Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
Linguist Wannabe wrote:What about a reverse of the unpacking change e.g. [tn] -> [n̥]. I'm thinking of having the two sounds in free variation.
I'd expect a /hn/ intermediate to be probable for both sn → n̥ and tn → n̥, but if you're having n̥ → tn anyway, leaving them in free variation is not a problem.
There are two main types of "free variation" though — "continuous" where you simply can pronounce e.g anything from [e] to [æ] as long as it's front unrounded and not , and "discontinuous" where speakers would probably recognize that e.g [r] and [ʀ] are different sounds but accept both as allophones in any environment anyway. The second type seems more likely here.
Thanks for the opinion. But why do you think the free variation would be more likely to be discontinuous?
Because there isn't really a continuum between [tn] and [n̥]. The [t] might be partly absorbed into the [n̥], but the change isn't gradual because there aren't multiple degrees of [t]-ness that can be perceived.
"Multiple degrees of [t]-ness" probably would be possible… in a transition from let's say an oral vowel to a voiceless nasal, the oral closure and the nasality are not going to commence exactly at the same time. There's wiggle space in how long a [t] portion you'd get before going to [n̥].
However apparently you want to have a consonant cluster there? And multiple degrees of phonemic /t/-ness isn't going to happen. Either it's a cluster or it's not.
OK if you specifically want to have continuous variation (though I think of that as the "less interesting" option — doesn't leave room for e.g. sociolectal complications), nasally released stops or prestopped nasals, /tⁿ/ /ᵗn/, are attested from some languages. Not exactly common phonemes but neither are voiceless nasals in the first place.
Tropylium wrote:
OK if you specifically want to have continuous variation (though I think of that as the "less interesting" option — doesn't leave room for e.g. sociolectal complications), nasally released stops or prestopped nasals, /tⁿ/ /ᵗn/, are attested from some languages. Not exactly common phonemes but neither are voiceless nasals in the first place.
Nasally released stops and prestopped nasals were exactly what I was thinking of. Though is there a difference between them or are they just two terms for the same thing?
Tropylium wrote:
OK if you specifically want to have continuous variation (though I think of that as the "less interesting" option — doesn't leave room for e.g. sociolectal complications), nasally released stops or prestopped nasals, /tⁿ/ /ᵗn/, are attested from some languages. Not exactly common phonemes but neither are voiceless nasals in the first place.
Nasally released stops and prestopped nasals were exactly what I was thinking of. Though is there a difference between them or are they just two terms for the same thing?
Yes. The difference is in how long each segment is held. They contrast in some Aslian (I think) language, but only as word-final allophones of different stop series.
All right, I'm completely redoing the Mailin phonology. Questions at the end of the post.
Phoneme inventory:
/m n ɳ ȵ ŋ/ m n ņ ń ŋ
/p pʰ b t tʰ d ʈ ʈʰ ɖ tɕ tɕʰ dʑ k kʰ g q qʰ/ p ph b t th d ţ ţh ḑ c ch j k kh g q qh
/(ɸ) s ʂ ɕ x χ/ f s ş ś h ħ
/w l ɾ ɻ j/ w l r ŗ y
/i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ɤ u ai au ɛi ɛu/ i ь e a o ъ u ai au ei eu
/ɸ/ is only found in loanwords.
Allophony:
The voiced stops /b d ɖ dʑ g/ are realized as fricatives [v ð ð̢ ʑ ɣ] intervocalically. [ð̢] is a retroflex slit fricative.
/w l ɾ ɻ j/ are devoiced after an aspirate.
/s ʂ ɕ/ assimilate in voicing to the following consonant.
Phonotactics:
The maximal syllable structure is (C(R))V(C). Any consonant can occur in the onset except word-initial /ɻ/. The onset can also consist of a non-glide consonant followed by one of /w l ɾ j/, except a labial followed by /w/, an alveolopalatal or a uvular followed by /j/, a nasal other than /m/ followed by /l ɾ/, a coronal followed by /l/, or /lɾ ɾw/. Only sibilants, /l ɾ ɻ/ and a homorganic nasal can occur in the coda, but non-clitic words must end with a vowel. Two aspirates can never occur in consecutive syllables, the first one is deaspirated. /ɪ ɤ/ can't occur in the last syllable.
