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

[Visions1]

In a thread on StackExchange, someone mentions that a glottal stop combined with other consonants (typically stops) is often referred to as an ejective. According to that post, there doesn't appear to be any difference. I'm interested in learning if there are other perspectives on this topic.

From what I can tell, this does seems to be one way ejectives arise: glottal stop + something else = ejective.
I actually used to do this as a kid, if I saw a glottal stop immediately after a stop or affricate.

But there is a difference. Use /t'/ as an example. You can pronounce it without necessarily glottalizing it (though it's easier to).

[Akubra]

In a thread on StackExchange, someone mentions that a glottal stop combined with other consonants (typically stops) is often referred to as an ejective. According to that post, there doesn't appear to be any difference. I'm interested in learning if there are other perspectives on this topic.

From what I can tell, this does seems to be one way ejectives arise: glottal stop + something else = ejective.
I actually used to do this as a kid, if I saw a glottal stop immediately after a stop or affricate.

But there is a difference. Use /t'/ as an example. You can pronounce it without necessarily glottalizing it (though it's easier to).

Thanks for the explanation, Visions1. I tried pronouncing both /t'/ and /tʔ/, and I noticed the difference. In K'aach, I've decided to use the ejectives /p' t' k'/ because they occur in Maya languages, whereas /pʔ tʔ kʔ/ do not.

[Ahzoh]

In accordance with this: https://wals.info/chapter/92
I have decided that Vrkhazhian would have a question particle in second position, and as a clitic, specifically.

But there is the constraint against it attaching to the verb due to prosodic reasons.

The other thing is that the language is strongly verb-initial except that pronominal subjects and conjunctive clitics can occur before the verb. The language is also pro-drop.

So, I'm wondering if it's naturalistic to obligatorily require either a conjunction or a pronoun to occur if one wants to say the question particle/ask a question?

Declarative:
(āma) paraḫma "you spoke"
(tummi) paraḫmasi "you did not speak"
kiz= (āma) paraḫma "but you spoke"
kiz= (tummi) paraḫmasi "but you did not speak"

Interrogative:
āma=ki paraḫma "did you speak?"
tummi=ki paraḫmasi "did you not speak"
kiz=ki (āma) paraḫma "but did you speak?"
kiz=ki (tummi) paraḫmasi "but did you not speak?"

[Dormouse559]

That sounds fine to me. It reminds me a bit of do-support in English verbs. Verbs can’t take X marker, so you add this other word that can.

[lurker]

Okay, I hit a roadblock with my conlang because of vocabulary generation. I found out that many of my words tend to have a one on one correspondence with English, with the exception of a few words.

What are some tips for avoiding this while generating vocabulary?

Look up the words in wiktionary and check other languages beside English. Look up the words and see what other additional meanings they have in these languages.

I second this suggestion. Another one is to see how words have changed over time. For example, in Spanish (at least Latin American Spanish), raro means bizarre or weird. The original Latin word, rarus meant scattered, far apart, or, as you probably guess, rare. The connection is that if you don't see something often, it looks strange when you do encounter it.

I decided to combine the two senses, as well as extend it even further. Since something weird or bizarre can also be funny, in Commonthroat, the word NPr /long high strengthening grunt, chuff/ can mean amusing, weird, or rare. It even conveniently makes the English phrase that's funny..., like when you find something out of place, work in Commonthroat NPrp...

[LinguoFranco]

1. Is it weird for a language to have CVC syllables, but only allows them to occur word finally, so that you can get CV.CVC but not CVC.CV?


2. How do you decide on the grammar for your language? So far, all I know about mine is that it's agglutinative and has a future vs non-future tense system.

[Creyeditor]

1. No, that's just a constraint again (heterosyllabic?) consonant clusters, right?
2. I try to get a general feeling for the language and then see what fits with this.

[lurker]

2. How do you decide on the grammar for your language? So far, all I know about mine is that it's agglutinative and has a future vs non-future tense system.

