(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Pabappa
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

There was a nice thread on the old ZBB at http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=19697 but the database has been corrupted and now a lot of the most crucial posts are blank. I couldnt find it preserved on archive.org either. There's still a few good ones left, e.g. http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?p=442372#p442372 .

I think cultural considerations can provide you with multiple words for what in English would just be one word. e.g. Japanese has dozens of words for swords, and Swahili has just about as many for knives. My cultures are extremely pacifistic by Earth standards, so I've given the Poswobs six words for knife, since they need knives in the kitchen, but only two for sword, since most Poswob men will never see a sword up close unless it's pointing right at them.

Likewise, one word in your language can correspond to multiple words in English. This is called polysemy, and is much tougher than the opposite because it's easy enough to just say that there are six words for different kinds of knives, but giving wide semantic ranges to existing words requires a lot of thought for each individual word. I havent gotten very far with this myself, and much of the polysemy in Poswa is just due to happenstance sound changes where two words coalesced together and I decided to remove one of them from the parent language's word list and say that it was just semantic drift all along. e.g. i have one word that means both "exact, precise" and "snug, tight", which i think was originally two unrelated words that i decided to merge into one even in the parent language. Others are true semantic drift that I made up on my own, though: e.g. Poswa ples "student; to spy on, track from a stationary position".

Ive created a couple of polysemic entries from dreams .... e.g. i had a dream a few days ago where i used the word "dot" for a small, restricted connection between two things, even though i was physically picturing a long thin object like a wire.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Pabappa wrote: 30 Jan 2020 00:00 I think cultural considerations can provide you with multiple words for what in English would just be one word. e.g. Japanese has dozens of words for swords
English has dozens of words for swords!

Sword, broadsword, longsword, shortsword, backsword, smallsword, sabre, scimitar, tulwar, katana, wakizashi, shamshir, cutlass, rapier, estoc, foil, epee, claymore, zweihander, espardon, flammard, flamberge, spatha, gladius, cinquedea, falx, falchion, machete, khopesh, scramasaex... and that's just off the top of my head, and I'm not a sword person...
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

indeed. we also have a history of swordfighting and fashioning ceremonial weapons. i wasnt intending to imply English lacked such a vocbulary, but that English lacks vocabulary for other concepts that in a con-culture might be greatly expanded.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Reyzadren »

Is anyone interested in trying another conlang magazine collab for 2020? (similar to this thread)

Note: If you are Dormouse559 or Vlürch, you are more than welcome to reuse your well-crafted materials ofc [:D]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguistCat »

Since some of the reconstructions for Old Japanese vowels involves both rising and falling diphthongs, I'm considering having palatalization of both consonants before rising palatal diphthongs (I'm not sure I'll do anything with velarization or rounding), and consonants after falling diphthings (which I've only seen end in /j/ in the reconstructions I'm working from).

Does this have precedence IRL, or at least sound realistic?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

Reyzadren wrote: 02 Feb 2020 23:03 Is anyone interested in trying another conlang magazine collab for 2020? (similar to this thread)

Note: If you are Dormouse559 or Vlürch, you are more than welcome to reuse your well-crafted materials ofc [:D]
Certainly! I may just take you up on that offer. But if I get another good story idea, I might make a new article. [:)]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

LinguistCat wrote: 03 Feb 2020 00:07 Since some of the reconstructions for Old Japanese vowels involves both rising and falling diphthongs, I'm considering having palatalization of both consonants before rising palatal diphthongs (I'm not sure I'll do anything with velarization or rounding), and consonants after falling diphthings (which I've only seen end in /j/ in the reconstructions I'm working from).

Does this have precedence IRL, or at least sound realistic?
I assume that the non-peak of the diphthong is phonologically a glide /j/.

(i) There are languages where /j/ causes/triggers palatalization but /i/ does not.
(ii) There are languages where palatalization applies if a consonant is preceded by a trigger
(iii) There are languages where palatalization applies if a consonant is followed by a trigger.
(iv) I suspect there are also languages where a consonant undergoes palatalization if is either preceded or followed by a trigger.

