Phonemic inventory advice?

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dva_arla
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Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by dva_arla »

I'm creating a realistic a posteriori language; does this sound inventory look natural?


m n
pʰ tʰ ʈʂʰ tsʰ kʰ
t ts k
b d ɖ dz g

f ʃ s ʂ
v ʒ z ʐ
r ɹ
l ɫ
q χ h ʁ



Allophonic alterations:
ʈʂʰ~ʈʰ
ɸ~f
w~β~v
ʒ~d̠ʒ

Any advice would be appreciated.
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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LinguistCat
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by LinguistCat »

I don't know if I have advice, but it reminds me a little of some reconstructions of Middle Chinese I've seen. So it's at least plausible-ish.
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Pabappa
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by Pabappa »

Might want to put in the vowels too 😛

The consonants look nice, although it's strange that you group /q/ with the approximants instead of the stops. Also I'd have expected /pʰ/ to be the one missing, not /p/, but perhaps Armenian has done what you've done. What happened to historical /p/ that didnt affect /pʰ/?
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Nachtuil
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by Nachtuil »

dva_arla wrote: 25 Oct 2019 21:40 I'm creating a realistic a posteriori language; does this sound inventory look natural?

m n
pʰ tʰ ʈʂʰ tsʰ kʰ
t ts k
b d ɖ dz g

f ʃ s ʂ
v ʒ z ʐ
r ɹ
l ɫ
q χ h ʁ



Allophonic alterations:
ʈʂʰ~ʈʰ
ɸ~f
w~β~v
ʒ~d̠ʒ

Any advice would be appreciated.
The thing that sticks out to me as jarring is that you have lack a plain voiceless bilabial stop when you have a voiced and aspirated version. The coronals feel a bit unusual with missing some sort of plain retroflex stop or retroflex affricate but coronals seem able to tolerate a bit of weirdness. If I were to suggest you change only one thing it'd be to replace the aspirated p with a plain one. Maybe have the aspirated version exist allophonicaly. Other than that it looks good to me.

I don't know if you know it but this one site is great for quickly seeing how common certain phoneme gaps/contrasts are: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~saphon/en/phonemes.php
For example, I just checked about languages that have both b and aspirated p while missing plain p and the only one that pops up lacks plain stops all together.

Oh, should not q be with the stops? If you add it, you'd likely want an aspirated variant (but need not do the voiced at all if you don't wish)
Last edited by Nachtuil on 27 Oct 2019 02:12, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by Nachtuil »

By the way! Welcome to the forum :)
dva_arla
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by dva_arla »

I've found out that at some point, Vietnamese had /pʰ/ but no /p/ (at least in coda initials):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnames ... Vietnamese

so I think that my phonemic inventory would be plausible, albeit unstable.
Pabappa wrote: 26 Oct 2019 00:30 What happened to historical /p/ that didnt affect /pʰ/?
The classic "French shift": intervocalic /p/ and /b/ > /w/, /pʰ/ remains.
(intervocalic /t d k g/ > /ʕ/ > /j/ or /w/)
Initial /b/ > /β/, inital /p/ > /b/ (disputed).
Also, /mb/ > /b/.
Nachtuil wrote: 27 Oct 2019 01:56
I don't know if you know it but this one site is great for quickly seeing how common certain phoneme gaps/contrasts are: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~saphon/en/phonemes.php
Thanks for making me know of a "phoneme inventory database", but I think I would rely on this more:

http://eurasianphonology.info/

(since my interests are all on the "Old World" as they call it. But your suggestion is helpful anyways.

Btw, has somebody made a sound change database?
Pabappa wrote: 26 Oct 2019 00:30 Oh, should not q be with the stops? If you add it, you'd likely want an aspirated variant (but need not do the voiced at all if you don't wish)
/q/ only exists in borrowings from Persian and Turkic (though I can't deny the possibility of native words sporadically appearing with /q/).
Nachtuil wrote: 27 Oct 2019 01:57 By the way! Welcome to the forum :)
Thanks! I guess you're an admin (or regulator)?
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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sangi39
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by sangi39 »

dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:27 Btw, has somebody made a sound change database?
They have indeed! [:D] It's called the Index Diachronica, which you can find here as a PDF by language and here as a searchable site fro individual phonemes.
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But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
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dva_arla
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by dva_arla »

Okay... so I think it is time for me to introduce my conlang-in-progress. I am working on a modern "re-construction" of the Khotanese "Saka" language (extinct during the 11th c.). Backgrounds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Khotan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_language

I guess I should start a new topic on the language, however:

