Page 4 of 5

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 11:19 am
by Drydic
Try sounding more smug.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:16 pm
by ObsequiousNewt
Has anyone created or considered creating an equivalent of this thread for consonant systems?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 11:53 pm
by clawgrip
Ideally something like that would be nice, but I wonder how you could organize something like that, since consonants are much more complex.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 6:22 am
by Nortaneous
Maybe for plosive systems?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2013 1:06 pm
by Tropylium
Even that's gonna be difficult. Vowels fit into basically 2-3 dimensions. Consonants are something like… well there's also a basic 3d grid of POA × MOA × phonation, but all of those already have more divisions than the main contrasts in vowel systems (backness × height × roundedness), and then you get modifiers like "nasal" "sibilant" "lateral" all over the place.

Here's a very limited survey I did a while ago, which gets quite complex already:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Ejective/Inventories

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2013 6:30 pm
by Whimemsz
Better late than never:
Hallow XIII wrote:Other things include Ojibwe with five long but only three short vowels,
It's actually four long vowels. The vowel system is long /i: e: o: a:/, short /i o a/. Also shared with some dialects of Cree. (Apparently the Ojibwe spoken in parts of Wisconsin has[/had] short /e/, though? I don't know the details.)

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:30 am
by Bristel
My conlang "Novemberlang" has just one phonemic vowel, /ə/. But it has a few allophonic vowels (maybe in a later stage more). It has /u/ after /k w/, /i/ after /j/ and /a/ after /ʁ/. Thought about doing /o/ after /p/ or something, but I didn't want to go overboard with allophonic vowels.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:33 am
by Hallow XIII
Whimemsz wrote:Better late than never:
Hallow XIII wrote:Other things include Ojibwe with five long but only three short vowels,
It's actually four long vowels. The vowel system is long /i: e: o: a:/, short /i o a/. Also shared with some dialects of Cree. (Apparently the Ojibwe spoken in parts of Wisconsin has[/had] short /e/, though? I don't know the details.)
I will be brutally honest: I was too lazy to look up how many long vowels Ojibwe has (I only knew it was more than three). Damn those Amerindian u-less systems!

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:41 am
by finlay
Bristel wrote:allophonic vowels.../u/... /i/.../a/.../o/...allophonic vowels.
isn't this lesson 1?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:22 pm
by Particles the Greek
ObsequiousNewt wrote:Has anyone created or considered creating an equivalent of this thread for consonant systems?
Inspired by this thread, rather than trying to establish an exhaustive typology, perhaps it might be better to collect some representative systems of various sizes (e.g. less than 10 consonants, 10-20, 20-30, and so on)?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 2:16 am
by Bristel
finlay wrote:
Bristel wrote:allophonic vowels.../u/... /i/.../a/.../o/...allophonic vowels.
isn't this lesson 1?
I dunno, is it? How about explaining that I accidentally used phonetic slashes instead of phonemic brackets? ;)

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:10 am
by finlay
you've been posting here for 4 years though, you must have been taught this four years ago.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:45 pm
by Nortaneous
Another interesting vowel system is the one on Nuosu / Liangshan Yi, which has a six-vowel system /a ɛ ɔ o i ɯ/ (though /ɛ o/ sound to me like [æ u]) plus four fricated vowels, written <u ur y yr> -- but it's best analyzed as having a tense/lax split, with the tense vowels /ɛ a ɔ v̠̩ z̠̩/ and the corresponding lax vowels /i ɯ o v̩ z̩/.

I'm not sure what's going on with the articulation of the fricated tense vowels; I can't pronounce anything that sounds at all like them. Source says "tension is formed on the aryepiglottal folds by pulling them close to one another in a way that causes much turbulence in the larynx". You can hear them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43KpZ_90d4

There's also something odd going on with the vowel harmony, where in certain cases (in the first syllable of compound words where the second syllable is a tense non-back vowel and does not have low tone, I think), /ɯ/ doesn't lower to [a], but only to [ɯ̠].

Wikipedia is wrong about the vowel system -- <u> isn't /u/; it's a fricative. There are no characters in the Yi script for u ur y yr with no onset (and you'll notice in the video that the guy doesn't say u ur y yr, but vu vur ssy ssyr -- <ss> is /z/), but there are for all the non-fricated vowels. IOW there's no contrast between /v̩ vv̩/, or between /z̩ zz̩/, and the same applies to the tense vowels.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:20 pm
by Pogostick Man
dhok wrote:Common among conlangers, I think, is T6R:

T6R

Code: Select all

i y   u
 e    o
    a
I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature
Aikanã, ignoring the nasality distinction.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 6:00 am
by Valdeut
Pogostick Man wrote:
dhok wrote:Common among conlangers, I think, is T6R:

T6R

Code: Select all

i y   u
 e    o
    a
I don't know of any languages where this appears in nature
Aikanã, ignoring the nasality distinction.
Also, Medieval Greek until the 10th century. No nasal vowels, length distinction or diphthongs, just 6 monophthongs: /i y u e o a/. There were probably some varieties of Koine Greek that already had that system as well.

