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This thread is about my language Proto-Haethic. It is the protolang for one of my fantasy language families, Haethic. This is going to be a bit of a hub for all things on this language. I'll have some information here for y'all and when I finish I'll link to the finished documents (documents because I like to keep the grammar and lexicon as separate files).

The phonology is closely modeled after Proto-Indo-European (PIE), with a full series of palatalized stops and one labialized stop. In full, I have the following phonology:
Consonants: /p pʲ b bʲ t tʲ d dʲ k kʲ kʷ g gʲ m n θ ð s z h j l w/
Vowels: /a aː e eː i o u uː/
Diphthongs: /ae ai au ei eo ie ou ua ue uo/ and /ja jaː je jeː ji jo ju juː/

Phonotactics:
Syllable: (C) + (m, n, s, z, h, l) + V + (V) + (C)
Syllable Restrictions:

• /m n s z h l/ are only allowed where they are shown.
• /θ ð j/ cannot cluster.
• /j/ cannot be in the coda.
• Palatalized and labialized stops cannot cluster.
• For the diphthongs /ja jaː je jeː ji jo ju juː/, the initial /j/ merges with a stop to form a palatalized stop. This does not happen with /kʷ/, which also cannot be used with these diphthongs.

Word Restrictions:

• Cannot start with /m n h/.
• Cannot be made entirely out of vowels unless the word is monosyllabic.

Timing: Syllable-timed (Spanish/French)
Stress: Always stress the first syllable, stress the last syllable if it ends in a consonant, otherwise stress the second-to-last syllable. Words with two syllables are never stressed. Monosyllabic words are stressed. A syllable is also stressed if it contains a long vowel.

I copied this off of the "Post your Phonology" topic because I didn't feel like retyping it. You can check and verify that I am the original writer of this phonology. It's on the 91st page.

A link to the full grammar will be posted in place of this text once it is completed, but know that I am very fond of prefixes and infixes. Suffixes are only found on nouns and adjectives and are only used for number and gender declinations.

A link to the lexicon will be posted in place of this sentence once it is completed.

SO, are palatalised stops phoneme clusters or independent phonemes? Also, long vowels are more likely to be stressed than other vowels.

mèþru wrote:SO, are palatalised stops phoneme clusters or independent phonemes? Also, long vowels are more likely to be stressed than other vowels.

A very good question and a very good point.

To answer the question, they are independent phonemes. The way I described it is just how my brain decided to say that "the /ja je ji jo ju/ etc. diphthongs and the palatalized stops work similarly to Russian".

And that makes sense. I'll go and change that right now. Why didn't I think of that? Heck, whenever I stress vowels in Spanish I make them longer for some reason. BRAIN, Y U NO WORK RITE?

Status update: Finally got done with pronouns. The possessives will now haunt me in my dreams forever.

ON TO NOUN MORPHOLOGY

Status edit: Never mind, forgot about indefinites, demonstratives, and interrogatives/relatives. Anybody got an idea for some extra interrogatives I can throw in besides the generics?

[STATUS UPDATE]

I'm done with the morphology and I'm currently working on the derivational morphology and the syntax. While I'm here, I'd like to get some feedback on some derivational noun morphology:

Since this is mostly pre-civilization times, people need to know how big and, the most important thing, how deadly something is. Using infixes (or possibly root repetition), we can embed this information in a word to create a new word that basically means "this, but bigger and deadlier". Good idea? Bad idea? Suggestions for what means what? Tell me with a reply.

Seems like a simple augmentative can do. A new grammatical category sounds unlikely. In real life, if you want to talk about a bigger, deadlier version, it seems like most cultures would call it the "Big X" or the "Giant X". Also, your suggestion reminds of "Dire X" constructions in D&D.

mèþru wrote:Seems like a simple augmentative can do. A new grammatical category sounds unlikely. In real life, if you want to talk about a bigger, deadlier version, it seems like most cultures would call it the "Big X" or the "Giant X". Also, your suggestion reminds of "Dire X" constructions in D&D.

True, the augmentative does work for big deadly things, but what if its a small deadly thing? Or a big harmless thing? Or something in between? This is why I was suggesting placing in a derivational noun infix system. The augmentative works, but there are some categories that it does not cover.

Also, I now have to look up what a "Dire X" construction is.

Dungeons & Dragons invented this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DireBeast

Just call it the "Dangerous X"? I guess the infix also works, but seems counter-intuitive. Then again, I'm not a native speaker of the language!

mèþru wrote:Dungeons & Dragons invented this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DireBeast

The D&D authors were inspired by a real critter, although an extinct one.

