The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
Post Reply
Ambrisio
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 189
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:27 pm

The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Ambrisio »

Introduction
Quququqquq is a conlang that I started sketching when I was fourteen. It's inspired by Finnish and Piraha.

Quququqquq is an extinct Kunipan language, with no native speakers, though people all over Fronties learn it for its unique mathematical properties (I'm not sure exactly what those properties are-- but, you know, the language has to be quaquaversal! And that's in fact a Quququqquq word -- quaqua means 'everywhere')

Phonology
There is one consonant phoneme, spelled <q>, and two vowel phonemes, spelled <a u>. There is a length distinction. indicated with an umlaut: <ä ü>.

<q> has at least five allophones: [t d k g ?]:
[?] word-finally,
[t, d] before /a/,
[k, g] before /u/,
[t, k] at the beginning of a word or when geminated,
[d, g] otherwise

There are six tones in Quququqquq:

1) neutral (e.g. a [ɔ], u )
2) high and long (e.g. ä [æ˥:], ü [o˥:])
3) falling (e.g. äa [a˥˧:], üu [u˥˧:])
4) rising (e.g. aä [a˧˥:])
5) rising-falling (e.g. aäa [æ˧˥˧:])
6) high rising (e.g. ää [æ˦˥:])

A is rounded to something like /ø/ before U -- so the word qau 'to play' is pronounced [tøy]. In some dialects [t] is assibilated to [ts], hence [tsøy].

Spoken Quququqquq has other phonemes, but they are used paralinguistically. Oddly enough, many of these are similar to ordinary English speech sounds and are in fact borrowed from other Irenesian languages, where they are used as speech sounds!

(It's kind of like clicks. By the way, click languages are much more widespread in my conworld than on Earth -- the whole Hirbic subfamily of Irenesian comprises about 700 languages, all of them with phonemic clicks! An example is Len!ir, which has four clicks: dental, alveolar, nasalized dental and nasalized alveolar.)

Morphology

Quququqquq is highly inflecting -- but it does not mark verbs for tense. Instead there's a huge array of aspect, mood and bipersonal suffixes.

There are twenty-four noun cases in Quququqquq -- which is typical of Kunipan but not of Irenesian languages in general. The most widely spoken Irenesian language, Auzinim, has only three noun cases in pronouns (nominative, genitive and partitive), while nouns don't inflect at all!

The twenty-four noun cases are the Estonian ones plus exessive, superessive, delative, superlative, subessive, sublative, "off-saying" (?), apudessive, apudlative, and "away-from-saying" (?). I'll explain the ones with weird Latin names shortly.

Like in most other Irenesian languages (except for a few Sylvan ones), there are no genders.

Here's a typical Quququqquq noun: aqua 'water' (a Latin loanword -- its Proto-Kunipan root is pekjŋe /bəc.ɲə/).

aqua - nominative (water)
aqü - genitive (water's) -- from 'pekjŋwe'
aquaq - partitive (some water) - from 'pekjŋek'
aqüa - illative (in/into water) - from 'pekjŋwa'
aquaqa - inessive (in water) - from 'pekjŋepe'
aquaqu- elative (from water) - from 'pekjŋepje'
aquä - allative - from 'pekjŋem'
aquäa - adessive - from 'pekjŋeme'
aquäu - ablative - from 'pekjŋemje'
aquäqa - delative- from 'pekjŋempe'
aquäqqa - superessive- from 'pekjŋemppe'
aquäqqu - superlative - from 'pekjŋemppje'
aqü - sublative- from 'pekjŋej'
aqüu - subessive - from 'pekjŋeje'
aqüü - "off-saying" - from 'pekjŋejje'
aquäqä - apudlative- from 'pekjŋempaŋ'
aquäqäa - apudessive- from 'pekjŋempaŋe'
aquäqäu - "away-from-saying"- from 'pekjŋempaŋje'
aquaqq - translative- from 'pekjŋepp'
aquäqaq - terminative- from 'pekjŋepak'
aquaqqa - essive- from 'pekjŋeppe'
aquaqqu -exessive- from 'pekjŋeppje'
aquaquqa - abessive- from 'pekjŋepweka'
aquaquq - comitative- from 'pekjŋekjep'
The plural suffix is -uqqaqq.