Stress:
The first syllable of the root is stressed, if it falls on the penult or antepenult, unless that syllable has /ɪ ɤ/ as the nucleus. If the first syllable of the root falls further back than the antepenult, but the antepenult is still part of the root and it doesn't have /ɪ ɤ/, it is stressed; otherwise the stress falls on the penult. If both the penult and antepenult have /ɪ ɤ/, the stress falls on the ultima. Examples:
Root *eudъn éudъna, eudъnáħi, eudъnъşţhí
Root *dyaqh dyáqha, dyáqhaħi, dyáqъşţhi
Root *thrьt thrьtá, thrьtáħi, thrьtъşţhí
And now for the questions.
1. Is this phonology plausible at all, or too strange? (especially the stress system)
2. In Satheira, /ɻ/ merges into /l/ before /i/ or syllable-finally, /ɾ/ before /ɛ/, /ɣ/ < /qʰ χ/ before /a/, and /z/ < [ʐ] before /ɔ u/. Is this fine, or would you consider this too systematic or too random?
3. What do I do with the yers? In Satheira, they're just dropped and resulting clusters are assimilated, in Arıvadha, they merge into a Mandarinesque apical vowel, and in Mačte they umlaut the preceding vowel and are deleted only in certain circumstances, wreaking havoc with the verbal system. Apart from simple fortition to, say, /i u/, what are some interesting sound changes that can apply to them?
4. How can I create a four-way obstruent distinction from the three-way plosive distinction? Basically what I want is /t d θ ð/. First, the voiced plosive lenition becomes phonemic, and the aspirates lenite to voiceless fricatives. What can I do to reintroduce intervocalic voiced plosives?
5. How do I get rid of the retroflexes and alveolopalatals? In Satheira they merge with the dentals, in Mačte, they merge with each other to form a separate postalveolar class. What other possibilities are there?
6. Is this post too long?
6) it's not too long, it's nice, but the yers are fucking my mind up.
4) do some funky shit with the yers, possibly with the prerequisite of /T D Dʰ/ > /Tʰ T D/ then something like /D/ > /Dʰ/ before the yers, then delete the yers or merge them into a schwa, then /Tʰ Dʰ/ > [-aspirate +fricative]
Deleting the yers might yield you a shift from coda to nucleus (related to 3) and yes umlaut might be a fun thing but only if you kinda merge some categories so that you get minimal pairs between the obstruent sets)
5) retroflexes > retroflexion on vowels, alveopalatals > postalveolars
2) take a look at Norwegian/Danish/Faroese <r> and all its kinks and you'll see what it can do. <ð> is also a good candidate in Faroese.
sano wrote:
To my dearest Darkgamma,
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Sincerely,
sano
tezcatlip0ca wrote:And now for the questions.
1. Is this phonology plausible at all, or too strange? (especially the stress system)
2. In Satheira, /ɻ/ merges into /l/ before /i/ or syllable-finally, /ɾ/ before /ɛ/, /ɣ/ < /qʰ χ/ before /a/, and /z/ < [ʐ] before /ɔ u/. Is this fine, or would you consider this too systematic or too random?
3. What do I do with the yers? In Satheira, they're just dropped and resulting clusters are assimilated, in Arıvadha, they merge into a Mandarinesque apical vowel, and in Mačte they umlaut the preceding vowel and are deleted only in certain circumstances, wreaking havoc with the verbal system. Apart from simple fortition to, say, /i u/, what are some interesting sound changes that can apply to them?
4. How can I create a four-way obstruent distinction from the three-way plosive distinction? Basically what I want is /t d θ ð/. First, the voiced plosive lenition becomes phonemic, and the aspirates lenite to voiceless fricatives. What can I do to reintroduce intervocalic voiced plosives?
5. How do I get rid of the retroflexes and alveolopalatals? In Satheira they merge with the dentals, in Mačte, they merge with each other to form a separate postalveolar class. What other possibilities are there?