Everything you've described so far really rings of an augmentative to me. What sorts of functions are you intending for this 'big deadly' form (I'm highly tempted to call it 'Dire X') which are not covered by the augmentative?

One thing to keep in mind is that very often, one term for a certain linguistic phenomenon (say the augmentative) in Language A can also be the term used to describe something in Language B which does not function exactly the same as Language A's augmentative. They're just similar enough to garner the same terminology. From Wikipedia: "An augmentative (abbreviated AUG) is a morphological form of a word which expresses greater intensity, often in size but also in other attributes." (Emphasis mine.) Now, I suppose it's possible that you might want to have two augmentatives, one for the very specific 'deadlier' thing, and another for a more general augmentative, but even then I'd only suggest a specific 'deadly' one if they use this construction a lot. To have it be separate from the average augmentative implies a very dangerous world that these people live in.

For another point... I find it interesting that you have [kʷ], but not [ɡʷ]. My first thought was that it felt a little counterintuitive, but I'd be interested in your reasoning behind the choice?

Well, [ɡʷ] lenites to /w/ more readily.

That's a point. It might be interesting to make a point to have /w/ distribute with /kʷ/, in a case like that, especially if the behavior of that glide doesn't follow the behavior of other glides such as /j/, though I'm rambling entirely now.

mèþru wrote:Dungeons & Dragons invented this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DireBeast

Just call it the "Dangerous X"? I guess the infix also works, but seems counter-intuitive. Then again, I'm not a native speaker of the language!

Well, remember, this is DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY.. We're using this to make new words, and it'd be useful to have a base root and add something to it that makes it smaller, bigger, deadlier, uh... whatever the opposite of deadlier is. And, to be honest, the only reason an infix is used is because Proto-Haethic is prefix and infix heavy. I'm kinda sick of suffixes. Why do Indo-European languages shove basically everything at the end of the word??? WHY???

Suffixation is really just the most common form of affixation you'll find, cross-linguistically. It's not just Indo-European that's fond of it, though it is fair to feel sick of them. Infixes are fun, and not terribly out there, so if the rest of the language rests on prefixes and infixes then you're simply following a decided tendency. Consistency lends naturalism.

sanskacharu wrote:Suffixation is really just the most common form of affixation you'll find, cross-linguistically. It's not just Indo-European that's fond of it, though it is fair to feel sick of them. Infixes are fun, and not terribly out there, so if the rest of the language rests on prefixes and infixes then you're simply following a decided tendency. Consistency lends naturalism.

You are my friend now.

So, its been a while. So while I attempt to eat this bowl of spaghetti my dad ruined with sauce that has mushrooms and stuff in it (ugh) I want to talk about adpositions!

I've gotten all the way up to "Of", and I just realized I should have asked for feedback on how I'm taking on adpositions. Essentially, you have your preposition that has the main meaning of the adposition. If, for some reason, theres some other meaning that adposition can have, you use a postposition alongside the preposition, turning the entire thing into a circumposition.

For example, the adposition for "Against" is qai [kʷai] X (= the noun phrase afterwards) when it means that you are leaning on something, but it is qai X esu [esu] when you are the enemy of something.

Is this a good idea or too complicated for a proto-language?

Firstly, that pasta sauce sounds great.

Secondly, I don't think that is overt complicated or all that unusual. It seems a little odd that an adposition would convey something like "enemy of" since they generally express spacial and temporal relations but I like the idea all the same. The semantic relationship between against and enemy is very clear and not all that confusing.

spanick wrote:Firstly, that pasta sauce sounds great.

To each their own.

spanick wrote:Secondly, I don't think that is overt complicated or all that unusual. It seems a little odd that an adposition would convey something like "enemy of" since they generally express spacial and temporal relations but I like the idea all the same. The semantic relationship between against and enemy is very clear and not all that confusing.

Semantics, semantics. The reason behind the entire system.

I HAVE RETURNED!!!

... and I have a website.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/against#Translations

I was surprised by how many languages combine "in a contrary direction to" and "in opposition to" into the same morpheme, even reaching far afield into languages such as Japanese. However, Wiktionary doesn't have many non-IE languages for the "in physical contact with" sense, and those that are there seem to resemble the first two senses less than the first two senses resemble each other. So, I think your setup is perfectly workable, but you could also consider making those two senses into entirely independent morphemes, perhaps deriving the second from a verb for fighting instead of a preposition.