1) Do you think that it belongs on the "Beginner's Corner" or "Conlangs"?
2) Should one need to worry about "idea thieves" in this forum? I wish to develop this conlang into "perfection" (someday God willing it will turn out to be like Novegradian in veche.net , with its own alternate history, grammar, dictionary, etc.) And perhaps I'd use the language in creating an alt-history novel.
sangi39 wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:32 They have indeed! [:D] It's called the Index Diachronica, which you can find here as a PDF by language and here as a searchable site fro individual phonemes.
Found out about the Index several days ago. Helpful site, but they could improve it (if the site is still "alive"). There are many topics that are noticeably "lacking" (such as the Iranian languages, the Modern Chinese languages, etc.) in comparison to a few others that are given detail to. Anyway, the creators of the Index has done great service.
Do you know of a more complete database? Or one created more professionally (by universities for instance)
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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sangi39
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by sangi39 »

dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:56 Okay... so I think it is time for me to introduce my conlang-in-progress. I am working on a modern "re-construction" of the Khotanese "Saka" language (extinct during the 11th c.). Backgrounds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Khotan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saka_language

I guess I should start a new topic on the language, however:

1) Do you think that it belongs on the "Beginner's Corner" or "Conlangs"?
I think maybe the Conlangs section might be more suited for it. What you could do is label is as something like a "Scratch Pad" or a "Work in Progress" if you're not presenting a now-"complete" conlang.


dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:56 2) Should one need to worry about "idea thieves" in this forum? I wish to develop this conlang into "perfection" (someday God willing it will turn out to be like Novegradian in veche.net , with its own alternate history, grammar, dictionary, etc.) And perhaps I'd use the language in creating an alt-history novel.
I've never noticed any "idea thieves" on this forum, so I think you should feel safe about it. What I would say, though, is to keep back-ups of you're work on your computer in paper form, rather than storing it wholly here on the Board.


dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:56
sangi39 wrote: 27 Oct 2019 16:32 They have indeed! [:D] It's called the Index Diachronica, which you can find here as a PDF by language and here as a searchable site fro individual phonemes.
Found out about the Index several days ago. Helpful site, but they could improve it (if the site is still "alive"). There are many topics that are noticeably "lacking" (such as the Iranian languages, the Modern Chinese languages, etc.) in comparison to a few others that are given detail to. Anyway, the creators of the Index has done great service.
Do you know of a more complete database? Or one created more professionally (by universities for instance)
In one single location? No, I don't think there is a more "complete" one. There are certainly more in-depth descriptions of diachronics for specific languages and language families (Wikipedia's articles on, say, the history of the English language or the French language are pretty darn in-depth), but you do have to go looking for them most of the time.

One thing I usually say, though, is to go ahead and find those descriptions, and read as many as you can. The more you read, the more you might get a feel for what could make sense without necessarily needing to consult a database.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
dva_arla
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by dva_arla »

One more thing: can a conlang be copyrighted?
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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sangi39
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by sangi39 »

dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 17:56 One more thing: can a conlang be copyrighted?
As far as I'm aware... probably not. Assuming there even is a consensus (which likely varies from country to country anyway, and might even tie into how those countries handle things like fanfiction), it seems to be that, as with natlangs, you can copyright dictionaries and grammars, and trademark set phrases and names, once the language is out there, and people learn it and use it, you can't actually stop them from using it in their own published works (at least on the grounds of using the language. IIRC a claim by Paramount relating to Klingon appearing in a non-Paramount production, their claim was upheld in relation to characters, costume, and insignia, but the use of Klingon within the non-Paramount work was deemed to have not violated copyright since it was original, i.e. those lines of dialogue were not just torn out of the Klingon Dictionary).
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Nachtuil
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by Nachtuil »

I'm not a mod here no. Special user classes here have different coloured names, like Sangi39
dva_arla wrote: 27 Oct 2019 17:56 One more thing: can a conlang be copyrighted?
My impression is that works made in a conlang can be copyrighted but not the conlang itself. Hypothetically, you could go and sell a poetry book written in Dothraki if you wanted but you would want to be careful how or if you mention Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, etc and not publish existing material copyrighted by them. I wouldn't do it without checking with an actual lawyer. These two links will be of interest:
http://conlangery.com/2016/05/03/conlan ... -v-axanar/
http://conlangery.com/2017/01/11/conlan ... ar-update/
dva_arla
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Re: Phonemic inventory advice?

Post by dva_arla »

Okay, I have created a thread to discuss my conlang :

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7090

so please do care to read my posts and share your feedbacks. I really need your advice, since I am at loss on some points regarding the sound changes.
Conlangs in progress:
Modern Khotanese
Modern Gandhari
?? - Japonic language in the Mekong Delta
Locna - Indo-European language in N. Syria
Wexford Norse
A British romlang, &c.
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