6. Is this post too long?
ad 1: Yes, it is plausible; I see no problems with it.
ad 2: Looks a bit random to me, but not to such a point that I would say, "No way!".
ad 3: That all makes sense.
ad 4: That also makes sense. Intervocalic voiced stops can be reintroduced by leniting voiceless unaspirated stops.
ad 5: Retroflexes could "unpack" by changing into /r/+alveolar, or alveolar+/r/. Alveolopalatals could similarly "unpack" into alveolar+/j/.
ad 6: No. It is long, but interesting to read.
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A
tezcatlip0ca wrote:All right, I'm completely redoing the Mailin phonology. Questions at the end of the post.
Phoneme inventory:
/m n ɳ ȵ ŋ/ m n ņ ń ŋ
/p pʰ b t tʰ d ʈ ʈʰ ɖ tɕ tɕʰ dʑ k kʰ g q qʰ/ p ph b t th d ţ ţh ḑ c ch j k kh g q qh
/(ɸ) s ʂ ɕ x χ/ f s ş ś h ħ
/w l ɾ ɻ j/ w l r ŗ y
/i ɪ ɛ a ɔ ɤ u ai au ɛi ɛu/ i ь e a o ъ u ai au ei eu
/ɸ/ is only found in loanwords.
Allophony:
The voiced stops /b d ɖ dʑ g/ are realized as fricatives [v ð ð̢ ʑ ɣ] intervocalically. [ð̢] is a retroflex slit fricative.
/w l ɾ ɻ j/ are devoiced after an aspirate.
/s ʂ ɕ/ assimilate in voicing to the following consonant.
Phonotactics:
The maximal syllable structure is (C(R))V(C). Any consonant can occur in the onset except word-initial /ɻ/. The onset can also consist of a non-glide consonant followed by one of /w l ɾ j/, except a labial followed by /w/, an alveolopalatal or a uvular followed by /j/, a nasal other than /m/ followed by /l ɾ/, a coronal followed by /l/, or /lɾ ɾw/. Only sibilants, /l ɾ ɻ/ and a homorganic nasal can occur in the coda, but non-clitic words must end with a vowel. Two aspirates can never occur in consecutive syllables, the first one is deaspirated. /ɪ ɤ/ can't occur in the last syllable.
Stress:
The first syllable of the root is stressed, if it falls on the penult or antepenult, unless that syllable has /ɪ ɤ/ as the nucleus. If the first syllable of the root falls further back than the antepenult, but the antepenult is still part of the root and it doesn't have /ɪ ɤ/, it is stressed; otherwise the stress falls on the penult. If both the penult and antepenult have /ɪ ɤ/, the stress falls on the ultima. Examples:
Root *eudъn éudъna, eudъnáħi, eudъnъşţhí
Root *dyaqh dyáqha, dyáqhaħi, dyáqъşţhi
Root *thrьt thrьtá, thrьtáħi, thrьtъşţhí
And now for the questions.
1. Is this phonology plausible at all, or too strange? (especially the stress system)
2. In Satheira, /ɻ/ merges into /l/ before /i/ or syllable-finally, /ɾ/ before /ɛ/, /ɣ/ < /qʰ χ/ before /a/, and /z/ < [ʐ] before /ɔ u/. Is this fine, or would you consider this too systematic or too random?
3. What do I do with the yers? In Satheira, they're just dropped and resulting clusters are assimilated, in Arıvadha, they merge into a Mandarinesque apical vowel, and in Mačte they umlaut the preceding vowel and are deleted only in certain circumstances, wreaking havoc with the verbal system. Apart from simple fortition to, say, /i u/, what are some interesting sound changes that can apply to them?
4. How can I create a four-way obstruent distinction from the three-way plosive distinction? Basically what I want is /t d θ ð/. First, the voiced plosive lenition becomes phonemic, and the aspirates lenite to voiceless fricatives. What can I do to reintroduce intervocalic voiced plosives?
5. How do I get rid of the retroflexes and alveolopalatals? In Satheira they merge with the dentals, in Mačte, they merge with each other to form a separate postalveolar class. What other possibilities are there?