Also, the Classical Latin of educated Romans probably had that 6-vowel system (with a length distinction), with /y/ and /yː/ only in Greek loans. I'm not sure how common it was to actually use /y/ and /yː/ (rather than merging them with /i/ and /iː/) in Latin speech. But I would guess the reason the system is common among conlangers is that it is basically the vowel system of the Latin alphabet (based on the Latin pronunciation).

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2014 9:22 pm
by Seirios
^ Actually when Greek had lost its length distinction and merged historical long e into i (i.e.η>ι) I think the system was already established. That is, since a late period of Koine Greek probably. Slightly before that there were two e's with distinction in height, and a bit more earlier the length distinction would still be yet to be lost, with a system like a a: e e: E: i i: u: o o: y y: where E: was higher and e: was lower.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:28 am
by TaylorS
Nortaneous wrote: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.
Well, if PIE can give rise to the insanity that is Germanic vowels, Proto-Oceanic can easily make that!

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 9:13 am
by R.Rusanov
What's so cray cray about German vowels?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 4:18 pm
by sirdanilot
R.Rusanov wrote:What's so cray cray about German vowels?
There's a hella lot of them. Note that he said GermanIC, this applies to all germanic languages.
The insane amount of vowel quality distinctions in English as well as other germanic languages may seem completely ordinary to a native speaker of these languages, but it is in fact a typologically fairly uncommon feature. In fact the record for most phonemically distinctive vowel qualities is probably a Germanic language/dialect, though it remains to be seen which one exactly. I have read that it would be one dialect of Bavaria, but I have also heard a Limburgish (southern holland) variety as having the most vowels, namely the dialect of Weert.
The presence of front-rounded vowels is also fairly uncommon though by no means balls-to-the-walls-bat-shit-crazy.

Of course other languages in the world might have more vowels, but they would not be distinctive by vowel quality alone but by other features, such as nasalization, different phonation types, gemination etc. Of course all is a matter of analysis; for example, you can see the gazillion different vowels in Dutch as being divided between 'short' (associated with lax/more central) and 'long' (associated between 'tense' or less central) members of pairs, such as o - ɔ y - ʏ i - ɪ a - ɑ etc. However, if you then look at it phonetically vowels that are traditionally considered 'long' (due to historical reasons; for example /i/) aren't phonetically longer than their 'short' counterparts, so we are truly dealing with only a quality distinction here.

The 'advanced tongue root' coined for many African languages is also something I would consider different vowel qualities, because in essence it's hardly different from lax vs. tense vowels in Germanic languages.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 4:05 pm
by Birdlang
My conlang Swampsparrownese has 15 vowels, and it is written in Cyrillic.it has /i e æ/ /u ɯ o ɤ ɑ ɒ/ /ɨ ʉ ɘ ɵ a ɶ/. Know any similar vowel sets?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 4:16 pm
by ivazaéun
/ɶ/ is not attested in any natlang, let alone as a language's only front rounded vowel.

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 6:13 pm
by Porphyrogenitos
While this thread is active again - are there any languages with just a plain /a i u/ vowel system, but without any length contrast?

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 6:51 pm
by zompist
Porphyrogenitos wrote:While this thread is active again - are there any languages with just a plain /a i u/ vowel system, but without any length contrast?
Sure— Quechua, Cree, Moroccan Arabic, Aleut...

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 6:58 pm
by Porphyrogenitos
zompist wrote:
Porphyrogenitos wrote:While this thread is active again - are there any languages with just a plain /a i u/ vowel system, but without any length contrast?
Sure— Quechua, Cree, Moroccan Arabic, Aleut...
Oh okay. For some reason I thought Quechua had a length contrast. The only other examples of /a i u/ systems I could think of offhand were Classical Arabic and Warlpiri, which both have length contrasts. Thanks!

Re: Vowel Systems

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 7:09 pm
by vokzhen
Birdlang wrote:My conlang Swampsparrownese has 15 vowels, and it is written in Cyrillic.it has /i e æ/ /u ɯ o ɤ ɑ ɒ/ /ɨ ʉ ɘ ɵ a ɶ/. Know any similar vowel sets?
It's extremely crowded. You've got /i ɨ ʉ ɯ u/. Almost no language contrasts any of /ɨ ʉ ɯ/, the Southern Sami example with two of them /i y ɨ ʉ u/ is extremely odd. And afaik any set of high vowels with 4 members includes /y/. /ɨ ɯ/ are often just two ways of writing the same sound, as there's an unrounded vowel between back and central so the choice of which to use comes down to convention (iirc, big emphasis on iirc, Vietnamese /ɯ/ is often more front than Welsh /ɨ/). Similar problems with the mid vowels as the high. Distinguishing /ɑ ɒ/ without length differences is pretty rare, and even rarer is a three-way contrast between /æ a ɑ/. I'm not sure a four-way between /æ a ɑ ɒ/ even exists, and if it did there'd almost certainly other things going on (e.g. /æ/ is really [ɛ] and /ɑ/ is [ɑ:]). I'm not sure an open central rounded vowel is even attested, let alone as a phoneme, which is presumably what you meant by /ɶ/.