Vowel Systems

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clawgrip
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by clawgrip »

Nortaneous wrote:
clawgrip wrote:An interesting post. I understood the basic principles, but it is nice to see so many concrete examples. Good work.

Analyzing my own language, Himmaswa, I realize it has a base system that is not on your list:

Code: Select all

i     u
e ø ə o 
    a
Do you know of any natural languages with this system?
I think I've seen this before, but I'm not sure where. I'm certain that /a e ø o i u/ is attested though.

Also, two of my conlangs have vowel systems that aren't on here: Insular Kett has /a e/ and Arve has /a ɛ ɞ ʌ ɔ e ø i y u/.
I actually left out /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ because I was considering them short versions of /iː/ and /uː/, but if I count them as vowels in their own right, and indicate the mid vowels more clearly, then I end up with this:

Code: Select all

i      u
  ɪ   ʊ
    ə
ɛ œ    ɔ
    a
Maybe this could be represented as:

Code: Select all

i ɪ ʊ u
ɛ œ ə ɔ
   a
I don't really know.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Nortaneous »

Vuvuzela wrote:One of my langs, Classical Minva, has six short vowels
/e ə i~ɪ ɔ ʊ u/
Colors indicate vowel harmony class, with blue being neutral.
In words with /ɔ ʊ/ /e/ merges with /i~ɪ/ as [ɪ], while in words with /e u/, /ɔ ʊ/ correspond to /u/. I know several Indian languages have short vowel systems which replace T5 /a/ with /ə/, so is this a tenable variation on that?
No. Short vowel systems aren't whole vowel systems. You aren't going to not have /a/, but you can say it's raised a bit from cardinal position or whatever. I'd expect it to be fronted though, but nobody said it had to be stable. Also that color scheme is a pain in the ass. The harmony is fine though.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Vuvuzela »

Nortaneous wrote: No. Short vowel systems aren't whole vowel systems.
This is a short vowel system, though, hence the
Vuvuzela wrote:Classical Minva, has six short vowels
The long vowels are
Light: /ɑ: o: u:/
Dark: /ɛ: ɔ: ʊ:/
Shadow: /e~ ̙e: i:~ɪ:/
I've labeled allophones where they are conditioned by vowel harmony. /ɑ:/ is a bit fronter than in English, and /ɛ:/ is really somewhere between /æ:/ and it's cardinal position.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by R.Rusanov »

Code: Select all

i   u
e   o
ɛ   ɔ 
a   ɒ
My, uh, Romlang has this vowel system ^

Anything cool I can do with that? I was thinking something like stressed ɛ>e and the rest to a, and stressed ɔ>o with the rest to ɒ, but I dunno.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by dhok »

R.Rusanov wrote:

Code: Select all

i   u
e   o
ɛ   ɔ 
a   ɒ
My, uh, Romlang has this vowel system ^

Anything cool I can do with that? I was thinking something like stressed ɛ>e and the rest to a, and stressed ɔ>o with the rest to ɒ, but I dunno.
Y'could put in a chain shift ɒ>ɔ>o>u>y, and end up with Portuguese+/y/.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Pogostick Man »

Didn't Latin have T6R in its monophthongs (EDIT: Or was "I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature" directed at S6R?)?
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Salmoneus »

Linguifex wrote:Didn't Latin have T6R in its monophthongs (EDIT: Or was "I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature" directed at S6R?)?
Huh? No, Latin just had the normal five vowels (long and short), no front rounded vowels.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Pogostick Man »

Salmoneus wrote:
Linguifex wrote:Didn't Latin have T6R in its monophthongs (EDIT: Or was "I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature" directed at S6R?)?
Huh? No, Latin just had the normal five vowels (long and short), no front rounded vowels.
Then what was ⟨y⟩? Wiktionary seems to imply that it had a front rounded vowel. I think Wheelock did too, but I don't have my Wheelock on hand atm.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by sangi39 »

Linguifex wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
Linguifex wrote:Didn't Latin have T6R in its monophthongs (EDIT: Or was "I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature" directed at S6R?)?
Huh? No, Latin just had the normal five vowels (long and short), no front rounded vowels.
Then what was ⟨y⟩? Wiktionary seems to imply that it had a front rounded vowel. I think Wheelock did too, but I don't have my Wheelock on hand atm.
Quoting Wikipedia's article onhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin spelling and pronunciation
Adoption of Greek upsilon

⟨y⟩ was used in Greek loanwords with upsilon (⟨υ⟩, representing /y/). Latin originally had no close front rounded vowel as a distinctive phoneme, and speakers tended to pronounce such loanwords with /u/ (in archaic Latin) or /i/ (in classical and late Latin) if they were unable to produce [y].
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Salmoneus »

Yeah, Latin had a front rounded vowel, and aspirated stops, in the same way that English has nasal vowels, uvular rhotics, palatal fricatives, front rounded vowels and so on.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Vuvuzela »

Salmoneus wrote:Yeah, Latin had a front rounded vowel, and aspirated stops, in the same way that English has nasal vowels, uvular rhotics, palatal fricatives, front rounded vowels and so on.
may be more analogous to how English has /x/. That is, significant enough to be listed in phonology charts as a loan phoneme, but absent from most speech. Also,
palatal fricatives,
That's an allophone of /hj/IMD, not something people only say when they're trying to pretend to know German or w/e.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Salmoneus »

