Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Pabappa
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Pabappa »

okay thank you all for the replies. i did find one more thing .... an evident diminutive process that results in more words with this pattern...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kunkku .... possibly from kuningas, but potentially a secondary loan from Swedish or another language
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kumppari .... made of originally foreign morphemes, but clearly a novel coinage since the loans are from different sources.
https://fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/pimppa .... baby talk, so likely of recent origin. possibly a variant of pimpsa

possibly different is
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tamppu less likely than the others to be a diminutive, but its not even in the Finnish wiktionary so who knows?

The last word is the best example of the four words that hints at a true native word stock, which along with tarttua (and I would certainly count varttua too) leads me to believe that there is probably a core of native vocabulary to which the loans were added. It makes sense to me that the only allowed triplets are in this pattern of a sonorant followed by a geminate stop, as if the sonorant really belonged to the preceding vowel as in the nearby Baltic languages and earlier stages of Slavic. Im not sure which family influenced the other, or if that may be just a coincidence after all. Likewise, Im aware of three consonants lengths in Estonian and some other Finnic languages, as well as in Sámi. It even reminds me of Basque, which we believe went through a stage in which the traditionally voiced and voiceless stops were almost in complementary distribution, but could contrast between vowels and, interestingly enough, also after sonorants.

In fact, my original interest in this was to find a precedent for reconstructing Old Basque without the voicing distinction, and just saying that it was fortis/lenis, meaning the consonant inventory of Old Basque could be reduced to just nine, far less than one finds in a typical European language. But that was a while ago, and I really just asked this question for its own sake, since I find Uralic languages interesting in general. So thanks again for all your help.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Omzinesý »

Pabappa wrote: 18 May 2021 14:44 okay thank you all for the replies. i did find one more thing .... an evident diminutive process that results in more words with this pattern...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kunkku .... possibly from kuningas, but potentially a secondary loan from Swedish or another language
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kumppari .... made of originally foreign morphemes, but clearly a novel coinage since the loans are from different sources.
That is a relatively productive slang-ish way of shortening compuonds or other long words.

"intiaanit ja lännenmiehet" = "inkkarit ja länkkärit"
'indians and cowboys/settlers/gringos (isn't there really a word for this in English)'
Pabappa wrote: 18 May 2021 14:44 possibly different is
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tamppu less likely than the others to be a diminutive, but its not even in the Finnish wiktionary so who knows?
Never heard. Maybe an old out-of-use dialectal word or just a typo. Kielitoimiston sanakirja does not recognize it either.

"Varttua" probably derives from "varsi" (varte-)
Partitive of "varsi" is "vart-ta"
Pabappa wrote: 18 May 2021 14:44 It makes sense to me that the only allowed triplets are in this pattern of a sonorant followed by a geminate stop, as if the sonorant really belonged to the preceding vowel as in the nearby Baltic languages and earlier stages of Slavic.
A good point!
If I remember correctly, voiceless stops in Latvian/Lithuanian are pronounced (phonetically) long. That could be why Finnic borrows voiced stops (phonemically) geminated in that environment.
The same though holds for Swedish too in that environment.

It's hard to say at which point those clusters appear in Finnic, but I think they first appear through loan words and then also in native vocabulary by elision of vowels.
That is such late development though that the only info it gives on Basque is that such clusters can appear.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Omzinesý wrote: 19 May 2021 22:49Never heard.
Same.
Omzinesý wrote: 19 May 2021 22:49It's hard to say at which point those clusters appear in Finnic, but I think they first appear through loan words and then also in native vocabulary by elision of vowels.
A distinction between /rt/ and /rtt/ existed already in Proto-Uralic according to at least Starostin's and Sammallahti's reconstructions, not sure about others right now. At least Starostin's has /*rkk/ and /*ĺkk/ as well, but only in a few words. If only all Uralic languages didn't have 99.99% of their vocabulary being completely different from one another, these questions might not even exist.😔 But then again, mysteries are interesting... and good fodder for conlanging...
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Vlürch wrote: 21 May 2021 02:21
Omzinesý wrote: 19 May 2021 22:49Never heard.
Same.
Omzinesý wrote: 19 May 2021 22:49It's hard to say at which point those clusters appear in Finnic, but I think they first appear through loan words and then also in native vocabulary by elision of vowels.
A distinction between /rt/ and /rtt/ existed already in Proto-Uralic according to at least Starostin's and Sammallahti's reconstructions
As far as I understand, Sammallahti's reconstructions are rather out of date and Starostin is widely considered... unreliable, to say the least. Recommend crystal of sodium chloride.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by teotlxixtli »