I am not sure if there are languages with (i) and (iv), but I don't see any reason why there should not be.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

I missed the question above. Swahili has lost its tones, and with no compensation, and it's doing fine. It happens a lot more when the tones carry a low functional load, as in most Bantu languages. Also, Japanese foreign learners often don't learn the tones and they also do fine; there are a few areas even within Japan where tone has also gone flat.

A better example might be Chinese, though. Shanghai's dialect has not lost tone entirely, but it's gotten most of the way there, with the result that the whole language has been reworked, and it's not really a dialect after all, but a wholly separate language. This is what will happen if the tones carry a high functional load.
---------
and further on the vocabulary question ... i remembered just now that Hawaiian has a word that means "to strain out impurities" and "to criticize constructively". its given as 2 separate definitions in the Hawaiian dictionary at wehewehe.org , but i suspect it is one original word. i think Polynesian languages are known to have a lot of polysemous roots.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguistCat »

Creyeditor wrote: 03 Feb 2020 19:44 I assume that the non-peak of the diphthong is phonologically a glide /j/.
That's the assumption for e1 vs e2 which tend to be denoted as something like /(j)e ej/. i1 vs i2 might be any of /i 1/, /ji ij/, or /i wi/, while o1 vs o2 tends to either be /wo o/ or /o @/
I am not sure if there are languages with (i) and (iv), but I don't see any reason why there should not be.
Even if there isn't I could still have reasons why e/i1 would act differently on consonants than e/i2, so I'm glad there could be some logic behind this.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Salmoneus wrote: 30 Jan 2020 02:29
Pabappa wrote: 30 Jan 2020 00:00 I think cultural considerations can provide you with multiple words for what in English would just be one word. e.g. Japanese has dozens of words for swords
English has dozens of words for swords!

Sword, broadsword, longsword, shortsword, backsword, smallsword, sabre, scimitar, tulwar, katana, wakizashi, shamshir, cutlass, rapier, estoc, foil, epee, claymore, zweihander, espardon, flammard, flamberge, spatha, gladius, cinquedea, falx, falchion, machete, khopesh, scramasaex... and that's just off the top of my head, and I'm not a sword person...
"Sword" is the only general word. Everything else you listed is a type, such as rapier, or a subclass, such as short sword. Also, several of them, such as zweihander, are still, technically, borrowed.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Nortaneous »

LinguistCat wrote: 03 Feb 2020 00:07 Since some of the reconstructions for Old Japanese vowels involves both rising and falling diphthongs, I'm considering having palatalization of both consonants before rising palatal diphthongs (I'm not sure I'll do anything with velarization or rounding), and consonants after falling diphthings (which I've only seen end in /j/ in the reconstructions I'm working from).

Does this have precedence IRL, or at least sound realistic?
I don't know about general precedence but I don't think this is realistic for Japonic. Semivowels tend to be tightly bound to the preceding consonant, and Old Japanese lost its diphthongs pretty quickly.
Vlürch wrote: 26 Jan 2020 19:54 Is it too unnaturalistic for a language to just straight up lose tone, creating tons of homophones? Especially if the same language has lots of mergers, like /pʰ/ and /kʰ/ both becoming /h/ word-initially and stuff like that?
Rurutu merged four consonants into the glottal stop, which given that it's Polynesian probably created a lot of homophones.
yangfiretiger121 wrote: 05 Feb 2020 19:39 "Sword" is the only general word. Everything else you listed is a type, such as rapier, or a subclass, such as short sword. Also, several of them, such as zweihander, are still, technically, borrowed.
A lot of them are. It's also worth noting that languages don't have to have general words for things. Aslian has been claimed to mostly lack general words.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Khemehekis »

Salmoneus wrote: 30 Jan 2020 02:29
Pabappa wrote: 30 Jan 2020 00:00 I think cultural considerations can provide you with multiple words for what in English would just be one word. e.g. Japanese has dozens of words for swords
English has dozens of words for swords!

