zompist bboard

Vowels:
æ
i
e
Consonants:
p
m
t
c
d
k
g
ɲ
x
n
ʔ

By the way...
The language is called Iptkygt (Eept-kya-gt)

Welcome to the boards! Have some pickles and tea.

It would be a lot easier to read your phonological inventory if you listed them by point and mode of articulation...

m n ɲ
p t d c k g
x

æ e i


You have a very odd consonant inventory. First, if one of /b d g/ is missing, it's almost always /g/, not /b/. As a corollary, why is /ɟ/ also missing? Second, if a language has only one fricative, I would expect it to be either /s/ or /h/ (though I could buy having /β/ or /v/ in place of that missing /b/). Third, the complete lack of any kind of approximant or liquid, while not (I believe) completely unattested, is a little strange. Now, if strange, exotic, or unnatural is what you're shooting for, you've managed to achieve it without piling on fifty consonants. Although, the more I think about it, the more your consonant (and vowel) inventory remind me of a weirder version of Tuscarora...In fact, with such a small inventory, I'm a little surprised to see the glottal stop missing.

One other point I'd make: the name of your language--Eeptkyagt--seems to including a sound not found in your language: <y>. Is <ky> your orthography for /c/, or does your language in fact include /j/? Or is it an exonym? Also, the <ee>--does Eeptkyagt have vowel length, or does <ee> stand for /i/? Or are they simply in hiatus /e.ep.../?

(Hope I didn't come across as harsh--just commenting on what stood out to me. )

In response to the name of the language, the ee is a representation of the IPA "i". As well as "c" becoming kya. It is just a way for me, being not very familiar to IPA, to represent those sounds. Also, I did forget to put the glottal stop in there. I guess that I forgot to paste it into my post.

How does this remind you of Tuscarora? They look nothing alike. This conlang has labials, a voicing distinction, no rounded vowels, no glides, no flap, no phonemic stress, etc. which are all stark differences from Tuscarora.

thetha wrote:How does this remind you of Tuscarora? They look nothing alike. This conlang has labials, a voicing distinction, no rounded vowels, no glides, no flap, no phonemic stress, etc. which are all stark differences from Tuscarora.

True. I think it's the /æ/, which I have a tendency to strongly associate with American English, Old English, and Tuscarora (despite the plenty of other languages it appears in), and the small inventory resembles Tuscarora more than American or Old English.

Well you got a lot of unusual happening. Not that that is a bad thing. But it is very odd. The three front vowels stand out to me. What was the inspiration?

Zaarin already covered all my constructive points. What else you got? Phonotactics? Syllable structure? Eh?

The vowel inventory stands out to me. Vertical vowel systems are fun (I have a WIP project with one) and attested. The thing about your system is that it has only front vowels, and vowels ususally like to fill out space. I would expect it to quickly shift to either a Sepik style /ɨ ə a/, a more triangular system say /ɨ e a/ (which i don't think is attested but could be workable), or perhaps something weird like the /i ɛ a~ɒ/ of some analyses of Wichita.
Also note that allophony tends to be rampant when you have small systems like that. Something like /ɨ ə a/ often comes out as [ɪ~ʊ e̞~o̞ a(~ɑ)] (these have become phonemic in some Sepik languages), and the /i/ and /ɛ/ of Wichita varies over [ɪ~i~e] and [ɛ~æ] according to Wikipedia.

Zaarin wrote:In fact, with such a small inventory, I'm a little surprised to see the glottal stop missing.

Nortaneous once compiled a lot of small consonant systems and one of the conclusions was that the glottal stop was not as necessary as one might think. (link) (quite a nice source of inspiration actually.


As Zaarin also points out the lack of /b/ in the presence of /d g/ is weird, as well as the lack of liquids. Again, small inventories => rampant allophony* so given this system I would expect something along the lines of d l or ɾ and g j, ɰ or w, in at least some environments. The lack of /b/ could potentially be explained away by something like b w or ʋ Ø. I don't know how realistic that would be, and in the shift of that type I am most familiar with ("Klusilsvækkelsen" in Danish) /b/ was/is much more resistant to change than /d/, with /g/ being weakened even more. ɟ could potentially be the same story (ɟ j Ø), though it could also be other things (say, kj c, with clusters of voiced plosive + j being forbidden, an affricate or some other things. Weird gaps in plosive systems aren't unattested though so you can get away with a bunch of things. (Tatuyo has /p b t d c k g/ and no /ɟ/, though it has /j/, and it also has a rather small inventory overall. Otherwise simply having /b/ instead of /p/ makes it a lot more realistic.

Zaarin makes some good points on the fricatives so I wont go into them further.

Of course as others have pointed out if you are going for exotic weirdness rather than strict realism without it feeling kitchen-sinky or try-hard, what you have is rather well-done I would say.

Hope this helps

*Usuallly, sort of.

That consonant system reminds me of that of the conlang I'm currently putting on Tumblr.

Mellint wrote:In response to the name of the language, the ee is a representation of the IPA "i". As well as "c" becoming kya. It is just a way for me, being not very familiar to IPA, to represent those sounds. Also, I did forget to put the glottal stop in there. I guess that I forgot to paste it into my post.

That's OK, there's time yet to learn the IPA, and <ky> is as sensible enough a digraph for /c/ as any.

as for the allophony question, I'd find it almost inevitable that the voiced stops would lenite, e.g. Rotokas is often quoted as having a consonant inventory of /p t k b d g/ but is actually more /p t k β ɾ ɣ/ <p t k v r g>. With your language if say you did originally have a voiced labial I'd really not expect (note the use of expect) the labial /β/ to go but not the velar /ɣ/.