The pronouns:
qaqq 'I' - from 'kjapp'
qü 'you' - from 'kwem'
qä 'he/she/it/this/that/they (sing.)' - from 'pam'
qaqquqqaqq 'we' - from 'kjapp wepkapp'
qüuqqaqq - 'you folks/you (pl.)'
qäuqqaqq - 'they (pl.)/these/those'

User avatar
Lyra
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2012 1:47 pm
Location: CATALUNYA INDEPENDÈNCIA TERRA LLIURE

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Lyra »

So, ummm, wow, let's see here...
Ambrisio wrote:Introduction
Quququqquq is an extinct Kunipan language, with no native speakers, though people all over Fronties learn it for its unique mathematical properties (I'm not sure exactly what those properties are-- but, you know, the language has to be quaquaversal! And that's in fact a Quququqquq word -- quaqua means 'everywhere')
Sorry, but I fail to see how the language has to be everywhere-versal. Please do explain.
Ambrisio wrote: Phonology
There is one consonant phoneme, spelled <q>, and two vowel phonemes, spelled <a u>. There is a length distinction. indicated with an umlaut: <ä ü>.

<q> has at least five allophones: [t d k g ?]:
[?] word-finally,
[t, d] before /a/,
[k, g] before /u/,
[t, k] at the beginning of a word or when geminated,
[d, g] otherwise
Now quite sure that's how allophony works. Hey, I could be wrong, but I don't think the allphones can be so ambiguous. At first I thought there was no distinction between the two allophones of each phoneme but it seems they are repeated elsewhere. Thus I don't think you can represent all these sounds with one symbol unless you change the circumstances of each allophone seperately.
Ambrisio wrote: A is rounded to something like /ø/ before U -- so the word qau 'to play' is pronounced [tøy]. In some dialects [t] is assibilated to [ts], hence [tsøy].
Only one vocalic allophone?
Ambrisio wrote: Spoken Quququqquq has other phonemes, but they are used paralinguistically. Oddly enough, many of these are similar to ordinary English speech sounds and are in fact borrowed from other Irenesian languages, where they are used as speech sounds!
Okay, so why are they similar to English ordinary speech? And, how dd these people go on with such a language when they could use ssuch relativly exotic loans? And why English in particular?
Ambrisio wrote: Morphology

Quququqquq is highly inflecting -- but it does not mark verbs for tense. Instead there's a huge array of aspect, mood and bipersonal suffixes.
Which are?
Ambrisio wrote: There are twenty-four noun cases in Quququqquq -- which is typical of Kunipan but not of Irenesian languages in general. The most widely spoken Irenesian language, Auzinim, has only three noun cases in pronouns (nominative, genitive and partitive), while nouns don't inflect at all!


The twenty-four noun cases are the Estonian ones plus exessive, superessive, delative, superlative, subessive, sublative, "off-saying" (?), apudessive, apudlative, and "away-from-saying" (?). I'll explain the ones with weird Latin names shortly.

Like in most other Irenesian languages (except for a few Sylvan ones), there are no genders.

Here's a typical Quququqquq noun: aqua 'water' (a Latin loanword -- its Proto-Kunipan root is pekjŋe /bəc.ɲə/).

aqua - nominative (water)
aqü - genitive (water's) -- from 'pekjŋwe'
aquaq - partitive (some water) - from 'pekjŋek'
aqüa - illative (in/into water) - from 'pekjŋwa'
aquaqa - inessive (in water) - from 'pekjŋepe'
aquaqu- elative (from water) - from 'pekjŋepje'
aquä - allative - from 'pekjŋem'
aquäa - adessive - from 'pekjŋeme'
aquäu - ablative - from 'pekjŋemje'
aquäqa - delative- from 'pekjŋempe'
aquäqqa - superessive- from 'pekjŋemppe'
aquäqqu - superlative - from 'pekjŋemppje'
aqü - sublative- from 'pekjŋej'
aqüu - subessive - from 'pekjŋeje'
aqüü - "off-saying" - from 'pekjŋejje'
aquäqä - apudlative- from 'pekjŋempaŋ'
aquäqäa - apudessive- from 'pekjŋempaŋe'
aquäqäu - "away-from-saying"- from 'pekjŋempaŋje'
aquaqq - translative- from 'pekjŋepp'
aquäqaq - terminative- from 'pekjŋepak'
aquaqqa - essive- from 'pekjŋeppe'
aquaqqu -exessive- from 'pekjŋeppje'
aquaquqa - abessive- from 'pekjŋepweka'
aquaquq - comitative- from 'pekjŋekjep'
The plural suffix is -uqqaqq.

The pronouns:
qaqq 'I' - from 'kjapp'
qü 'you' - from 'kwem'
qä 'he/she/it/this/that/they (sing.)' - from 'pam'
qaqquqqaqq 'we' - from 'kjapp wepkapp'
qüuqqaqq - 'you folks/you (pl.)'
qäuqqaqq - 'they (pl.)/these/those'
How and why do the pronouns work as such? Could you give us some examples?
Also, I think most cases have Latin names. It would be nice to give an example of each or then this language is looking very kitchen sinky.

And there we ago again with a real world language loan word? How is it a loan word from Latin when it has a conlang root?