I believe I read somewhere about an Australian Aboriginal language that requires a coda consonant but I couldn’t find anything when I searched with those terms.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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it's Arrernte.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrernte_ ... onotactics

I leave it up to you to decide if the analysis is correct or not .... knowing the details is important.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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teotlxixtli wrote: 16 Jun 2021 08:29 I believe I read somewhere about an Australian Aboriginal language that requires a coda consonant but I couldn’t find anything when I searched with those terms.
There are plenty of languages that require coda consonants - Aslian requires word codas and English at one point required codas in stressed syllables (and wasn't happy about V-final words)
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by teotlxixtli »

Nortaneous wrote: 20 Jun 2021 18:03
teotlxixtli wrote: 16 Jun 2021 08:29 I believe I read somewhere about an Australian Aboriginal language that requires a coda consonant but I couldn’t find anything when I searched with those terms.
There are plenty of languages that require coda consonants - Aslian requires word codas and English at one point required codas in stressed syllables (and wasn't happy about V-final words)
I hadn’t read about those languages before. They have some other cool features like stop clusters at the beginning of a word and Jah Hut’s vowel inventory is pretty full too
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Tsugar »

Mandarin heavily uses disyllabic words to the extent that a fluent speaker neng fenbie butong de ci zhiyong mei dai fuhao de hanyu pinyin and compounds of two disyllabic words collapse into one disyllabic word e.g Oumeng from Ouzhou lianmeng
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by mister »

Pabappa wrote: 18 May 2021 14:44
Pabappa wrote: 18 May 2021 14:44 It makes sense to me that the only allowed triplets are in this pattern of a sonorant followed by a geminate stop, as if the sonorant really belonged to the preceding vowel as in the nearby Baltic languages and earlier stages of Slavic.
A good point!
If I remember correctly, voiceless stops in Latvian/Lithuanian are pronounced (phonetically) long. That could be why Finnic borrows voiced stops (phonemically) geminated in that environment.
The same though holds for Swedish too in that environment.
AFAIK, consonants between unstressed syllables undergo phonetic lengthening in Latvian. Dunno about Lithuanian; I have tried saying a few words with a plethora of voiceless consonants and they all seem to have the same length to me.

The Latvian example is a pretty cool instance of allophony imo because it is one of the only cases of secondary stress-related phenomena in the language. Otherwise all syllables other than the initial one are somewhat shorter and more prone to reduction (though the reduction is not as prominent as it is in Lithuanian).
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Omzinesý »

In Hyman 2005, which Greyeditor linked a while ago.

(16) Culminative glottalized and aspirated consonants in Cuzco Quechua (Parker 1997:2)
a. root-controlled: occur only in roots, never in suffixes
b. non-obligatory: occur in some roots, not in all
c. culminative: may occur only once per root: *T'VT'V, *THVTHV, *T'VTHV, *THVT’V
d. directional: only occur on first stop of root: T'VTV, THVTV vs. *TVT'V, *TVTHV
NB. C' and CH occur only in onset position of the syllable, never in codas
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Omzinesý wrote: 16 Dec 2021 04:22 In Hyman 2005, which Greyeditor linked a while ago.

