The CBB

Just want to provide a little bump and encourage more vowel quality inventory submissions! (and more votes on syllable structure!)

Absolutely anyone can submit or vote, no need to have participated previously! I suppose things are just a bit slow since people are busy with real-life stuff during the holidays.

Porphyrogenitos wrote: ↑21 Dec 2020 19:47 Just want to provide a little bump and encourage more ...! (and more votes on syllable structure!)

OK then.
My vote for vowel qualities was the six commonest vowels in PHOIBLE.org, namely all those in over 50% of their inventories, namely Crey2;
Front unrounded close
Front unrounded close-mid
Front unrounded open-mid,
Back rounded close,
Back rounded mid,
Central unrounded open.
I’m sticking by my previous vote; I’m not hoping to vote twice!

I’ll vote 12B for syllable structures: maximally (C)(R)V(C) where R is a liquid or glide or semivowel or nasal; in other words a sonorant.
That’s a new vote; I abstained on the Feature 12 issue until now.

12: C) Complex syllable structure

Vowel-inventory submission:
/i e æ ɯ ɤ ɑ/

Round 5 is now complete! Our results are:

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

In Round 6, we will be voting on vowel quality inventories. Round 5 had the lowest rate of participation yet, and I do indeed think that it must have had something to do with the holidays. So Round 6 is going to last two weeks, to get us through Christmas and New Year's. Hopefully this will allow for greater participation, rather than killing the game. I just don't want to move on to the crucial step of accepting consonant inventories during a time when there may be relatively little participation.

For the vowel quality inventories, I will be presenting them without the usernames of their submitters. However, the submitter of the winning vowel inventory will be credited when the round is over. Also, due to the great number of vowel quality inventories, I will be allowing each user to cast two votes. You may not cast both votes for the same vowel inventory. You may also only cast one vote if you wish.

Our choices for vowel quality inventories are:

A)
/i ɨ/
/ɛ o/
/ɑ/

B)
/i u/
/e ə o/
/a/

C)
/i ɨ/
/e o/
/ɛ/
/a/

D)
/i u/
/e o/
/ɛ/
/a/

E)
/i/
/e o/
/ɛ ɔ/
/a/

F)
/i ɨ u/
/o/
/a/

G)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

H)
/i u/
/e o/
/ɔ/
/a/

I)
/i ɯ u/
/ɛ ə/
/a/

J)
/i ɨ~ʉ/
/e o/
/ɔ/
/a/

K)
/i ʉ u/
/ɤʊ̯/
/a/

L)
/i ɯ/
/e ɤ/
/æ ɑ/

Voting will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, January 6, 2021.

Vowel Inventory: G, K

G)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

K)
/i ʉ u/
/ɤʊ̯/
/a/

I and K for me

B and G

B)
/i u/
/e ə o/
/a/

G)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

D.

K.

A)
/i ɨ/
/ɛ o/
/ɑ/

G)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

As stated previously, voting on vowel quality inventories will go on for another week.

I think the plan for next time will be to take submissions for consonant inventories, and also to initiate the decision process on nasal vowels, which could take up to four rounds:

• Will there be contrastive nasal vowels? (WALS Chapter 10)

• (if "yes") Will every oral vowel have a nasal counterpart?

• (if "no") Submissions for nasal vowel inventories

• Voting on nasal vowel inventories

We're currently at a tie, so anyone who hasn't yet voted is welcomed to do so. (The tie is between G and K, but by no means feel limited to those two.)

Just a thought… in the interest of helping to move things along, if we end up with a tie between G /i ɨ u e a/ and K /i ʉ u ɤʊ̯ a/, maybe we could find some kind of compromise between the two, such as:

G~K)
/i ɨ~ʉ u/
/e~ɤʊ̯/
/a/

I'll vote F and G

Round 6:
B)
/i u/
/e ə o/
/a/

and F)
/i ɨ u/
/o/
/a/

Okay, Round 6 is complete! The winner is vowel quality inventory G, contributed by shimobaatar, with the tie-breaking vote cast by Ratsawn!

G)
/i ɨ u/
/e/
/a/

This also means that our consonant inventory may have no more than 10 consonants, in order to stay within the bounds of consonant inventory size and consonant-vowel ratio established previously.

In Round 7, we will be voting on Chapter 10: Vowel Nasalization. I will provide the question right here:

Chapter 10: Vowel Nasalization
A) Contrastive nasal vowels present
B) Contrastive nasal vowels absent

(If we do decide that contrastive nasal vowels will be present, we will decide on the details of the nasal vowel system in the succeeding rounds.)

This week we will also finally start on the main event you've all been waiting for...selection of the consonant inventory!

Just as as with vowel quality inventories, everyone will be able to submit as many consonant inventories as they wish. During Round 8, we will vote on them, with everyone having the ability to cast a maximum of two votes.

Consonant inventory submissions must fall within the parameters we've established in the preceding rounds. Before listing them, I'll provide what we know about this language's non-phonological properties:

• Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology - Consistently head-marking

• Order of Subject, Object and Verb - Lacking a dominant word order

We have also established that the language will have a moderately complex syllable structure; that is, more complex than CV, but no more complex than CRVC, where R stands for some type of glide or liquid. So, you may want to keep both that and our selected vowel inventory in mind.

Here are the parameters for the consonant inventory:

Size limitations:

• There are no more than 10 consonants

What it must have:

• There is at least one ejective

• There is at least one bilabial

• There is at least one fricative

• There is at least one nasal

What it may not have:

• There is no voicing contrast in plosives and fricatives

• There are no lateral consonants

• There is no velar nasal

• There are no uvulars

• There are no clicks

• There are no labial-velars (meaning k͜p, not kʷ)

• There are no pharyngeals

• There are no 'th'-sounds (interdental fricatives)

• There are no implosives

• There are no glottalized resonants

Voting and submissions will close at 5:00 PM GMT (12 noon US Eastern time) on Wednesday, January 13.

10: A) Contrastive nasal vowels present

Consonant-inventory submission:
/p t tʼ ʃ t͡ʃʼ k kʼ ʔ/
/m n/

10: B) Contrastive nasal vowels absent

Consonant-inventory submission:
/t tʼ k kʼ ʔ/
/s h/
/m n r/

Chapter 10: Vowel Nasalization
B) Contrastive nasal vowels absent

Consonant inventory submission:

Lonely Ejective
/p t k k'/
/m n/
/s/
/w r j/

Lots of Ejectives
/p p' t t' k k'/
/m n/
/s/
/j/

Fricatives ftw
/p t t' k k'/
/m n/
/s h/
/j/

Pairs
/p t t' k~k'/
/m n/
/s h/
/j w/

Ch. 10: B

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Consonant Inventory Submissions:

/p t tʼ k kʼ/
/s h/
/m n/
/r/

/t k kʼ/
/s h/
/m n/
/j w/
/r/

/t k kʼ ʔ/
/s h/
/m n/
/w/
/r/