Typological voting game

[Porphyrogenitos]

This was something I once tried on Tumblr, though it did not meet with much success there. I decided it would be fun to try it out here. My apologies if something like this has already been tried out here!

My idea is that we build a sketch of a conlang by going through the World Atlas of Language Structures feature-by-feature and voting on which value/category will apply to the conlang. In general, we will vote on one feature a week.

However, some weeks, I may have us vote on more than one feature at once, and other times may have us vote on a non-WALS item to clarify an issue. For example, once we have gone through the phonological categories, there will be a week in which anyone can submit a final consonant inventory proposal, after which they will be voted on. Thread participants may also raise non-WALS issues to be voted on, provided that two people second their issue. The issue will then go to vote alongside the following week's question.

For some voting outcomes, certain future chapters of WALS will be redundant or ruled out and thus not voted on.

For the first week, we will actually start out with three items, to broadly define the typological profile of the conlang. We will vote on WALS Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio, Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology, and Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb.

Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio

The value produced by the size of the consonant inventory divided by the number of distinct vowel qualities.

A) Low (equal to or below 2.0)
B) Moderately low (above 2.0 but below 2.75)
C) Average (2.75 or above, but below 4.5)
D) Moderately high (4.5 or above, but below 6.5)
E) High (equal to or above 6.5)


Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology

A) Consistently head-marking
B) Consistently dependent-marking
C) Consistently double-marking
D) Consistently zero-marking
E) Inconsistent marking or other type


Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb

A) Subject-object-verb (SOV)
B) Subject-verb-object (SVO)
C) Verb-subject-object (VSO)
D) Verb-object-subject (VOS)
E) Object-verb-subject (OVS)
F) Object-subject-verb (OSV)
G) Lacking a dominant word order


Voting will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, November 25.

Next week we will proceed into the phonological features, simultaneously voting on Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories, though with the possible answers constrained by the results of this week's consonant-vowel ratio vote.

Also, some of these are not absolute propositions. There can always be exceptions to word order and locus of marking, etc. Just to keep that in mind.

[Porphyrogenitos]

Reserving this space as a place to record the results of each round of voting, i.e. the skeleton of the sketch.

Round 1:

Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio - A) Low (equal to or below 2.0)

Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology - A) Consistently head-marking

Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb - G) Lacking a dominant word order

Round 2:

Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories - B) Small consonant inventory and average vowel quality inventory

Chapter 4: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives - A) No voicing contrast

Chapter 7: Glottalized consonants - B) Ejectives only

Round 3:

Chapter 8: Lateral consonants - A) No laterals

Chapter 9: The velar nasal - C) No velar nasal

Chapter 19: Presence of Uncommon Consonants - A) None

Chapter 6: Uvular consonants - A) No uvulars

Round 4:

Chapter 18: Absence of Common Consonants - All present

Chapter 11: Front Rounded Vowels - None

Round 5:

Chapter 12: Syllable structure - Moderately complex syllable structure (maximally CRVC)

Round 6:

Vowel quality inventory:

/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

Submitted by shimobaatar.

Round 7:

Chapter 10: Vowel Nasalization - Contrastive nasal vowels absent

Round 8:

Tie between consonant inventories A, C, and H

Round 9:

Chapter 131: Numeral bases - Hybrid vigesimal-decimal

Consonant inventory:

/p t k kʼ/
/m n/
/s/
/w r j/

Creyeditor's "Lonely ejective" inventory

Round 10:

Chapter 13: Tone - Simple tone system (two-way contrast)

Stress - tie between Predictable stress, fixed and Predictable stress, weight-sensitive

Round 11:

Stress run-off - Predictable stress, weight-sensitive

Chapter 27: Reduplication - Productive full and partial reduplication

Round 12:

Chapter 15: Weight-sensitive stress - tie between Right-oriented and Unbounded

Chapter 16: Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems - Long vowel + Coda: long vowels or closed syllables

Round 13:

Weight-sensitive stress runoff - Unbounded: Stress can be anywhere in the word

Round 14:

Unbounded stress types - Right/Right - Stress the rightmost heavy syllable in the word, and if there are no heavy syllables, stress the last syllable

Secondary stress - Secondary stress is present

Vowel length inventories - Inventory C, "Symmetrical length and diphthongs" submitted by Creyeditor

/i iː ɨ ɨː u uː/
/e eː/
/a aː/
/ai au ei eu iu ui ɨu ɨi/

Chapter 20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives - Exclusively concatenative

Round 15:

Secondary stress types - Trochaic: left-hand syllable in the foot is strong

21B: Tense-aspect-mood (TAM) exponence - TAM+polarity

[Pāṇini]

I'm thinking A, A, B will be fun.