The system that ended up working best for me, at least, was to start with one or two broad ideas, which it sounds like you've got, then just bang out a few sentences with glosses, don't even think about structure, just go with what sounds "right" to you. Pretty soon you'll find other things that work with your original vision. You'll build momentum and it'll get easier.

Also, get feedback. That's what has kept me from scrapping my latest project.

You may also just find natural langauges with the features you want to use and see what other grammatical features they have that you like. Maybe some obscure North American language with 300 speakers has agglutination and also clusivity, so you add an inclusive/exclusive distinction to your own lang... you get the idea.

To avoid the kitchen sink problem, see how many ways you can use a particular structure without making your utterances ambiguous. Spanish pronominal verbs have a bunch of uses besides indicating reflexive voice.

el gato se lavó
the cat washed itself (reflexive)

el coche se lavó
The car got washed (passive)

se me rompió
it broke on me (accidental 'se')

and so on.

[Omzinesý]

2. How do you decide on the grammar for your language? So far, all I know about mine is that it's agglutinative and has a future vs non-future tense system.

The system that ended up working best for me, at least, was to start with one or two broad ideas, which it sounds like you've got,

I do quite much the same.
My Dlor started from instrumental prefixes that can also be used for deriving denominal verbs. Then I got some other ideas and considered if they play together with the existing ones. The hard thing is to decide that this idea have to wait for the next project. The ideas have to be concrete. If I decide that this long will have super complex morphology, without knowing what it really is, that just ruins the lang. Often the fine ideas leave some gaps, like Dlor nominal morphology that I think I got the key idea for a year after starting the lang.

[Salmoneus]

I find it can be helpful to have some idea of what languages you might want the conlang to remind you (or others of). You can see what those languages do, and think which things you want to borrow, or which things you might want to hint at but not really copy, and mix and match features from different languages (altering them to fit together in a coherent way). Then when you have a basic idea you can make further alterations unique to your conlang.

Often it can be helpful to think not in terms of features per se, but in terms of interests and attitudes. Different languages tend to focus on different things. For instance, my conlang, Rawàng Ata, is primarily inspired by Austronesian languages (though I also got some ideas from South America). Many austronesian languages famously have a preoccupation with voice, and Rawàng Ata has a weird voice/alignment system, even though it's not one found in Austronesia. Many Austronesian languages, relatedly, are concerned with semantic transitivity, and so is Rawàng Ata, though it's reflected differently. Many Austronesian languages have relatively little (or virtually zero!) clear distinction between nouns and verbs, and likewise Rawàng Ata can be ambiguous (eg directly possessed nouns look an awful lot like person-marked verbs). And so on.

[although I've also just stolen: Rawàng Ata has an Austronesian-style possessive classifier system]

[LinguoFranco]

I have an aversion to intentionally basing my conlangs on IRL languages. At most, I might be base a conlang on one specific feature of a natlang, but try to make it it's own thing on everything else.

For instance, I really like how tenses work in Mayan languages, particularly Yucatec. They're "Tenseless," but it can still be expressed via aspect and mood, and I have heard Yucatec as having a future vs non-future tense contrast.

I am also thinking of adding an ATR based vowel harmony system, but more like the Tungusic and Mongolic languages rather than African.

Aside from that, I have directedly lifted any inspiration from a natlang for my current project. Still, a lot of commonalities and coincidences are inevitable.

One of my abaonded projects ended up being a mish-mash of Japanese, Polynesian and Nahuatl.

[Salmoneus]

My view on this is that your conlang will inevitably look like some natlang or combination of natlangs, because there's only so many things that you can do in a language - so it's better to have control over what it looks like than have it be accidental. Even if "looks like" is sometimes something only the creator would be aware of.

[Creyeditor]

I think it's okay if a language looks like something he didn't expect, as long as it's not involuntarily copying English (or your native language).