Sword, broadsword, longsword, shortsword, backsword, smallsword, sabre, scimitar, tulwar, katana, wakizashi, shamshir, cutlass, rapier, estoc, foil, epee, claymore, zweihander, espardon, flammard, flamberge, spatha, gladius, cinquedea, falx, falchion, machete, khopesh, scramasaex... and that's just off the top of my head, and I'm not a sword person...
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

I find it hilarious that when I was a teenager I became familiar with the stereotypes of all those types of swords listed by Salmoneus because of an interest sparked by videogames. I haven't looked into sword stuff in a bit over a decade but I still remember them...
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

LinguistCat wrote: 03 Feb 2020 00:07 Since some of the reconstructions for Old Japanese vowels involves both rising and falling diphthongs, I'm considering having palatalization of both consonants before rising palatal diphthongs (I'm not sure I'll do anything with velarization or rounding), and consonants after falling diphthings (which I've only seen end in /j/ in the reconstructions I'm working from).

Does this have precedence IRL, or at least sound realistic?
Thanks to something Aszev sent me earlier today... Slavic. At least in the run up to Common Slavic, there has been both regressive and progressive palatalistion, whereby various sounds were palatalised (to some degree or another) before and after front vowels and /j/ respectively.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to have similar changes occur adjacent to Vj and jV diphthongs.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

@Creyeditor, Ælfwine, Salmoneus and Pabappa: Thanks! I think I now have a realistic(?) justification for the loss of tone that allows a fair number of homophones:

Since the conlang in question originated in the Himalayas or somewhere in their vicinity but its speakers ended up migrating to some (fictional) island(s) somewhere in the East China Sea, and most likely they'd have had a bunch of different small states along the way, eventually pulling a Japan and becoming completely insular while the mainland varieties went extinct, and at some point coming in contact with the Japanese and at least the coastal dialect(s) being influenced by Japanese, there could be some degree of creolisation and the language could well have been at the brink of extinction.

The way I'm picturing the transition is that the (final) loss of tone happened only after the speakers had already moved to the island(s), with literacy in their original writing system dropping to something like 1%, and the elite retreated to the highest point(s) on the island(s). The masses would strive to have a connection to their ancestors, using transcriptions made by speakers of other languages to revitalise their language, which would've been made by speakers of non-tonal languages with the exception of Chinese, but they wouldn't be literate in Chinese so they couldn't re-acquire the tonality of the words that way. The elite would have switched to writing with Chinese characters except for ceremonial purposes, in everyday use substituting the language's original (similarly largely logographic) writing system character-for-character with Chinese ones, and while at least in theory they would maintain tone, the masses would have ignored it when they became literate; so, in the modern day they'd write in Chinese characters but have few Chinese loanwords. Some kind of tone or pitch accent might linger in super-formal highly educated speech, but in everyday speech it would be long gone.

Does that sound like something that could happen? I mean, I haven't thought too much about the timeline, but the mainland varieties would probably have gone extinct by like 100BCE at the latest as the speakers assimilated into the Chinese, while the speakers in their original homeland would've already entirely assimilated into another conpeople (the Nemin) by maybe like 300BCE or earlier. Real-world implications aren't that important since both their original homeland and the island(s) are in a pocket dimension or whatever, but obviously the restriction of the Chinese influence to just the elite for centuries would still have to be explained somehow...

...but I mean, would that be a realistic justification for the loss of tone and the large numbers of homophones?
Reyzadren wrote: 02 Feb 2020 23:03Is anyone interested in trying another conlang magazine collab for 2020? (similar to this thread)
That'd be fun.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

My roleplay setting's Elvish language has the six vowel system /ɐ ɑ ɪ ɨ ø̞ ɵ̞/. Is it more logical to Romanize it with unmarked central (/ɐ ɑ/ as <a ä>) or peripheral (/ɐ ɑ/ as <ä a>) vowels?

Additionally, I currently have a law that affects every nasal in the protolang named VViqàxùa’s [ˈʙí.ʔɐ̀.Xù.ɐ̀] Law (see below), after the fiendish linguist who discovered it. Should it be broken in half (nasal to voiced plosives; deglottalizations), or is it fine as one? [X] represents Greek lower case chi.

