Bremsic sketches

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Arzakon
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Bremsic sketches

Post by Arzakon »

Hi, I'm new arround here. Sorry in advance for my bad english, or if I post something out of place. I'll make my best effort to be understood.

I have joined this community because I'm a n00b conlanger, but eager to learn. I've been working by a couple of months in two naturalistic artlangs, and I'll greatly appreciate any feedback. I have one, Bremsic, which is almost ready to publish... at least for a fast revision of some ideas.

The main idea is to produce a fantasy conworld, on which I already have some details. Those details are entwined on the language, so there are some of those details, the ones that I belive are important to keep in mind:

The origin of Man: Humans started their footsteps on this world being a lower class of spirit-gods, more like fae, nymphs and similar creatures. After an "Original Sin", Humanity is demoted, getting material body and being subject to earth-bond illness and death.

The time frame: The world is kind of new. There was world only for a few hundred years. Humanity thrive thanks it's divine past, and thanks to that past, Human science, culture and tecnology can evolve quickly. There will be irregularities in the language, remainders of archaic rules. Also, some characteristics will give clues of how this language will evolve in the future.

The main characteristics of Bremsic are as follow:
  • Alphabetical scripture, I'm currently working on the font.
  • Three Genders (Human, Neutral, Honorific). Honorific is reserved to gods and important social roles, such as kings, priests, militarymen...
  • Three Numbers (Singular, Dual, Plural).
  • Seven declension cases (Nominative, Acusative, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Instrumental, Abessive).
  • Articles, adjectives and verbs must follow the noun in gender, but not in number.
  • Noun inflection "loses" his gender in dual and plural forms. They become neutral. The primitive gender of the word can be retrieved from the gender on the associated articles and adjectives, since they keep their original gender.Also, if we're talking about the subject, the verb can be useful for retrieve this information. Some irregular nouns will dig up archaic plural cases for human and honoric genders.
  • S-V-O, with Dative Construction for static verbs.
  • Verb tenses and modes are determined by a system of prefixes, instead of the more common suffixes, which derive from archaic auxiliary verbs. Interrogative sentences are made with one of those prefixes on the verb you're asking for.
Examples:

BRE - Neu senen eroai zenamen porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.hum smart-hum young.individual-nt.nom.pl vb.prog-hum-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - Smart kids eat oranges.

BRE - Me senil eroai zelinam porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.nt smart-nt young.individual-nt.nom.pl vb.prog-nt-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - Smart young animals eat oranges.

BRE - Neu senen ero zenenam porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.hum smart-hum young.individual-hum.nom.sin vb.prog-hum-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - The smart child eats oranges


I'm particulary worried about the gender dropping in plural forms. I think it's a cool feature that feels unique, but maybe is too weird. The idea is that Bremsic is evolving to a genderless language.

I'm also worried about the phonetics. I have not an impaired audition, but for some reason, I'm almost deaf in subtelties like little sound differences, even in my native language. I'm posting IPA charts with a few notes here:
Consonantic Chart
Consonantic Chart
Selecció_009.png (12.62 KiB) Viewed 3878 times
Vocalic Chart
Vocalic Chart
Selecció_008.png (7.03 KiB) Viewed 3878 times
  • Starting F (Fricative, Voiceless, labial) is pronounced bilabial. Otherwise, is pronounced labiodental
  • Z (Fricative, Voiced, Alveolar) is pronounced TH (Voiceless Dental Fricative) at the end of the word.
  • In central bremsama dialect, Center vowel is read where "A" is atone. Other dialects may lose this vocalic sound.
  • U is pronounced like japanese, without rounding the lips.
So, I would greatly appreciate any suggestion or comment.

Thanks a lot.

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Frislander
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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Frislander »

Yay, a phonology chart from the get-go! And what a phonology! I'd probably say it's a bit heavy towards the front of the mouth in the consonants. Also I don't see that much motivation for word-final /z/ becoming /θ/ when both /s/ and /ð/ are phonemic. Other than that, nice! I like that voicing is more throughgoing in fricatives than stops!
Arzakon wrote:The main idea is to produce a fantasy conworld, on which I already have some details. Those details are entwined on the language, so there are some of those details, the ones that I belive are important to keep in mind:

The origin of Man: Humans started their footsteps on this world being a lower class of spirit-gods, more like fae, nymphs and similar creatures. After an "Original Sin", Humanity is demoted, getting material body and being subject to earth-bond illness and death.