6. Is this post too long?
Without reading the other replies...
1. The phoneme inventory looks plausible, allthough a little too regular maybe? How did the stress system become that way, that it avoids putting stress on syllables with yers.
2. I don't understand why those consonants would merge in front of those vowels.
3. Some ideas:
a) ɪ, ɤ > ə
b) C > Cʲ / _i
C > Cʷ / _u
ɪ, ɤ > i, u
c) ɪ, ɤ > e, o
4. You already solved it in Satheira.
5. I can't come up with any good ideas right now. Maybe:
alveopalatals > palatals
palatals, velars > velars, uvulars
6. Yes.
tezcatlip0ca wrote:All right, I'm completely redoing the Mailin phonology.
1. The weirdest thing I can think of in there is the distinction between [ɻ] and [ɻ˔], other than that it seems reasonable.
2. All of those are fine individual changes but taken together they do seem a bit random. → l seems like a feasible palatalization development and → ɣ a feasible darkening development, but I don't see how exactly the distinction between → ɾ / _ɛ and → ʐ / _ɔ u is supposed to work? Labiality triggering assibilation does not make sense, and while /ɛ/'s frontness could justify the alveolarization, I don't see why the output here is a flap rather than a lateral.
3. The fun thing to do, I think, would be to drop them but stretch this process out so as to mesh with other key changes, considering that you have several processes that operate intervocally or syllable-finally.
4. Morphological leveling could work to an extent. Say that some stage of yer-loss creates alternations between syllable-final voiced stops versus intervocalic voiced frics; this could get generalized one way or the other. Alternately, cluster leveling following yer-loss allows tons of possibilities like:
4a. *-mb- → -b-, *-mьb- → -mb-
4b. *-d- → -ð-, *-dьt- → -d-
4c. *-sg- → -g-, *sьg → -zg-
5. ʂ could be velarized to x. Perhaps similarly at least ʐ → ɣ. [ʐ ʑ] might alternately lenite to /ɻ j/, and you might toss in a lenition of /dʑ/ to /ʑ/ before that. For /ɖ/, perhaps a better lenition route might be /ɽ/ → /ɾ/. The voiceless stops seem like the difficult part to think of anything really original for but just handling dentalization / postalveolarization / velarization differently in each descendant depending on the vowel environment (say, tɕi tɕa tɕu → ki tʃa tʃu, or ʈi ʈa ʈu → ti tʃa tu) would allow ending up with all sorts of variation.
6. Nah.
That's pretty cool, you could contrast this original "mn" with later "mn" from the loss of vowels in, for example, "femina". Something like somnia > səbbia but femina > fimna/femma, or whatever.
But I'd expect the i to become syllabic pretty quickly, and probably drop out (being in a labial context) or alter surrounding sounds; somnia > sõbmja > səbmʲa > səbba, maybe, or somnia > sõbmja > səbɲæ > səbbije.
A question: what would be a likely evolution for glottal stop + stop clusters for both voiced and voiceless stops ([ʔt], [ʔd])? I went for simple deletion of the glottal stop, but I wonder if there couldn't be anything more interesting.
Ars Lande wrote:A question: what would be a likely evolution for glottal stop + stop clusters for both voiced and voiceless stops ([ʔt], [ʔd])? I went for simple deletion of the glottal stop, but I wonder if there couldn't be anything more interesting.
Two suggestions:
1. The clusters become geminates.
2. The clusters with a voiceless stops become ejectives, those with a voiced stop become implosives.
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A
Ars Lande wrote:A question: what would be a likely evolution for glottal stop + stop clusters for both voiced and voiceless stops ([ʔt], [ʔd])? I went for simple deletion of the glottal stop, but I wonder if there couldn't be anything more interesting.
Two suggestions:
1. The clusters become geminates.
2. The clusters with a voiceless stops become ejectives, those with a voiced stop become implosives.
3. All of these clusters become ejectives or implosives (via voicing neutralization)
4. All of these clusters become [ʔ], possibly with a secondary articulation reflecting the original POA of the stop (e.g. [ʔp] > [ʔʷ] etc.) This secondary articulation might then color one or both of the adjacent vowels (e.g. [aʔpa] > [oʔa]~[aʔo] or similar).