Vuvuzela wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:Yeah, Latin had a front rounded vowel, and aspirated stops, in the same way that English has nasal vowels, uvular rhotics, palatal fricatives, front rounded vowels and so on.
may be more analogous to how English has /x/. That is, significant enough to be listed in phonology charts as a loan phoneme, but absent from most speech.
More like nasal vowels, I'd say. At least IME/IMI, /x/ only crops up in a tiny number of rare words (only ones I can think of off-hand are 'loch' and 'Fach'), and a very small number of personal and placenames. Nasal vowels, on the other hand, are a lot more frequent and more common (avant-garde, restaraunt, genre, entourage, penchant, etc) though still only used in loanwords and only used by certain speakers (probably more speakers, however, than go to the effort of pronouncing /x/, I should say).
Also,
palatal fricatives,
That's an allophone of /hj/IMD, not something people only say when they're trying to pretend to know German or w/e.
Just because you realise a cluster a certain way in certain circumstances doesn't make it a single phoneme, nor the same phoneme as occurs in certain loanwords outside of those circumstances!
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Richard W »

FearfulJesuit wrote: S9C adds /ɨ ə/ to T7L instead. It's found in European Portuguese and Thai:

S9C

Code: Select all

i  ɨ  u
e  ə  o
ɛ     ɔ
   a
Some analyses of European Portuguese have /ə ɐ/ instead of /ɨ ə/, however, which would be T9C instead. With /ɯ ɤ/ instead of /ɨ ə/ [S9U] we have Lao.
Whether Thai is recorded as having /ɯ ɤ/ or /ɨ ə/ seems to be more a matter of tradition and available fonts than of phonetics.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by R.Rusanov »

Code: Select all

i      u
     ɤ o
ɛ   
    a
/a ɛ i o u ɤ/

^ Bulgarian

Unstressed e and o are collapsing into i and u. Unstressed a into ɐ which many speakers are merging with ɤ. So our unstressed vowel system will probably be /i u ə/ before too long, providing you your hypothetical 3Td
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Nortaneous »

beep beep bump have some vanuatu

Code: Select all

7: Volow, Mwotlap, Vera'a, Nume (Olrat has this system + length distinction in every vowel)
i u
ɪ ʊ 
ɛ ɔ
 a

7+1: Koro
i u
ɪ ʊ 
ɛ ɔ
 a
ɛa

8: Dorig
i u
ɪ ʊ 
ɛ ɔ
 a
 a:

8: Lakon: (+ length distinction in every vowel)
i u
ɪ ʊ 
ɛ ɔ
æ a

8: Hiw
i   ʉ 
e ə ɵ o
      ɔ
   a

8: Lehali
i u
e o
ɛ ɔ 
æ a

8+1: Lehalurup
i   u
e   o
ɛ œ ɔ 
a
ie

8+5: Lo-Toga
i   ʉ 
e ə   o
ɛ     ɔ
   a 
ie iɛ ia oə oɔ

9+3: Mwerlap
i ʉ
ɪ ɵ ʊ
ɛ ɞ ɔ
a      
ɛa ɔɞ ʊɵ

10: Lemerig
i     u 
ɪ ø   ʊ
ɛ œ   ɔ
    a ɒ
These all came from a protolang inventory of /a e i o u/ and here's how.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

Nortaneous wrote:These all came from a protolang inventory of /a e i o u/
... UGHHH!!! This is practically a license to make up vowel systems or vowels changes by throwing darts at the IPA table.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by gach »

2+3 clusivity wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:These all came from a protolang inventory of /a e i o u/
... UGHHH!!! This is practically a license to make up vowel systems or vowels changes by throwing darts at the IPA table.
Well, in conlangery everything is exeptable as long as you are able to justify it.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Drydic »

2+3 clusivity wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:These all came from a protolang inventory of /a e i o u/
... UGHHH!!! This is practically a license to make up vowel systems or vowels changes by throwing darts at the IPA table.
...you don't do this (metaphorically speaking)?
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Hallow XIII »

Well, er, yes. That's always how it's been, with the implicit understanding that you have to be good enough to explain your dartboard vowels with diachronics.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Nortaneous »

That also answers the Himmaswa question: the vowel system there is pretty much the same as Hiw, if you count /ɔo̯/ as /o/ and ignore /u/-fronting.
2+3 clusivity wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:These all came from a protolang inventory of /a e i o u/
... UGHHH!!! This is practically a license to make up vowel systems or vowels changes by throwing darts at the IPA table.
Mr. Kurtz wrote:The horror, the horror, the horror.
:)
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by clawgrip »

Neat. Also I suspect that in a future form of Himmaswa, the long version of /ø/, realized as [ʏœ̯], will eventually become /y/. The raising gradually happened in my speech by accident.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Drydic »

Hallow XIII wrote:Well, er, yes. That's always how it's been, with the implicit understanding that you have to be good enough to explain your dartboard vowels with diachronics.
Yes, I assumed that was assumed.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

Drydic Guy wrote:...you don't do this (metaphorically speaking)?
gach wrote:Well, in conlangery everything is exeptable as long as you are able to justify it.
Hallow XIII wrote:Well, er, yes. That's always how it's been, with the implicit understanding that you have to be good enough to explain your dartboard vowels with diachronics.
Oh, yes of course, at the end of the day conlanging is a creative--perhaps artistic process--wherein you throw darts at the IPA table unless you are working a posteriori. I was just lamenting that natlangs often show you that diachronic changes can be seemingly/arguably near random (read: VERY messy) at times.
linguoboy wrote:So that's what it looks like when the master satirist is moistened by his own moutarde.

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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by Hallow XIII »

Why? These changes make perfect sense.
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Re: Vowel Systems

Post by R.Rusanov »

I hate to agree with Hollow but they are

Paʀi > per
Paʀe > pær
Paʀa > par
Paʀo > pɒr
Paʀu > por

etc. to keep the distinctions present that had existed before while eliminating unstressed syllables
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