and the -m- remain unchanged, or would some manner of metathesis occur, making the cluster -md-? Given the apparent switch of -dn- to -nd- elsewhere in Primitive Elvish, it seems plausible that such could happen here, but I thought it best to ask here rather than guess.
So I had a run through Wiktionary's list of Proto-Indo-European roots, and of the 650 it has, I found two that end in *d (in the standard reconstruction) that have derived forms with an *m-initial suffix that then make their way down to Proto-Germanic:

PIE *h₁wed- (dowry) > *h₁wed-mō > PG *wetmô (dowry)
PIE *sweh₂d- (sweet [perfective]) > *sweh₂d-mō > PG *swōtmô (sweetness)

So it looks like your idea of "[w]ould the -d- devoice and the -m- remain unchanged" might be the one that sticks to Proto-Germanic the closest
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Hugh_Capet »

sangi39 wrote: 12 Jan 2023 17:08 So I had a run through Wiktionary's list of Proto-Indo-European roots, and of the 650 it has, I found two that end in *d (in the standard reconstruction) that have derived forms with an *m-initial suffix that then make their way down to Proto-Germanic:

PIE *h₁wed- (dowry) > *h₁wed-mō > PG *wetmô (dowry)
PIE *sweh₂d- (sweet [perfective]) > *sweh₂d-mō > PG *swōtmô (sweetness)

So it looks like your idea of "[w]ould the -d- devoice and the -m- remain unchanged" might be the one that sticks to Proto-Germanic the closest
I had a feeling that was the case, though I wasn't sure. It also seems that, in virtually every instance of -tm-, it eventually results in -m- syllabizing and producing a vowel of differing quality, depending on the language. Thank you for the clarification on this.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 12 Jan 2023 02:49
loglorn wrote: 11 Jan 2023 23:57
LinguoFranco wrote: 11 Jan 2023 16:18 How unusual is it, cross-linguistically, to have syllable weight determine stress, but having no phonemic long vowels?
WALS has 18 of the 239 languages with weight-sensitive stress marked as "Coda Consonant" (as opposed to "Long Vowels" or "Long Vowels and Coda Consonants") while 65 are sensitive only to long vowels and 35 do both. So apparently not the most common option but definitely an option. I expected it to be a bit more common than it is, honestly, it doesn't strike me as odd at all.
I have seen some natlangs analyzed as having stress on the next-to-last vowel if the word ends with a vowel, and on the final vowel if the word ends with a consonant. Would this technically be weight sensitive?
Yes
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Plusquamperfekt »

Hello people, I am currently revamping my conlang Miwonša. I am thinking about how I could make nouns and adjectives negative... Until now, I have just prefixed "žai-" (not) to the stem:

yakni = fair, just
žaiyakni = unfair
yaknjani = fairness, justice
žaiyaknjaza = unfairness, injustice

skwani - polite
skwana - politeness
žaiskwani - impolite
žaiskwana - impoliteness

However, using "žai" is a bit problematic, because it leads to completely homophonic sentences:

"Sja žai yakni!" = That's not fair.
"Sja žaiyakni!" = That's unfair.

I thought about simply inventing a new prefix for negated adjectives and nouns, but prefixing negations is practically what you do in any Indo-European natlang and I want Miwonša to look a little bit less Indo-European.
So I thought maybe I should use infixes instead that are directly inserted behind the first consonant or consonant cluster of the stem.

The revamped version would look like this:

skwani - polite
skwiwani - impolite
yakni - fair
yuyakni - unfair

I would like to know what you think about this idea. Maybe you even have a better idea how I can solve the problem?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Ignore it. Indonesian does just fine with merging 'unfair' and 'not fair' into the phrase tidak adil. And only using prefixes could also be an option for your lang.

On the other hand, infixes are always a sexy option.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Plusquamperfekt wrote: 18 Jan 2023 19:09 I would like to know what you think about this idea. Maybe you even have a better idea how I can solve the problem?
You give very little info on how adjectives are in your language. But I assume they are a word class as in European languages.

Russian also does well with ne/ne- in both functions.

Maybe you could develop a prefix that fuses un- and -ness meanings.


But if you like infixes more than suffixes, have them.

You can also form nuances saying 'less happy' instead of unhappy mostly.

Arabic ghrair is also interesting https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%B1

If žai is a kind of verb, you could make it a participle when it modifies an adjective. Finnish epä- 'un-' is a dead participle of the negation verb e 'don't'.
Last edited by Omzinesý on 19 Jan 2023 16:32, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

I'm making a conlang whose verbs are prephrastic, basically 'to be' + a participle.

I'm looking for languages with quite compact synthetic verbs with much info in them (polypersonal agreement, TAM etc.) whose paradigm is not boringly templatic.

What other languages I could check than Basque?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Knox Adjacent »

Brother, have you heard of Ngan'gityemerri and Murrinh-patha?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by loglorn »

Omzinesý wrote: 19 Jan 2023 16:26 I'm making a conlang whose verbs are prephrastic, basically 'to be' + a participle.

I'm looking for languages with quite compact synthetic verbs with much info in them (polypersonal agreement, TAM etc.) whose paradigm is not boringly templatic.

What other languages I could check than Basque?
I dont remember any off the top of my head but the oxford handbook of polysynthesis has a whole list for you to peruse in the section on templatic versus other forms of polysynthesis.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Anyone have any tips for consonant clusters?

