Chavakani

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Soap
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Re: Chavakani

Post by Soap »

OK, I know this is going to automatically bump the thread onto a new page, so I'll quote most of what I was replying to.
cromulant wrote:The "pseudo base 5" thing (straight base 10 with 5 as an additive subbase) is attested in a gigantic number of natlangs.
And I'm curious about the root for nine. Is it from "almost" or "without" or any such thing? Since it doesnt seem to be related to the root for four. (This was more or less my strategy. I had basic noncompound roots for 1 to 5 and for 10, and derived the word for 9 from the word for "almost". I believe six was derived from "five plus" and eight was "four twice", making 7 the only word of the basic ten I dont have an etymology for.)

Chengjiang wrote:The glottal stop isn't very acoustically salient utterance-initially, but if it's good enough for Hawaiian, it's good enough for Chavakani.
Are there minimal pairs? I wouldnt know how to deal with this, if I was trying to distinguish two words that I know have different pronunciations but are impossible to tell apart in isolation. I guess the logical answer would be to spell them out. I'm curious how Hawaiian handles the situation though.



I like the tone setup, especially given that a lot of tonal conlangs seem to brush away sandhi. If this is a realistic tonal system I may want to use some of the ideas for sandhi in later conlangs. High vs low vs falling is probably a common inventory cross-linguistically.
Chavakani also has a "macho"/"boasting" speech register, whose phonological traits include making the voiceless stops and affricate weakly ejective, substituting [x] for /h/, and substituting a full trill [r] for /ɾ/.
I like this.
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Re: Chavakani

Post by Chengjiang »

Soap wrote:And I'm curious about the root for nine. Is it from "almost" or "without" or any such thing? Since it doesnt seem to be related to the root for four. (This was more or less my strategy. I had basic noncompound roots for 1 to 5 and for 10, and derived the word for 9 from the word for "almost". I believe six was derived from "five plus" and eight was "four twice", making 7 the only word of the basic ten I dont have an etymology for.)
The word for nine does derive from such a word, yes.

Are there minimal pairs? I wouldnt know how to deal with this, if I was trying to distinguish two words that I know have different pronunciations but are impossible to tell apart in isolation. I guess the logical answer would be to spell them out. I'm curious how Hawaiian handles the situation though.
There are minimal pairs. One example I already gave was uye "unripe/green" versus 'uye "cheap". I suppose they would be difficult to distinguish in isolation, but then that's true of a surprising number of words in any language. Consider how often we have to clarify the names of letters, e.g. "B as in boy".
I like the tone setup, especially given that a lot of tonal conlangs seem to brush away sandhi. If this is a realistic tonal system I may want to use some of the ideas for sandhi in later conlangs. High vs low vs falling is probably a common inventory cross-linguistically.
Well, I know at least a few major natlangs have it, e.g. Hausa. In this case there used to also be a rising tone but it merged into the high tone.
I like this.
Thanks. I based part of it on macho Japanese, which I seem to recall favors a trilled rhotic.
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that

Formerly known as Primordial Soup

Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.

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Re: Chavakani

Post by Chengjiang »

Serial verbs: Comparison

This ends up sort of being an extension of the post on adjectives, but I didn't cover some important things then.

In phrases comparing entities' qualities, the structure is is A ADJECTIVE MODIFIER B for verbal adjectives:
  • Fúi sachí mbrê Túvi. "The horse is smarter than Tuvi."
  • Túvi sachí háro fúi. "Tuvi is not as smart as a horse."
For nominal adjectives, the structure is A n'/ni ADJECTIVE MODIFIER B:
  • Túvi n' mbro mbrê fúi. "Tuvi is bigger than a horse."
  • Fúi n' mbro háro Túvi. "The horse is not as big as Tuvi."
The comparative verbs may be used with non-adjectival verbs as well, generally referring to "more/less" but occasionally also with a sense of "better/worse", with the general senses being along the lines of "outperform" or "underperform":
  • Mátao saka mbrê Ndriká. "Matao works harder/better than Ndrika."
  • Ngapa té yói háro kwetu me. "My dog barks less than yours."
  • Té fûa chune. "I rode a little."
If the verb has an object, the modifier comes after the object, but before the entity the subject is compared to:
  • Mátao krí témbé mbrê Túvi. "Matao cuts wood better than Tuvi."
  • Swinâ kra ímí háro Ndriká. "Swina sings imi (sung stories; ballads) less well than Ndrika."
In the event that a more specific qualification of a trait or action is needed, a verbal adjective or n' plus a nominal adjective is used in place of the modifier:
  • Ndriká krí témbé sachí. "Ndrika cuts wood intelligently."
To extend this to comparisons concerning a specific manner, the appropriate comparative verb follows the ya phrase, followed by its object:
  • Ndriká krí témbé sachí mbrê Mátao. "Ndrika cuts wood more intelligently than Matao."
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that

Formerly known as Primordial Soup

Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.

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Re: Chavakani

Post by Chengjiang »

Numbers, revisited

I decided after thinking more about my conlangs that way too many of them have essentially the same Sinosphere-style numeral set. It’s getting boring. Thus, I’m overhauling the number system to be sexagesimal!

The numbers from one through ten are the same as before, although since when I first listed them I hadn’t decided on tones I’m giving them tones now:

êtu “one”
âi “two”
pará “three”
chikó “four”
semi “five”
sendu “six”
semâi “seven”
sembrá “eight”
tóno “nine”
pachí “ten”

Now, kóru refers to 60, ndákú to 3600, pîra to 216,000, and má’îmbrú to 12,960,000. Given this society’s current technological development, it’s rarely important to refer to a number as high as this last numeral, let alone multiples of it.

Additionally, I’m slightly altering how the tens and ones digits interact, for euphony:

pachêtu 11
pachâi 12
papârá 13
pachîkó 14
pasêmi 15
pasêndu 16
pasêmái 17
pasêmbrá 18
patóno 19
âivachí 20
âivachêtu 21
âivachâi 22
âivapârá 23
âivachîkó 24
âivasêmi 25
âivasêndu 26
âivasêmái 27
âivasêmbrá 28
âivatóno 29
parávachí 30
parávachêtu 31
...
chikóvachí 40
...
sembachí 50
...
kóru 60

Note the tone changes; the deleted second syllable from pachí affects the tone of the following syllable, and in 17, 27, etc. the final falling tone dissimilates to a high tone.

As a new example of the nomenclature, here’s 259,048:

Pîra pachêtu ndákú sembasêmái kóru âivasêmbrá
216,000 + 11 * 3600 + 57 * 60 + 28
[ʈʂʰɤŋtɕjɑŋ], or whatever you can comfortably pronounce that's close to that

Formerly known as Primordial Soup

Supporter of use of [ȶ ȡ ȵ ȴ] in transcription

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a 青.

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