[Ahzoh]

From where can I source morphemes to create ablaut classes for my conlang's verbs? That is, what grammatical functions or nuances of grammatical functions can result in these series of vocalic alternation between the realis stem and the irrealis stem?:

Realis > Irrealis:
u > u
u > a
a > u
a > i
a > a
i > i
i > a

In the realis stem of verbs, the theme vowel conveys transitivity/valence:

Either:
a = transitive
u = dynamic intransitive
i = stative intransitive
(Roughly how the theme vowels work in Semitic)
Or:
u = transitive
a = intransitive
i = attributive
(roughly how the theme vowels work in Hurro-Urartian)

But, like, I don't know what grammatical functions these morphemes would have other than they mark the irrealis mood.

[Salmoneus]

I don't think I understand these questions.

You seem to start by asking one question, about diachronics, and end by asking another, about synchronic functions. Which question did you intend?

On the first question: vocalic alternations are not the result of "nuances of grammatical functions". They are the result of sound changes, from original affixation (or stress shift, etc), and are entirely agnostic as to what those affixes (or suprasegmental markers) actually mean.

On the second question: you list a series of markers of realis verbs that specify valency, and then say "I don't know what grammatical functions these morphemes would have other than they mark the irrealis mood". I'm confused. On the one hand, you've just told us what grammatical functions those morphemes have: they mark valency. And on the other hand, you've just told us they mark valency in realis verbs, so they're not marking the irrealis mood at all. And if they were marking the irrealis mood, then... well, that's the grammatical function, isn't it? So what are you asking exactly?

[Ahzoh]

I don't think I understand these questions.

Ok, so the Semitic languages have or had basically fossilized or relict "theme vowels" in their least marked verb form which is the perfective or past tense

Akkadian is slightly different, less about permanent and temporary states, and more about whether the intransitive is a dynamic action (e.g. run, get up) or a stative one (e.g. be old, stand).
Vrkhazhian has something similar in the realis form of the verb

Anyways, but then the Semitic languages have alternations in these vowels between the perfective and imperfective:


There is, as far as I can tell, no rhyme or reason to these alternations. But that makes me uncomfortable so I want a rhyme or reason to MY language's alternations.

---

Now obviously in Vrkhazhian, the realis verb form will be the least marked while the irrealis verb form will be the more marked of the binary. So that means the irrealis will take an affix, specifically something on the right-edge of the word.

So for example p(a)ruḫ meaning "spoke/speak to" and its irrealis form was probably something like p(a)ruḫ-a resulting in p(a)raḫ. But this is boring because there is only one type of vowel alternation, that of /i/ to /a/, /u/ to /a/, and /a/ to /a/.

So like, I don't know if I can get more variation by deciding that intransitives have one type of irrealis suffix while transitives have another type, or if the irrealis suffixes come from semantically-bleaches mood markers. Or maybe they originated from something completely different.

There are also prosodic considerations, since stress falls on the heaviest non-final syllable or the antepenult if there are no heavy syllables. The ancestor of Vrkhazhian had /e o/ that either became /i u/ when stressed in open syllable, /a/ when unstressed in open syllable, or /i u/ in closed syllable. One possible origin of alternation.

[Salmoneus]

Again, I'm still not sure what the question is here. And you seem to be conflating the semantics of moods with the details of sound changes, which have nothing to do with one another. It doesn't matter what the semantics of the theme vowels are in Akkadian, Arabic, or indeed Vrkhazhian, because the semantics don't alter the sound changes.


In terms of how to have a distinction that is seemingly neutralised in some forms, obviously the answer is sound change. There are three obvious options, of which you've already mentioned two:

- the "same" affix comes from two different sources, which had two different effects

- the "same" vowel in the root comes from two different sources, which were affected differently (if the vowels had the same quality, they could have had different lengths or stress levels)

- the same vowel in the root was affected differently in different contexts, which may be predictable (if the environment remains) or non-predictable (if the environmental factor has itself been neutralised).

A fourth option is analogy. For instance, if a certain highly-prominent verb with a certain aktionsart has an unusual alternation due to phonological context, that alternation could be analogised as a marker of a certain aspect. Or, more broadly, an unusual alternation in a common verb could be incompletely analogised to some but not all similar verbs (for a real-world example, certain ablaut variations in Germanic are believed by many to be entirely the result of the verb "to eat" having its laryngeal-influenced alternation exported by analogy to other verbs).