The time frame: The world is kind of new. There was world only for a few hundred years. Humanity thrive thanks it's divine past, and thanks to that past, Human science, culture and tecnology can evolve quickly. There will be irregularities in the language, remainders of archaic rules. Also, some characteristics will give clues of how this language will evolve in the future.
Interesting!
The main characteristics of Bremsic are as follow:
  • Alphabetical scripture, I'm currently working on the font.
  • Three Genders (Human, Neutral, Honorific). Honorific is reserved to gods and important social roles, such as kings, priests, militarymen...
  • Three Numbers (Singular, Dual, Plural).
  • Seven declension cases (Nominative, Acusative, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Instrumental, Abessive).
  • Articles, adjectives and verbs must follow the noun in gender, but not in number.
  • Noun inflection "loses" his gender in dual and plural forms. They become neutral. The primitive gender of the word can be retrieved from the gender on the associated articles and adjectives, since they keep their original gender.Also, if we're talking about the subject, the verb can be useful for retrieve this information. Some irregular nouns will dig up archaic plural cases for human and honoric genders.
  • S-V-O, with Dative Construction for static verbs.
  • Verb tenses and modes are determined by a system of prefixes, instead of the more common suffixes, which derive from archaic auxiliary verbs. Interrogative sentences are made with one of those prefixes on the verb you're asking for.
Intriguing gender system, and the singular/dual/plural system is rocksteady. The cases look a tad European, but they're fine as they are.

A small point to note, though: verbs are counted as the head of the clause and a verb doesn't "follow" the noun like an adjective or article. For one thing, which argument do transitive verbs agree with, or do they agree with both? You later say that it is the "subject", presuming a nominative-accusative alignment, which is born out by the example sentences, but the statement does still rely on those European "verbs agree in a nominative-accusative manner with the 'subject'". You're fine to have it this way, but it would be better if you stated it overtly.

The prefixing morphology is nice, and the derivation from auxiliaries is standard. you also have interrogative inflection (lovely!). Is negation marked with a prefix too?
I'm particulary worried about the gender dropping in plural forms. I think it's a cool feature that feels unique, but maybe is too weird. The idea is that Bremsic is evolving to a genderless language.
Actually there's plenty languages which lose gender distinctions in the plural (e.g. German), it's not that unusual.

EDIT: also, expect tea and gherkins arriving very soon.
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gufferdk
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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by gufferdk »

Welcome to the board. Treat yourself with some tea and pickles (I'm too lazy to go find pictures).

What you got there looks quite interesting. It has a rather european feel to it, not that anyhting is wrong with that. I actually like the way you handled it. If that is what you are comfortable with, it is great for learning. I toyed with a rom/germanlang for a while when i was very new to conlanging before throwing it in the bin at some point. Be aware that languages that are a lot like the western european ones have some stigma attached to them, mostly because some people who didn't know what they were doing basically cloned them, spammed the orthography with garbage, and then proceeded to claim that they had made something totally unlike them. As long as you are aware that it's europe-like noone will come after you with pitchforks and/or pejoratives.
</ramble>

As Frislander pointed out the system is quite heavy with sound in the front of the mouth, and the z/θ/_# (if you dont know this type of notation, you can read about it here) seems rather unmotivated. If you want /z/ to do something at the end of words, something like z/s/_# would make more sense, likely together with ð/θ/_#
/θ/ and /ð/ are actually quite uncommon sounds and often morph into all sorts of things, especially /ð/. If you want to take some load off the front of the mouth, something like θ, ð, s, z :> s, z, ʃ, ʒ could help.
Also is there any reason [x] is missing? That gap feels a bit weird, unlike the gaps at [d], [g] and [ŋ] which are very reasonable. I think (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), that [x] is usually stronger than [ɣ], but if you had something like /h/, /ħ/ or maybe /kʰ/ or /q/ then it would make more sense.


Hope you like this little corner of the internet and decide to stay, and good luck with the conlanging.
Languages i speak fluently: Dansk, English
Languages i am studying: Deutsch, Español

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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Vijay »

gufferdk wrote:Welcome to the board. Treat yourself with some tea and pickles (I'm too lazy to go find pictures).
ImageImage
Welcome, Arzakon!

