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.
KathAveara wrote:What sort of conditions could I use to have both z > ts / _# and z > s / _# (and maybe retention of z in all other cases)?
For z > s / _#, that's just final devoicing. Not sure how z > ts would work. (Are you basing this on Latin <z>? Because I've read it was probably an affricate.)
I think you don't understand what Hallow meant. The sound in your recording is definitely an implosive, but we still don't have any reason to believe that that's what denasals are. What if your attempts at pronouncing them aren't successful?
I think you don't understand what Hallow meant. The sound in your recording is definitely an implosive, but we still don't have any reason to believe that that's what denasals are. What if your attempts at pronouncing them aren't successful?
I guess they aren't denasals then! Wikipedia is a dirty liar, evidently. Thanks for the help, and sorry for the trouble.
KathAveara wrote:What sort of conditions could I use to have both z > ts / _# and z > s / _# (and maybe retention of z in all other cases)?
For z > s / _#, that's just final devoicing. Not sure how z > ts would work. (Are you basing this on Latin <z>? Because I've read it was probably an affricate.)
No, I want final /z/ to go to two different voiceless phones, and I figured [s] and [ts] would work.
I think you don't understand what Hallow meant. The sound in your recording is definitely an implosive, but we still don't have any reason to believe that that's what denasals are. What if your attempts at pronouncing them aren't successful?
I guess they aren't denasals then! Wikipedia is a dirty liar, evidently. Thanks for the help, and sorry for the trouble.
What? How does that statement make sense?
Wikipedia says that "denasals" are nasal consonants pronounced without nasal airflow. Your attempts at producing these sounds become implosives because you glottalize to prevent the nasal airflow; when it is pointed out that a person attempting to reproduce a sound he has read about -- but not heard -- is not necessarily a trusty source for phonetic analysis this becomes "Wikipedia is a dirty liar"?
Anyway just on feature-theoretical basis we note that nasals have the features [+voiced][+nasal]; if we remove [+nasal] we are left with [+voiced], not [+voiced][+glottalized]. etc.
KathAveara wrote:I'm more interested in the conditioning environments than options for what to turn /z/ into.
There's a problem, for one of the changes your split presupposes is trivial and easy and the other isn't. Have you already decided on the intermediary stages for your /z/ -> /ts/ change? If not, this subject has to be discussed, sort of, for understanding the mechanics of the change is essential for understanding the environments.
(But as a quick and dirty solution: /nz/ -> /ndz/ -> ... , then perhaps delete /n/ in codas, leaving behind nasalization or whatever... in surface phonology, that "whatever" thing will work as the conditioning factor.)
For a dumb reader like me, the mechanics and conditioning environments for these^ bits may demand a lengthy explanation :)
Also, another Q&D solution for KathAveara: claim that your /z/ was formerly /dz/, then went [dz] -> [z] (-> [s]) in one set of environments and remained [dz] (->[ts]) in another. Since the different bit, [dz] -> [z], is essentially a lenition, you may think of any environment that facilitates consonant lenitions (after long vowels, in unstressed syllables, ...). Or, conversely, of environments that make lenitions less probable (for [ts]).
For a dumb reader like me, the mechanics and conditioning environments for these^ bits may demand a lengthy explanation
Nort is just an Austronesian fanboy. r > gʟ is an attested (unconditional?) sound change from Hiw and if I remember correctly, one or two other languages.
θ > tθ honestly doesn't seem that weird to me at all.
Pretty sure it's unconditional. /r/ is easy to get and there aren't really any other ways to get a velar from it, so it's useful. (There's one language where /gʟ/ devoices word-finally -- or maybe it was just /ʟ/, but the velar lateral is more often prestopped than not.)
θ > tθ seems pretty weird to me.
Ahzoh: I don't know about the first one. As for the second, I'd expect /q/ to have other sources, but if /l/ is uvularized, that feature could spread.
I disagree; from a theoretical perspective it's pretty unremarkable. It is a "weird" change in that it isn't well-attested in real life, but I think that's just because dental fricatives are relatively rare to begin with. Outside of that limitation, it's just basic fortition.
Are there examples of changes like s > ts or even s > tS in certain environments in languages (other than after resonants cf. English), like word-initially or at the beginning of stressed syllables or something? I know s > t is attested from a couple languages. If there are, then θ > tθ is the exact same process so there's nothing really wrong with it.
I disagree; from a theoretical perspective it's pretty unremarkable. It is a "weird" change in that it isn't well-attested in real life, but I think that's just because dental fricatives are relatively rare to begin with. Outside of that limitation, it's just basic fortition.
I'm not sure it's that rare. I've heard [tθ] for initial /θ/ in English, even.
which everybody keeps telling me is a very rare sound change (as well as ʔ > h) but there are enough languages where h and ʔ alternate in different dialects, especially in the syllable coda, to make me think that it is less rare than one would think