(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2020]

[thaen]

Where can I hear quiet ejectives This sounds exciting

[thetha]

There are probably a few in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUreGoooc_U

[thaen]

Thanks! I could barely hear them.

[Xing]

Well, the fact that a glottal stop appears in careful speech suggests that.

But couldn't one just say that one had a set of phonemic pre-glottalised plosives, that may be realised either as clusters of glottal stops and oral plosives, or as ejectives? I don't see that it's necessary to analyse the glottal stop as a separate phoneme, if they only occur in very specific clusters.

[Lambuzhao]

Hmm... I was going to make a blanket phontactic rule in Rozwi that geminated/double consonants do not exist. Then I find two boingers:

niddu - "give"

nunni - "fish" (= nun "water" + ni "creature")

I think there may be 3 or 4 others lurking about in gemination-safari.

Now I have to make up some tchotchka/diacritic/thingie-bo-bingie to represent this, b/c

a) one dot (a la Hebrew) is already taken (as a vowel)
b) I do not like the look of just writing double consonants (looks childish?)
c) I do not like the look (in romanization) or feel of disappearing the second consonant.
No, sir. I don't grok it.

I'm thinking I may "double" part of the symbol. Which is fine as long as it's just [n,d].

What to do?
Has anyone ever dealt with gemination in their connatural orthographic habitat?

[Lambuzhao]

*Please don't grinch about two consecutive posts. This is a completely different question*


Could someone please watch this clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxlfvI17oY

And tell me how to represent in IPA the /k/ in "joke" at 0:01 and the /p/ in "broke up" at 1:15.
I think it's just straight up aspiration in a word-final position. When I reproduce it, it feels like something more is going on there. I need a second opinion.

[Click]

What is the name of the grammatical number whose meaning is all NOUN, all ADJECTIVE?

[eldin raigmore]

What is the name of the grammatical number whose meaning is all NOUN, all ADJECTIVE?

"Omnial", or sometimes "greater plural" (which could also mean something else).

[Click]

What is the glossing abbreviation for omnial? OMN, or sonething else?
What is the other meaning of greater plural?

So much to learn...

[eldin raigmore]

What is the glossing abbreviation for omnial? OMN, or sonething else?

Maybe LFINO ? (that's a pun )
There's no glossing abbreviation, ANAICT.

See Grammatical Number for that conlang.
This other conlang by the same conlanger also has an omnial.

See

Rule 3: Grammatical category labels

Grammatical morphemes are generally rendered by abbreviated grammatical
category labels, printed in upper case letters (usually small capitals). A list of
standard abbreviations (which are widely known among linguists) is given at
the end of this document.

Deviations from these standard abbreviations may of course be necessary
in particular cases, e.g. if a category is highly frequent in a language, so that a
shorter abbreviation is more convenient, e.g. CPL (instead of COMPL) for
"completive", PF (instead of PRF) for "perfect", etc. If a category is very rare, it
may be simplest not to abbreviate its label at all.

In many cases, either a category label or a word from the metalanguage is
acceptable. ...


Rule 5A. (Optional)

Number and gender markers are very frequent in some languages, especially
when combined with person. Several authors therefore use non-capitalized
shortened abbreviations without a period. If this option is adopted, then the
second gloss is used ...

and make up your own* abbreviation, or don't abbreviate if the word you're "abbreviating" is short enough (six or fewer characters if I remember correctly "Ideally, the abbreviations should not be longer than four letters.").

*(If there is already an abbreviation, or if there are more or better rules about how to make up an abbreviation, they're probably known by the people at GOLD (General Ontology for Linguistic Description) and/or SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology). Look up "E-MELD Best Practices" and http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/tools-at-l ... ossing.pdf.)

Grammatical category labels are subject to two conflicting requirements: they must be
both distinct and short. The former requirement takes precedence. It is, for instance, not
possible to use ‘COMP’ in one and the same publication to mean both ‘completive’ and
‘complementizer’.

I'm not certain whether any natlangs attest an "omnal" or "omnial" grammatical number, nor do I have the foggiest notion which (if any) natlangs do so attest. However I'm pretty sure that if a natlang has a "greater plural", then that "omnal" or "omnial" meaning would be one (if not the main) meaning of the "greater plural".

What is the other meaning of greater plural?

Just "huge-assed plural", AFAIK.
E.g. too many to count.
Or, just "a lot more of them than that other plural set I was just talking about (or intend to talk about in a minute)".
When Custer said (in the old joke; not IRL AFAIK) "Holy jumping catfish! Look at all those f**king Indians!", he might have used the greater plural if his natlang had had one, even though he was aware that not every Indian was (suddenly therefore miratively) in view.