Most of my conlangs tend to be CVC, but I want to make a syllable structure that is more complex.

The thing is, I'm picky with phonotactics, and I want to know if there are any rules or tendencies when it comes to clusters aside from perhaps the most well known rule, the sonority sequencing principle.

I have read that Georgian has harmonic clusters, and Inuktitut requires clusters to have the same manner of articulation. I'm wondering if there are any papers where I can read more on this, or more natlangs with similar rules?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

Knox Adjacent wrote: 19 Jan 2023 18:09 Brother, have you heard of Ngan'gityemerri and Murrinh-patha?
Now I have heard, thanks, Knox. The verb seems to have a simplish template, so I think they are not what I'm looking for now. But I'll read abaut them for general interest anyways.
loglorn wrote: 19 Jan 2023 23:15
Omzinesý wrote: 19 Jan 2023 16:26 I'm making a conlang whose verbs are prephrastic, basically 'to be' + a participle.

I'm looking for languages with quite compact synthetic verbs with much info in them (polypersonal agreement, TAM etc.) whose paradigm is not boringly templatic.

What other languages I could check than Basque?
I dont remember any off the top of my head but the oxford handbook of polysynthesis has a whole list for you to peruse in the section on templatic versus other forms of polysynthesis.
I'll check that. It can also answer some of the longstanding problems I have with morphology of my langs. I never knew such a book existed.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

LinguoFranco wrote: 21 Jan 2023 02:59 Anyone have any tips for consonant clusters?

Most of my conlangs tend to be CVC, but I want to make a syllable structure that is more complex.

The thing is, I'm picky with phonotactics, and I want to know if there are any rules or tendencies when it comes to clusters aside from perhaps the most well known rule, the sonority sequencing principle.

I have read that Georgian has harmonic clusters, and Inuktitut requires clusters to have the same manner of articulation. I'm wondering if there are any papers where I can read more on this, or more natlangs with similar rules?
A good question

Have you read this thread viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7030
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 21 Jan 2023 02:59 Anyone have any tips for consonant clusters?

Most of my conlangs tend to be CVC, but I want to make a syllable structure that is more complex.

The thing is, I'm picky with phonotactics, and I want to know if there are any rules or tendencies when it comes to clusters aside from perhaps the most well known rule, the sonority sequencing principle.

I have read that Georgian has harmonic clusters, and Inuktitut requires clusters to have the same manner of articulation. I'm wondering if there are any papers where I can read more on this, or more natlangs with similar rules?
There are at least two major crosslinguistic tendencies when it comes to consonant clusters: the sonority sequencing principle (SSQ) and the syllable contact law (SCL). The SSQ says that onset clusters rise in sonority and coda clusters decrease. So /pl/ is a good onset cluster but /lp/ is not. On the other hand, /lp/ is a good coda cluster but /pl/ is not. Some languages allow exceptions in that sonority reversals or plateaus or split up the sonority scale slightly different. Greek seems to treat fricatives and stops as one category for example. Some languages on the other hand only allow for relatively steep rises in onsets.
The SCL states that if two syllables are adjacent the coda of the first syllable tends to be more sonorous than the onset of the second. In other words sonority tends to fall across syllable boundaries. Therefore two syllable words like /tanpa/ are more frequent than words like /tapna/. Again, languages vary, but a common consequence is that nasals are the only allowed coda consonants. There is recent typological work by Draga Zec and Martin Krämer on this but I don't know how much of it is accesible yet.

The main advantage for syllable-based conlanging for me is that it allows for a natural distinction between word-initial, word-medial and word-final clusters by treating the second as a combination of the first and the third.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Knox Adjacent »

Perplexed at the analysis, but aight.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

If you start a newish project, how do you approach lexical semantics?

Do you start from a word, say poro, give it a core meaning, say, 'a dwelling', and then start thinking what extended meanings and restrictions it could have. Say, 'a storage building' is not poro, because nobody lives there but nifoporo 'horse house' means 'stable' because horses metaphorically live there.

Or do you start from some kind of semantic fields and think how to share different semantic entities, like 'office building', 'a apartment house', 'a flat', 'storage building' etc. between lexemes.

It seems quite tidy to make every word with such polysemy.

How do you do things?
How do you think one should do to have a "proper" conlang?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

As I think I've said before, there are no "proper" and "improper" conlangs. There are no judges to rate your work - all that matters is your own satisfaction. To the extent that others may be interested, it's usually more on the basis of being interesting than on the basis of being "proper".

Having said that, if you're intending a naturalistic conlang, then an overly 'neat' semantic division may seem unrealistic.


Most people will use a combination of these strategies. When trying to populate a (chunk of) basic lexicon in one go, they're likely to think more in terms of division of a semantic space. When they're translating a specific text, they're more likely to think in terms of the semantic area covered by specific words. And since hardly anyone actually has a big enough lexicon to bother with tiny semantic details anyway, it doesn't particularly matter...
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Yes. I have never had such a good lexicon game that polysemy needs to be carefully thought about, aside from a few words.

Zompist recommends in one or both of the LCKs to look at bilingual dictionaries to get inspiration / an idea of what can be covered in a word, but I notice his conlangs' lexica don't have much polysemy either...
Last edited by Sequor on 25 Jan 2023 02:05, edited 1 time in total.
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