5. The glottal stop is deleted, but induces a tone on the preceding vowel (typically high tone, but low tone before *ʔC is attested in some Athabaskan languages)
6. The distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is neutralized after a glottal stop, with voiced plosives inducing a low tone on the following vowel (e.g. [aʔba] > [aʔpà])
7. A combination of 6 with any of 3-5, e.g. 6+4 [aʔba] > [oʔà]; 6+3 [aʔba] > [ap’à], 6+5 [aʔba] > [ápà].
EDIT:
8. All of these clusters become preglottalized voiceless stops. The original voiceless stops become aspirated in order to enhance the contrast, and preglottalization is then lost. This creates a three-way opposition: *[apa] *[aʔpa] *[aʔba] *[aba] become [apʰa] [apa] [apa] [aba].
Last edited by Cedh on Mon Apr 15, 2013 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Poplar wrote:{f θ} → x
f → x
xx → k
xC → CC
a aː → e o
These, yes.
pʼ tʼ tsʼ kʼ → f θ s x
This, not so much. Glottalization is more or less the opposite articulatory gesture to aspiration/spirantization, so I'd think the following would be more likely:
p t ts k → f θ s x
pʼ tʼ tsʼ kʼ → p t ts k
cedh audmanh wrote:This, not so much. Glottalization is more or less the opposite articulatory gesture to aspiration/spirantization, so I'd think the following would be more likely:
p t ts k → f θ s x
pʼ tʼ tsʼ kʼ → p t ts k
Okay. Is there a sort of a secondary articulation or whatever that can become both aspiration and glottalization?
That's pretty cool, you could contrast this original "mn" with later "mn" from the loss of vowels in, for example, "femina". Something like somnia > səbbia but femina > fimna/femma, or whatever.
But I'd expect the i to become syllabic pretty quickly, and probably drop out (being in a labial context) or alter surrounding sounds; somnia > sõbmja > səbmʲa > səbba, maybe, or somnia > sõbmja > səbɲæ > səbbije.
Yeah definitely. mn > bb but mVn > mn > mm thus səbːæj sleep vs him noblewoman.
IIRC, in certain environments both Welsh (or earlier Brythonic?) and Old French had [w] > [gw], and Old French further had [j] > [dʒ]. Would it be safe to assume the following intermediate steps:
[w] > [ɣw] > [gw] and [j] > [ʝj] > [ɟj] > [dʒ]?
If so, let us assume a hypothetical language has all of [β], [ð], [ʝ] and [ɣ] as well as [w] and [j]. Given that this language undergoes [w] > [gw] and [j] > [ɟj], and therefore [ɣw] > [gw] and [ʝj] > [ɟj], would it be likely that all voiced fricatives before [w] and [j] fortified to voiced plosives as follows:
[βw ðw ʝw] > [bw dw ɟw] and [βj ðj ɣj] > [bj dj gj]
…or would fortition be restricted to fricative-approximant clusters where both sounds are at the same POA, i.e. [ɣw] > [gw] and [ʝj] > [ɟj] but retention of [βw ðw ʝw] and [βj ðj ɣj]?
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
I think both would be possible, but generalised fortition might be more likely. A third option would be to have some mergers, taking along one or more of the non-homoorganic vfric+glide clusters with the homoorganic ones (most likely IMO for *βw *ɣj, least likely but still possible for *ðw *βj). In effect, this might mean that all vfric+w clusters end up as [ɡw]~[ɡʷ], and all vfric+j clusters end up as [dʒ].
In typical ZBB unnecessarily pedantic fashion, I'll clarify French borrowed words with [w] in Germanic languages using [gw]. Like gui(d)er (modern guider), cf. English to wit, which also gave back the doublet to guide.
In typical ZBB unnecessarily pedantic fashion, I'll clarify French borrowed words with [w] in Germanic languages using [gw]. Like gui(d)er (modern guider), cf. English to wit, which also gave back the doublet to guide.
Thanks very much for the correction, Serafin. Always appreciated
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