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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Frislander »

gufferdk wrote:As Frislander pointed out the system is quite heavy with sound in the front of the mouth, and the z/θ/_# (if you dont know this type of notation, you can read about it here) seems rather unmotivated. If you want /z/ to do something at the end of words, something like z/s/_# would make more sense, likely together with ð/θ/_#
/θ/ and /ð/ are actually quite uncommon sounds and often morph into all sorts of things, especially /ð/. If you want to take some load off the front of the mouth, something like θ, ð, s, z :> s, z, ʃ, ʒ could help.
I personally don't actually have too much of a problem with the interdentals: they are uncommon and do morph a bit, but they're not ridiculously rare: they have a worldwide distribution, and they're found in quite all over the place in North-America (e.g. Halkomelem, Arapaho, Tuscarora, Tanacross and several other Athabaskan languages, Karuk).
Also is there any reason [x] is missing? That gap feels a bit weird, unlike the gaps at [d], [g] and [ŋ] which are very reasonable. I think (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), that [x] is usually stronger than [ɣ], but if you had something like /h/, /ħ/ or maybe /kʰ/ or /q/ then it would make more sense.
As for the missing /x/, I'd point to Inuit varieties, though in those languages all fricatives bar /h/ are mostly voiced.
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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by gufferdk »

Frislander wrote: I personally don't actually have too much of a problem with the interdentals: they are uncommon and do morph a bit, but they're not ridiculously rare: they have a worldwide distribution, and they're found in quite all over the place in North-America (e.g. Halkomelem, Arapaho, Tuscarora, Tanacross and several other Athabaskan languages, Karuk).
I'm suprised to learn that they are so common in North America. Perhaps WALS was just unlucky with their sample (http://wals.info/feature/19A).
I don't have too much of a problem with them in this phonology either. The morphing of them is quite notably though. Danish had /d/ get weakened to /ð/ in some positions and in different dialects that has turned it into anything from this list: /d ð̞ˠ ð̞ˠˡ ə j r Ø/, sometimes several different depending on environments
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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Arzakon »

Whoa, thanks for the replies! That's exactly what I hoped for.
Frislander wrote:The cases look a tad European, but they're fine as they are.
gufferdk wrote:It has a rather european feel to it, not that anyhting is wrong with that. [...] As long as you are aware that it's europe-like noone will come after you with pitchforks and/or pejoratives.
Why they look european? Is the selected cases or the use of cases at all? I simply don't know. I realize that's normal, since I'm catalan with near-zero experience on non-european languages, but I would like to know what is that it makes a language european-like. On the other hand, I took special effort to avoid cloning other languages. I'm bilingual Catalan-Spanish, with rough english and some notions of japanese and french. Declensions are strange to me, I only used them in Latin class, fifteen years ago, so I'm not affraid to make something too similar to other things because I have no base. If anything, it would be a coincidence, not a copy.

And yes, if you are wondering, I'm bragging about my utterly and complete ignorance.
Frislander wrote:A small point to note, though: verbs are counted as the head of the clause and a verb doesn't "follow" the noun like an adjective or article. For one thing, which argument do transitive verbs agree with, or do they agree with both? You later say that it is the "subject", presuming a nominative-accusative alignment, which is born out by the example sentences, but the statement does still rely on those European "verbs agree in a nominative-accusative manner with the 'subject'". You're fine to have it this way, but it would be better if you stated it overtly.
The main idea was to inflect verbs by gender, and I thought that the subject gender would be a perfect fit, since is who is doing something. I know that in some cases this might be confusing (I want to use dative construction in some verbs that doesn't imply motion, and there will be some impersonal verbs too, for example), but I will address each particularity as they will appear. I don't know if this is right. I understand that is one of the things that might feel european, then.
Frislander wrote:The prefixing morphology is nice, and the derivation from auxiliaries is standard. you also have interrogative inflection (lovely!). Is negation marked with a prefix too?
Not yet. On my early drafts, negation was done by a particle (doi zenam = not eating), but since I have Abessive in noun cases and interrogative inflection in verbs, I realize now that maybe is a weird solution. It will be a negative inflection for verbs soon :D
Frislander wrote:Also I don't see that much motivation for word-final /z/ becoming /θ/ when both /s/ and /ð/ are phonemic.
gufferdk wrote:If you want /z/ to do something at the end of words, something like z/s/_# would make more sense, likely together with ð/θ/_#
The main reason for Z -> TH was that I had a previous word I would like to fit in the language, and this word is Zegereth, with both Z and TH. THey are similar sounds and I thought that it would make sense to make it as a phonetic rule. I understand that what you guys suggest is make it a whole different phoneme, instead of make it dependant of z?

BTW, thanks gufferdk for the link about notation, I'll take a look.

