zompist bboard

There is no such thing as a "first" sound change in a language, as languages have no single time in which they come into being. I imagine they mean "first sound change after the constructed proto-language" or something like that. It was one of the first sound changes in the language. The distinctio...

The thing is that velars do not usually become uvulars unconditionally; when they do become uvulars it is usually due to the influence of an adjacent back vowel or further-back-than-velar consonant. My idea came from dialects of Arabic that (iirc) have the emphatics as velarized rather than uvulari...

What are ways to develop word-initial geminates of obstruents (although they would be phonetically realized as tense)? Looking mostly for /p t d k s/. I adore word-initial geminates (blame it on my girlfriends raddoppiamento sintattico). I usually derive it through: 1. Sandhi that basically copies ...

The main options I can think of is to turn them into voiced nasals or to make them split into clusters of non-nasal consonants and voiced nasals. Hmm. So the main place the voiceless nasals would appear is in clusters of the [sN], [xN] sort. Some word-final examples: tara-x-m light-plural.inanimate...

What could I turn voiceless nasals into? Other than back into voiced nasals. I have a lot of [sn,sm],[xn,xm],[pʰn],[kʰn],[tʰn] clusters in intervocalic and word-final positions, which look to me like they would turn into voiceless nasals as other sonorants devoice in these positions in my language (...

I'm trying to derive a three-way contrast in plosives from a proto-lang that has none: Old voiceless stops become the lenis series: /k/ → /k~g/ Old clusters of stops and /h/ become aspirates. /kh/ → /kʰ/ The final series would be from glottal stop and voiceless stop clusters: /kʔ/ → ? What sort of t...

Still trying to work out my vocalic system. The proto-language has a very turkish-like: i y ɯ u ɛ ø a o All of these can be long or short, vowel length is phonemic in the proto-lang. There is vowel harmony. Possible dipthongs are Vj, Vw, other things which might condition the vowels are /Vɣ/, /Vh/, ...

How might back unrounded vowels diphthongize? I'm mostly familiar with diphthongs in English and Quebec French, and I'm wondering what we might expect [ɯː],[ɤː],[ʌː],[ɑː] to diphthongize to.

I sort of wonder: For Italians who do differentiate /s/ and /z/, is there much of a sense of them being separate sounds, or is the situation more like English <th> sounds? (I know that while they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect, many speakers have fully merged them.) Or, for that ...

dénouement - [ˈdɛɪnʉmə̃nʔ] (spelling pronunciation, I'm not familiar with this word). rapprochement - [ɹʷɜˈpʰɹɜʉt͡ʃmə̃nʔ] (possibly also a spelling pronunciation, but I have used this word). three [θɾ̥̪iː] Arthritis [aɹ̠ˈθɾ̪aːɾɘs] Asthma [ˈæzmə] They [ðɛ̞ɪ] Brother [ˈb̥ɹʷɜðɚ] Friulian [fɹʷʏʉlijən] N...

I have a rather weird one I want to ask about. s/k/_# Does that seem too far fetched? Seems unlikely. Perhaps: gliding [s→j/_#] fortition [j→c/_#] depalatalization [c→k/_#] But I wouldn't expect fortition of [j] in final position. Maybe derive it by morphology. Like if -s is an affix, -k starts tak...

What peculiarities might we see in a language which does not have vowel harmony, but whose ancestor did? I'm working on my conlang's vowel system, and I would like a situation where the ancestor had front-back harmony, but this system collapsed. I want it to still show up vestigially in the language...

Consonants /m n ɲ ŋ/ /p t k ʔ b d g/ /ts tʃ cç dz dʒ ɟʝ/ /f s ʃ ç x h/ /r rʲ ʋ j/ /l ʎ/ Vowels: [+ATR / -low] group: /e i o u ɘ̆/ /ei ɘʉ/ [-ATR / -high] group: /a ɒ ɛ ɔ ɜ̆/ /aɛ aɒ/ - +/- ATR / vowel height harmony - Fricatives become voiced between vowels. - Approximant/nasal+h cluster is realized a...

[ɔːstɹ̩]
[s] might be a velarized

What are some interesting things to do with geminate consonants?
Currently I have /bː,dː,gː,pː,tː,kː,zː,sː,vː,fː,mː,nː,lː,jː,ɲː,ʎː/
I'd like to do more than just degeminate them, especially if they could develop into something less Romance-y.

There are some languages that appear to have had SOV without case marking, I think late Akkadian. It lost case marking but continued to use the SOV order it had developed from a Sumerian substrate.

I'll look into Sorbian and Niger-Congo.

SOV changing to other word orders has been well-documented, however it seems to be much rarer for languages to change to SOV from another word order. I have been looking for an example of a language changing to SOV where the change is not due to language contact. So far i've only been able to find s...

house [hɛʉs] houses [haəzɪz] owl [æəl] owls [æwlz] bright [bɹəɪt] bride [bɹæːd] boy [bɒɪ] boys [bɒɪz] goat [gɛʉt] goad [goʊd] bay [bei] bays [bɛɪz] beer [biəɹ] or [biə]* beers [biəz] cure [kjɝ] or [kjə]* cures [kjəːz] *My r-dropping is inconsistent. My knowledge of vowel phones isn't perfect, but th...