[Ahzoh]

Again, I'm still not sure what the question is here.

I don't know why it's so hard to understand. I am asking about morpheme sources. Morphemes that are to become allomorphs marking a single grammatical category (e.g. indicating the irrealis mood) that in turn cause vowel mutations in the verb root and eventually get elided. But obviously these allomorphs-to-be are going to start off with different semantic distinctions. And I'm inquiring what those semantic distinctions might be.

And you seem to be conflating the semantics of moods with the details of sound changes, which have nothing to do with one another. It doesn't matter what the semantics of the theme vowels are in Akkadian, Arabic, or indeed Vrkhazhian

No, I'm not.

Also changes in semantics (like semantic bleaching) are a source of allomorphy and morpheme variety. It's one means by which you get paradigmatic suppletion, inflection classes, and noun class systems.

because the semantics don't alter the sound changes.

That's not what I'm asking for or talking about. Not at all.

[Salmoneus]

Ahh! So all the stuff about alternations and semitic and transitivity and whatnot was all just red herrings? OK, I get it. So you're actually just asking "what sort of free morphemes might become affixed onto verbs and conceivably end up with an irrealis significance?"

To which the answer is: well, anything you want, really.

First, I'd say that this seems a counterintuitive way to produce different verb classes, if that's your ultimate intent. Much simpler and more common for them to reflect the same morphemes but different original phonemes.

That said, virtually anything could become an affix, and semantics can shift massively. How about one suffix originally means "marshland"? That's a plausible suffix for deriving verbal nouns of place, which can easily act as abstracts, and abstract verbal nouns can easily be reanalysed as irrealis forms. Or maybe it means "nose" - that's a plausible source for an indefinite pronoun (as 'body' and 'head' and so on are in other languages), and an indefinite pronoun can easily be grammaticalised as a marker of indefinite verbs, and indefinites can easily become irrealis. Or it means "under the sun", and becomes an adverbial of potential, which becomes a marker of irrealis. Or "left hand" (contrastives), or "my gift" (concessives), or... etc etc.

There's no need for two different suffixes to actually have different semantics originally, in any case. The choice of suffix could be arbitrary, or triggered by the semantics of the root, or triggered by phonotactic constraints, or spread by analogy from a single source and triggered by phonological resemblance to that source.

[Ahzoh]

and all the stuff about alternations and semitic and transitivity and whatnot was all just red herrings? OK, I get it.

I was describing an endgoal, which is to have a complex series of ablaut classes like the Semitic languages. Mentioning this endgoal was in order to narrow the scope of possibilities to things that would serve to create the stated endgoal.

So you're actually just asking "what sort of free morphemes might become affixed onto verbs and conceivably end up with an irrealis significance?" To which the answer is: well, anything you want, really.

Hoping for ideas only one or two stages removed. So far my ideas included different suffixes based on transitivity or different mood markers that got bleached.

First, I'd say that this seems a counterintuitive way to produce different verb classes, if that's your ultimate intent. Much simpler and more common for them to reflect the same morphemes but different original phonemes.

I don't know how the Semitic languages did it--having such alternation patterns as i>a and a>i and a>u and i>u, etc--so I have to start with my own way.

That said, virtually anything could become an affix, and semantics can shift massively. How about one suffix originally means "marshland"? That's a plausible suffix for deriving verbal nouns of place, which can easily act as abstracts, and abstract verbal nouns can easily be reanalysed as irrealis forms. Or maybe it means "nose" - that's a plausible source for an indefinite pronoun (as 'body' and 'head' and so on are in other languages), and an indefinite pronoun can easily be grammaticalised as a marker of indefinite verbs, and indefinites can easily become irrealis. Or it means "under the sun", and becomes an adverbial of potential, which becomes a marker of irrealis. Or "left hand" (contrastives), or "my gift" (concessives), or... etc etc.

That is a lot of possibilities.