For the missing x sound, this is intended, but without possible justification. It just feel it right at the very moment to build the phonetic charts.
Frislander wrote:
I'm particulary worried about the gender dropping in plural forms. I think it's a cool feature that feels unique, but maybe is too weird. The idea is that Bremsic is evolving to a genderless language.
Actually there's plenty languages which lose gender distinctions in the plural (e.g. German), it's not that unusual.
Now I feel ashamed, disapointed and relieved at the same time. Thx a lot :D

Thanks for this warm welcome!

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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Frislander »

Arzakon wrote:Whoa, thanks for the replies! That's exactly what I hoped for.
Frislander wrote:The cases look a tad European, but they're fine as they are.
gufferdk wrote:It has a rather european feel to it, not that anyhting is wrong with that. [...] As long as you are aware that it's europe-like noone will come after you with pitchforks and/or pejoratives.
Why they look european? Is the selected cases or the use of cases at all? I simply don't know. I realize that's normal, since I'm catalan with near-zero experience on non-european languages, but I would like to know what is that it makes a language european-like. On the other hand, I took special effort to avoid cloning other languages. I'm bilingual Catalan-Spanish, with rough english and some notions of japanese and french. Declensions are strange to me, I only used them in Latin class, fifteen years ago, so I'm not affraid to make something too similar to other things because I have no base. If anything, it would be a coincidence, not a copy.

And yes, if you are wondering, I'm bragging about my utterly and complete ignorance.
OK, let me break the cases down for you: Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, Dative and Ablative are fully fledged noun cases in Latin. The Instrumental has a few relics in a few words. The Abessive is the only one with no direct Latin counterpart, though if it does much the same work as the relics of the Latin locative then no.

The trick would be to use the same terms but use them for different functions (e.g. you've already mentioned Dative subjects). Maybe divorce the Dative from occurring with prepositions and instead use the Abessive, Ablative and Instrumental instead.
Frislander wrote:A small point to note, though: verbs are counted as the head of the clause and a verb doesn't "follow" the noun like an adjective or article. For one thing, which argument do transitive verbs agree with, or do they agree with both? You later say that it is the "subject", presuming a nominative-accusative alignment, which is born out by the example sentences, but the statement does still rely on those European "verbs agree in a nominative-accusative manner with the 'subject'". You're fine to have it this way, but it would be better if you stated it overtly.
The main idea was to inflect verbs by gender, and I thought that the subject gender would be a perfect fit, since is who is doing something. I know that in some cases this might be confusing (I want to use dative construction in some verbs that doesn't imply motion, and there will be some impersonal verbs too, for example), but I will address each particularity as they will appear. I don't know if this is right. I understand that is one of the things that might feel european, then.
Actually prefixing gender marking/agreement of the "subject" on the verb is a Northeast Caucasian feature, rather than a purely European one.
Frislander wrote:Also I don't see that much motivation for word-final /z/ becoming /θ/ when both /s/ and /ð/ are phonemic.
gufferdk wrote:If you want /z/ to do something at the end of words, something like z/s/_# would make more sense, likely together with ð/θ/_#
The main reason for Z -> TH was that I had a previous word I would like to fit in the language, and this word is Zegereth, with both Z and TH. THey are similar sounds and I thought that it would make sense to make it as a phonetic rule. I understand that what you guys suggest is make it a whole different phoneme, instead of make it dependant of z?

BTW, thanks gufferdk for the link about notation, I'll take a look./quote]

But you put it in your phoneme chart so why are you saying it's merely phonetic and not morphophonological?
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Arzakon
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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Arzakon »

But you put it in your phoneme chart so why are you saying it's merely phonetic and not morphophonological?
Honestly, I was not aware of the difference. There was a confusion here, caused for my misuse of linguistics vocabulary. Sorry about that.

Let me try to explain my train of thought. I had the word "Zegereth". Firstly, I pronounce something similar to "zegerez", but soon I realize that the last "z", written "th", makes more sense as dental fricative. Since those sounds are close, I tried to tie them together in a phonetic rule, keeping the same grapheme. But here I realize another issue: there will be a grapheme with two valid transliterations, and a mess between transliteration, phonology and scripture.

OMG, I hate phonology :cry:

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Re: Bremsic sketches

Post by Arzakon »

Ok, I've done some work. Here is all I've got about Bremsic (without lexicon, still in the works):

http://bremsama.tiddlyspot.com

Things I haven't done yet: Script, full-fledged examples, impersonal pronouns, adverbs etc etc...

I've been working in the feedback Frislander and gufferdk gave to me. I'd appreciate if someone take a look in a more in-deep view of bremsic.

Also, I found tiddlywiki great for this kind of works. The tiddles structure is perfect.

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