(16) Culminative glottalized and aspirated consonants in Cuzco Quechua (Parker 1997:2)
a. root-controlled: occur only in roots, never in suffixes
b. non-obligatory: occur in some roots, not in all
c. culminative: may occur only once per root: *T'VT'V, *THVTHV, *T'VTHV, *THVT’V
d. directional: only occur on first stop of root: T'VTV, THVTV vs. *TVT'V, *TVTHV
NB. C' and CH occur only in onset position of the syllable, never in codas
Cf. the aspiration reconstructed for Old Basque - *hil + *herri > either *hilerri or *ilherri, but not **hilherri
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Omzinesý »

Nortaneous wrote: 06 Jan 2022 01:34
Omzinesý wrote: 16 Dec 2021 04:22 In Hyman 2005, which Greyeditor linked a while ago.

(16) Culminative glottalized and aspirated consonants in Cuzco Quechua (Parker 1997:2)
a. root-controlled: occur only in roots, never in suffixes
b. non-obligatory: occur in some roots, not in all
c. culminative: may occur only once per root: *T'VT'V, *THVTHV, *T'VTHV, *THVT’V
d. directional: only occur on first stop of root: T'VTV, THVTV vs. *TVT'V, *TVTHV
NB. C' and CH occur only in onset position of the syllable, never in codas
Cf. the aspiration reconstructed for Old Basque - *hil + *herri > either *hilerri or *ilherri, but not **hilherri
/h/ could appear in aword only once?
Interesting that such a rule can apply to single phonemes.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Omzinesý wrote: 06 Jan 2022 02:11
Nortaneous wrote: 06 Jan 2022 01:34
Omzinesý wrote: 16 Dec 2021 04:22 In Hyman 2005, which Greyeditor linked a while ago.

(16) Culminative glottalized and aspirated consonants in Cuzco Quechua (Parker 1997:2)
a. root-controlled: occur only in roots, never in suffixes
b. non-obligatory: occur in some roots, not in all
c. culminative: may occur only once per root: *T'VT'V, *THVTHV, *T'VTHV, *THVT’V
d. directional: only occur on first stop of root: T'VTV, THVTV vs. *TVT'V, *TVTHV
NB. C' and CH occur only in onset position of the syllable, never in codas
Cf. the aspiration reconstructed for Old Basque - *hil + *herri > either *hilerri or *ilherri, but not **hilherri
/h/ could appear in aword only once?
Interesting that such a rule can apply to single phonemes.
Sure, for /h/, cf. Grassmann's
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Shemtov »

I have seen an analysis of Khalkha :mon: that concludes it phonemically has coda clusters that (IMO) would put Georgian's initial clusters to shame; However, it has a complex system of inserting phonetic empenthetic vowels, that the Cyrillic writing system writes, which is why it looks like there is no such clusters phonemically, but the Cyrillic script is phonetic, and if one would look at how Modern :mon: is written in its native script, one would see the phonemic truth. An example would be the word for "cheese" <бяслаг> Phonetically [pʲasɮaq], but phonemically /pʲasɮk/.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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That reminds me of the lexical phonology analysis of Malayalam by Mohanan, where phonenically there are coda consonants but they are always repaired by epenthesis. There are some phonological rules hoowever that reference the status of these consonants as codas.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Salmoneus »

Creyeditor wrote: 01 Feb 2022 18:53 That reminds me of the lexical phonology analysis of Malayalam by Mohanan, where phonenically there are coda consonants but they are always repaired by epenthesis. There are some phonological rules hoowever that reference the status of these consonants as codas.
It occurs to me that that might be exactly what you'd expect to happen when a language with rich phonotactics had massive influence from a substrate (adstrate, superstrate) with simple phonotactics: the phonological (and morphophonological) rules regarding coda consonants could remain in place, but speakers unfamiliar with them would 'repair' them phonetically.