[Creyeditor]

A,E,G

[cedh]

A,A,D

[zyma]

Ch. 3: B
Ch. 25: A
Ch. 81: D

[eldin raigmore]

3 D (or C if there are 5 or more vowels)
25 C
81 G

[DesEsseintes]

A, C, A

[kiwikami]

A, C, C!

This is neat; I like the idea of using WALS to build structure.

[idov]

3: D
25: E
81: A

[Omzinesý]

3) E
25) A
81) G (though I don't know how it works)

[qwed117]

3) C
25) B C
81) C D F

[Porphyrogenitos]

3) C
25) B C
81) C D F

Voting technically closed at noon, and while I would let it slide and count your votes...it would cause multiple ties, triggering a runoff round. So I think I will be strict in this case to avoid that. Also I had not thought to make any rules about whether someone can vote for more than one option...let's just say that unless otherwise specified, each person can vote for just one option. I very much wish for your participation in the next round, though!

The winners for Round 1 are:

Chapter 3: Consonant-Vowel Ratio - A) Low (equal to or below 2.0)

Chapter 25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology - A) Consistently head-marking

Chapter 81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb - G) Lacking a dominant word order

Next we move further into the consonant inventory. In Round 2, we will be doing a combined vote on Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories, constrained by the results of our vote on Consonant-Vowel Ratio. I will explain how this will work in a moment.

We will also vote on Chapter 4: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives and Chapter 7: Glottalized consonants, to further define the character of the phoneme inventory.

For consonant inventories, WALS defines the following categories:

Small (6-14)
Moderately small (15-18)
Average (19-25)
Moderately large (26-33)
Large (34+)

For vowel quality inventories, WALS defines the following categories:

Small (3-4)
Average (5-6)
Large (7-14)

Since we have chosen a consonant-vowel ratio of 2 or less, not all combinations of these categories are possible - and even within certain combinations, some possibilities are excluded. See the chart below, with our options for this vote.



We are limited to the blue area, which has a consonant-vowel ratio of 2 or less. The cells with grey text represent values that are assumed not to exist by WALS. (I hope this isn't excessively confusing.)

So, our choices for Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories are:

A) Small consonant inventory and small vowel quality inventory
B) Small consonant inventory and average vowel quality inventory
C) Small consonant inventory and large vowel quality inventory
D) Moderately small consonant inventory and large vowel quality inventory
E) Average consonant inventory and large vowel quality inventory
F) Moderately large consonant inventory and large vowel quality inventory

Note that our options within A) and F) are quite limited, at least if you want to stay within typologically plausible bounds. Large consonant inventory + large vowel inventory is excluded as an option because the values equal to or below 2.0 are outside of the range assumed to exist by WALS.

What happens is that when we eventually take submissions for final phoneme inventories, they have to stay within the chosen category and consonant-vowel ratio.

Our other two questions for this round:

Chapter 4: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives
A) No voicing contrast
B) Voicing contrast in plosives alone
C) Voicing contrast in fricatives alone
D) Voicing contrast in both plosives and fricatives

Chapter 7: Glottalized consonants
A) No glottalized consonants
B) Ejectives only
C) Implosives only
D) Glottalized resonants only
E) Ejectives and implosives
F) Ejectives and glottalized resonants
G) Implosives and glottalized resonants
H) Ejectives, implosives and glottalized resonants

Voting will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, December 2.

[zyma]

Ch. 1 & 2: B
Ch. 4: B
Ch. 7: B

[Omzinesý]

1 2) E
4) A (supposing implosives are not a voicing contrast)
7) G

[Pāṇini]

1+2) C
4) A
7) B

[Porphyrogenitos]

4) A (supposing implosives are not a voicing contrast)

Yes, we will assume the voicing contrast question applies only to pulmonic consonants.

[qwed117]

1) A
2) B
3) F

don’t worry about that, lol

[Creyeditor]

Chapter 1: Consonant Inventories and Chapter 2: Vowel Quality Inventories
B) Small consonant inventory and average vowel quality inventory

Chapter 4: Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives
A) No voicing contrast

Chapter 7: Glottalized consonants
B) Ejectives only

[cedh]

1) B
4) A
7) B