Some languages (like Mele-Fila) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion. It should also be noted that the distinction between the paucal, the plural, and the greater plural is often relative to the type of object under discussion. For example, in discussing oranges, the paucal number might imply fewer than ten, whereas for the population of a country, it might be used for a few hundred thousand.

But from what I've read recently at least someone (don't know who nor how many) thinks that if the plural is split into a "greater" and a "lesser", with "lesser plural" not meaning "paucal", then the "lesser plural" refers to all (or almost all) in view, while the "greater plural" refers to all (or almost all) that actually exist in the world at the moment. I wonder whether maybe these might more informatively be called "lesser omnial" (all in view) and "greater omnial" (all that exist), since both their meanings include the notion "all".

So much to learn...

Yeah, ain't it fun?
And the best part is, once you get to where you're asking a question no-one has an answer to, you get to make up the answer! And then that might become the "official answer"!

[Alomar]

I'm trying to add switch-reference conjunctions to Mychai.

What do you all think?
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Mychai%2 ... w=d3b259cb

[sangi39]

Could these sets of vowel changes occur within the same language?

*i *i: * u *u:
*e *e: *o *o:
*æ *æ: *ɑ *ɑ:

(1a) Raising of long vowels followed by (2a) diphthongisation in open syllables

*i: > ai
*e: > i: ( > ie)
*æ: > e: ( > ei)
*u: > au
*o: > u: ( > uo)
*ɑ: > o: ( > ou)

(1b) “Circular” shift of short vowels followed by (2b) lengthening in open syllables

*u > i ( > i:)
*i > e ( > e:)
*e > æ ( > æ:)
*æ > ɑ ( > ɑ:)
*ɑ > o ( > o:)
*o > u ( > u:)

(3) Phonemicisation of long vowels through consonant cluster simplification and shortening of geminate consonants

While I’m fairly certain, 1a, 2a, 2b and 3 are attested shifts, it’s 2a I’m more concerned about. I vaguely recall reading about a circular vowel shift but I can’t remember the language or the details. I’m also not sure how likely 1a and 1b are to happen in the same language. Perhaps it would be more realistic for 1b to occur after 1a rather than the two occurring simultaneously.

[Keenir]

I know that descriptions can be written <n> can be realized as [n] or [ŋ].

But what do you do when one of the realizations is no sound? Could I say Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as [ ].?

thank you.

[Maximillian]

But what do you do when one of the realizations is no sound? Could I say Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as [ ].?

Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as [Ø]
or
Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as zero sound

[Xing]

Could I say Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as [ ].?

Well, angle brackets < > indicates orthographic representations, and it's arbitrary how one wants the letters to be pronounced. (Or if one don't want them to be pronounced at all.)

I guess that you by ['] mean a glottal stop - [ʔ] - and by [ ] means nothing audible at all.

Maybe the glottal stop is optinally dropped in some circumstances. (Happens in some langs.) In that case, you could have a symbol <'> that could be pronounced either [ʔ] or [Ø].

[Keenir]

Could I say Initial <'> can be realized as both ['] and as [ ].?

I guess that you by ['] mean a glottal stop - [ʔ]

more of the first part of ['h] (which was the IPA given for chutzpah's entry in wiki)

- and by [ ] means nothing audible at all.

that was my best guess, yes.

Maybe the glottal stop is optinally dropped in some circumstances. (Happens in some langs.) In that case, you could have a symbol <'> that could be pronounced either [ʔ] or [Ø].

okay; that works.

thank you.

[Ear of the Sphinx]

more of the first part of ['h] (which was the IPA given for chutzpah's entry in wiki)

The "chutzpah" is /ˈhʊtspə/ in the English pronunciation and its first sound is [h]. The [ˈ] just means that the first syllable is stressed.

[eldin raigmore]

I'm trying to add switch-reference conjunctions to Mychai.
What do you all think?
https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Mychai%2 ... w=d3b259cb

I'm not allowed to see because I'm not a member of dropbox and so can't log in.

[Keenir]

more of the first part of ['h] (which was the IPA given for chutzpah's entry in wiki)

The "chutzpah" is /ˈhʊtspə/ in the English pronunciation and its first sound is [h]. The [ˈ] just means that the first syllable is stressed.

Oh.

Thank you for explaining & clarifying that. I hadn't thought of stress...just of a preceeding sound.

[Keenir]

Thinking about using "for" as more than just benefactive...would this work?

Thassi faal fur-yu fur a Thomas a Percy.
[Təs.si fə:l fur.ju fur a <<thomas>> a <<percy>>]
The accident is your fault, Thomas & Percy / The accident is Thomas' & Percy's fault.

fault -> faal
The accident -> tha (h)assi'e'(th) -> thassi