For example, let's say a language has laxing of vowels before a coda, assimilatory devoicing and intervocalic and final voicing of single consonants. But then it comes to be spoken by people whose first language has CV structure and no ongoing compulsory voicing...

Original /plesa/, past tense /plesat/ becomes modern [pleza], past tense [plezada]. But original /ples/, past tense /plest/, becomes modern [plEza], [plEsata]. Meanwhile original past plural /plesats/ becomes modern [plez{tasa], while /plestas/ (original language doesn't allow CCC) becomes [plEsat{za].

A direct phonemic analysis here requires both tense and lax vowels, and voiced and voiceless consonants, AND complex rules on voicing and tensing dissimilatory harmony, AND complex morphological rules; or, all of that could be swept away by simply recognising that some [a] is epenthetic and non-phonemic... so yes, that sort of analysis seems like it could make sense sometimes.


Not that I'm suggesting Malayalam specifically went through this sort of second-language affect. Just that a second-language influence could quickly produce that sort of incongruity between the surface phonetics and what the "rules" of the language seem to imply (because the rules would still be responding to the 'underlying' historical situation).
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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I think this is very close to the amphichronic interpretation of stratal theories of phonology by Bermudez-Otero. Synchronic processes that are more surface-y/later/closer-to-phonetics, are diachronically younger. Synchronic processes that are less surface-y/earlier/further-from-phonetics are diachronically older. With you making the additional assumption that younger processes stem from recent language contact, which many people assume anyway.
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

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Creyeditor wrote: 01 Feb 2022 21:04 I think this is very close to the amphichronic interpretation of stratal theories of phonology by Bermudez-Otero. Synchronic processes that are more surface-y/later/closer-to-phonetics, are diachronically younger. Synchronic processes that are less surface-y/earlier/further-from-phonetics are diachronically older. With you making the additional assumption that younger processes stem from recent language contact, which many people assume anyway.
To clarify, I'm making that assumption here - or that suggestion, rather - because of the issue of, as it were, pacing. I'm not someone who always looks to external influences to explain organic shifts, which I do think can occur naturally. But I think natural changes tend to happen more slowly, and also more organically: different parts of the language move in sync with one another, more or less, so there's less opportunity for the sort of incongruity that motivates deep analysis. Whereas with contact influence, you can have one part of the language change really quickly, which makes it easier for it to, as it were, fold over and hide another part, before that other part has had a chance to change organically to get out of the way.

The other thing I'd say from a theoretical point of view is that conceptually "deep" analysis doesn't necessarily HAVE to reflect diachronics. The deep analysis is invented by the analyst, and while it's possible that an analysis will reflect the diachronic development, it's also possible that an analyst will discover a pattern that could explain something that has actually developed by chance, which does not reflect a historical state of the language. Indeed, this is a microcosm of what actual speakers do when they reanalyse things in their own language: most subconscious speaker analysis reflects the diachronic development, but some reflects misunderstandings, or strikes upon a total coincidence and takes it as meaningful; and I think the same it also potentially true of the more detailed analyses by linguists...
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Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Post by Creyeditor »

I totally think that reanalysis is real. Mayve one could even think of it as a diachronic change that applies to the underlying forms (or something like that) but leaves most surface forms intact.
The amphichronic interpretatiom is also not deterministic. A synchronic process can stay surface-y/shallow/etc for a long time or become lexicslized/morphologized/less surface-y pretty quickly. This depends on extra-grammatical factors (including language contact).
Btw, I reread the Malayalam paper by T. Mohanan and she sketches a similar kind of explanation, IIUC. An older stage of Dravidian Malayalam only allowed open syllables. Then a lot of Sankrit words were loaned, which included closed syllables. These were then adjusted by regular epenthesis. However, later on Dravidian roots were also reanalysed as undergoing epenthesis and underlyingly having closed syllables. This leads to a situation were both Sankrit loans and native Dravidian roots can now have underlyingly closed syllables.
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