VViqàxùa’s Law: Unconditioned denasalization of original [*m *n *ŋ → b d g], deglottalization of [*mʔ → m], and deglottalization and merger of {*nʔ *ŋʔ → ŋ}
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by gestaltist »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 08 Feb 2020 18:27 My roleplay setting's Elvish language has the six vowel system /ɐ ɑ ɪ ɨ ø̞ ɵ̞/. Is it more logical to Romanize it with unmarked central (/ɐ ɑ/ as <a ä>) or peripheral (/ɐ ɑ/ as <ä a>) vowels?
This vowel system isn’t particularly naturalistic anyway so I’d go with a romanization that works best for the intended use (ie, avoiding diacritics to not scare off players ;) )
Additionally, I currently have a law that affects every nasal in the protolang named VViqàxùa’s [ˈʙí.ʔɐ̀.Xù.ɐ̀] Law (see below), after the fiendish linguist who discovered it. Should it be broken in half (nasal to voiced plosives; deglottalizations), or is it fine as one? [X] represents Greek lower case chi.

VViqàxùa’s Law: Unconditioned denasalization of original [*m *n *ŋ → b d g], deglottalization of [*mʔ → m], and deglottalization and merger of {*nʔ *ŋʔ → ŋ}
It’s fine as one IMO
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

I've probably asked this before, but it's time to ask again. [:)] Do you include sounds in your conlang that you yourself can't pronounce? I see some of the phonological inventories here and wonder how pronounceable they really are. I make sure not to include any sounds I can't say myself (part of the reason why I'll probably never create a tonal language) and I love reading my conlang out loud to ensure that I'm pronouncing it correctly.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 26 Feb 2020 19:53 I've probably asked this before, but it's time to ask again. [:)] Do you include sounds in your conlang that you yourself can't pronounce? I see some of the phonological inventories here and wonder how pronounceable they really are. I make sure not to include any sounds I can't say myself (part of the reason why I'll probably never create a tonal language) and I love reading my conlang out loud to ensure that I'm pronouncing it correctly.
I definitely do [:P] I can't pronounce implosives, I can't consistently produce a distinction between aspirated and non-aspirated voiceless stops, I can barely distinguish tones in slow careful speech, let alone fast speech, and I can't reliably pronounce anything between glottals and uvulars at all.

However, I don't think it's unreasonable to include those sounds within a conlang, but, for me personally, I try and do some reading about them first, see how they behave in languages that have them, e.g. how do they interact with other sounds (do they cause vowels to shift around), do they tend to occur only in certain environments (or, conversely, is there a restriction on what sounds can occur around them), and stuff like that. That way, when it starts to coming to word-building and describing allophony, those sounds (hopefully) seem to fit better.

But, basically, if it turns up as "pronounceable" somewhere in the real world, then there's nothing stopping you throwing it at your conlang (strictly speaking, there's nothing stopping you throwing anything you want at your conlang, but that's a wider discussion).

EDIT: I'm also attempting (rather slowly), to work on a conworld mainly centred around being a place for languages to go, but with the same sort of variety that you might find here on Earth. If I stuck to just what I could pronounce, every language would basically be pretty Englishy, which would just be boring.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

As I was just mentioning in another thread, I used ejective stops in my conlangs for four years before I figured out how to actually pronounce them myself. That was a problem with me understanding *how* to pronounce them, because this was 20 years ago and information wasnt that easy to get. As a result I thought that ejectives were clusters and decided to only allow them intervocalically even though I knew that some (and as I now realize, probably all) natlangs that have ejectives in fact allow them inword-initial position as well.

Most of my languages are phonologically simple, so there aren't many problems with pronunciation for me, but I also have tonal conlangs, and though I have no problem with tones in isolation, I don't think I could even get so much as a single sentence right if I had to pronounce the tones correctly on every single syllable in a language such as Leaper, where there are 6 tones on stressed syllables and a few sandhi effects that determine the tones of unstressed syllables.

It took me four years after creating Poswa to get comfortable with having plain and labialized consonants contrast in the syllable coda, like Russian does with palatalization. Until then, I really didnt have labialized consonants at all, just clusters of consonant + /w/. Realizing that coda labialization is a feasible contrast greatly changed the character of the language.
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