I can see that this is a pretty innovative project, but if you want to do it right ou can't just bunch up a whole load of interesting features and cases half-arsedly. It all has to work cohesivly.


Sorry for the typos this is a library keyboard



~Lyra
"In the liver we trust."
Image
From yonder, in the land of TWC.

User avatar
Pole, the
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1606
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:50 am

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Pole, the »

Lyra wrote:
Ambrisio wrote: Phonology
There is one consonant phoneme, spelled <q>, and two vowel phonemes, spelled <a u>. There is a length distinction. indicated with an umlaut: <ä ü>.

<q> has at least five allophones: [t d k g ?]:
[?] word-finally,
[t, d] before /a/,
[k, g] before /u/,
[t, k] at the beginning of a word or when geminated,
[d, g] otherwise
Now quite sure that's how allophony works. Hey, I could be wrong, but I don't think the allphones can be so ambiguous. At first I thought there was no distinction between the two allophones of each phoneme but it seems they are repeated elsewhere. Thus I don't think you can represent all these sounds with one symbol unless you change the circumstances of each allophone seperately.
It is in no measure ambiguous, you just have to write out the intersection of the circumstances:
[ʔ] word finally,
[t] before /a/ and at the beginning of a word or when geminated
[d] before /a/ and otherwise
[k] before /u/ and at the beginning of a word or when geminated
[g] before /u/ and otherwise
The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

User avatar
Sakir
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 58
Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:15 pm
Location: Shanghai, China
Contact:

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Sakir »

Simply sadistic: you are a bad human being. That said, I smiled reading it; are there other languages with so many noun cases? How did Quququqquq lose all the other consonants from Proto-Kunipan?

User avatar
kodé
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 175
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 8:25 pm
Location: Trojan Country

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by kodé »

Uh... how many words can this language have? There is one consonant phoneme, and two vowel phonemes, which expand to nine if you count tone/length contrasts. Still, assuming your syllable structure is (C)(V)V(V)(C), and that there can only be one locus of tone per syllable (which is pretty much guaranteed if you want this to be anything like human language, you only have 144 possible syllables:

a (x 6 tones) = 6
u (x 3 tones) = 3
qa, qu = 9
aq, uq = 9
qaq, quq = 9
(q)ua(q) = 36
(q)au(q) = 36
(q)uau(q) = 36
36 x 4 = 144

This may seem like plenty, compared to, say, Japanese and Hawai'ian, but note that you can't make different words out of every combination: CVC + VC is identical to CV + CVC. Moreover, it is highly unlike for any human language to have multiple complex tones in polysyllabic words, so let's say that only two or three of the tones can occur on more than one syllable in the word. This greatly limits the number of words you can have in the language: probably you can only have a very limited vocabulary, and I don't think there's any way such a language can have the complex morphology you describe, unless you want most of your words to be five or six syllables long, or only have a few hundred roots (many of which will be homophonous with other roots + inflections).

In more practical terms, there's no way this is a feasible medium of communication, unless your species have a much, much better auditory system than humans. In fast speech, most of your sentences are going to sound the same because not enough redundancy in the acoustic signal, and won't be parseable.

But, hey, don't let reality dissuade you. Experiment!
linguoboy wrote:
GrinningManiac wrote:Local pronunciation - /ˈtoʊ.stə/
Ah, so now I know where Towcester pastries originated! Cheers.

Ambrisio
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 189
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:27 pm

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Ambrisio »

Sorry, but I fail to see how the language has to be everywhere-versal. Please do explain.
It's a play on words - the English word 'quaquaversal' happens to begin like a Quququqquq word.
Only one vocalic allophone?
There are a lot more: a /ɔ~æ~a~ø/ and u /o~u~y/.
Which are?
I've not really decided on the inflections. I'll probably steal the moods from Nenets and the bipersonal suffixes from Hungarian (after all, it's a Uralic-inspired language).
bunch up a whole load of interesting features and cases half-arsedly
Say that about Hungarian or Estonian!
you are a bad human being
I really don't know how conlanging can make someone a bad human being.

User avatar
Sakir
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 58
Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:15 pm
Location: Shanghai, China
Contact:

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Sakir »

Ambrisio wrote:
you are a bad human being
I really don't know how conlanging can make someone a bad human being.
Just to be perfectly clear, I was being light-hearted. :)

Mornche Geddick
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 370
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:22 pm
Location: UK

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Mornche Geddick »

What's the Quququqquq for "pulling our legs"?

Ambrisio
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 189
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:27 pm

Re: The Quququqquq language / Quququqquq Qaqqaäa

Post by Ambrisio »

Qaqquqqaqqa uüqauqaäaqaqaqquqä.

Post Reply