Primordial Scratchpad (NP: Dwarvish vowel question)
Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:54 pm
In this thread, I mentioned that I have started working on what I'm calling "primordial languages". These are 4, perhaps 5, proto-languages that I will use to create descendant proto-languages for the world I am starting to work on. The idea is to make them all analytic/isolating and then derive the descendants to be whatever typology I want. Also, I plan to make them very different from each other in terms of phonology, morphology, etc., and center each one around a common theme.
Primordial Devani is the first such language, and is the first significant bit of conlanging I've done in a while. I have a bunch of ideas sketched out in terms of phonology, inflection, and syntax. However, when I started trying to detail them with explanations and examples, I ran into the bane of all conlangers: creating vocabulary. This conlang has developed quite fast compared to my usual glacial pace of conlanging, so I figured I would start a scratchpad thread with temporary vocabulary made up as I go. I hope this will help me continue the momentum I've had over the past couple weeks.
Primordial Devani is the ancestor language of the deva, (what I am currently?/permanently? calling) one of the races in my conworld. Generally, the goals for it are the following:
Primordial Devani is the first such language, and is the first significant bit of conlanging I've done in a while. I have a bunch of ideas sketched out in terms of phonology, inflection, and syntax. However, when I started trying to detail them with explanations and examples, I ran into the bane of all conlangers: creating vocabulary. This conlang has developed quite fast compared to my usual glacial pace of conlanging, so I figured I would start a scratchpad thread with temporary vocabulary made up as I go. I hope this will help me continue the momentum I've had over the past couple weeks.
Primordial Devani is the ancestor language of the deva, (what I am currently?/permanently? calling) one of the races in my conworld. Generally, the goals for it are the following:
- Melifluous phonology: this will be the "Sindarin" of my world, as it were
- Very little inflection of nouns
- Verbal inflections focused on volition, evidentiality, mood, and modalities, with a bit of tense, politeness, and person mixed in
- No verbal inflection for voice or number
- Nominative/accusative alignment
- Mostly head-final & left branching, with postpositions (including case markers)
- Topic - Subject - Verb - Object sentence order