Weird natlang phonologies

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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Qwynegold
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Qwynegold »

Bristel wrote:Faroese has [j] in some (or all?) places where /ð/ was in the older language, and it is written <ð>. (I'm guessing this isn't so weird? Do [ð] get lowered a bit as an approximant and then turned into [j] in other languages?)
Some Finnish dialects have j from earlier ð, though someone said that it only happens in certain environments, making it a mere allophone.
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by gach »

Qwynegold wrote:Some Finnish dialects have j from earlier ð, though someone said that it only happens in certain environments, making it a mere allophone.
I think the the /j/ and /v/ as weak grades of /t/ (like vejän - vetää in place of standard vedän - vetää, "pull.SG1" - "pull.SG3") don't represent direct descendants of /ð/ but are epenthetic consonants filling in the positions of older hiatuses resulting from the loss of the /ð/. Thus these forms are actually subtypes of the regular eastern gradation type /t/ ~ Ø.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Tropylium »

gach wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:Some Finnish dialects have j from earlier ð, though someone said that it only happens in certain environments, making it a mere allophone.
I think the the /j/ and /v/ as weak grades of /t/ (like vejän - vetää in place of standard vedän - vetää, "pull.SG1" - "pull.SG3") don't represent direct descendants of /ð/ but are epenthetic consonants filling in the positions of older hiatuses resulting from the loss of the /ð/. Thus these forms are actually subtypes of the regular eastern gradation type /t/ ~ Ø.
That much is true, but there are dialects that have /j/ also in a back-vocalic environment, e.g. pata : pajan 'pot', sata : sajan 'hundred', sato : sajon 'crop'.

Same in Estonian too, where it's indeed standard, e.g. pada : paja.

There are also d ~ j correspondences which occur regularly across the Turkic languages, and I've seen *ð posited as the intermediate. (Though it could be just as well *ɟ / *dʲ, I figure.)
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Post by Richard W »

vokzhen wrote:/ð/ does weird things all over. Irish has it > ɣ, Osco-Umbrian > v,...
Just like some British English - post-vocalic /ð/ > /v/ (neutralisationʔ) is widespread, and possibly related to unconditional /θ/ > /f/.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Magb »

Faroese has ð > v in some environments as well, e.g. <maður> [ˈmɛavʊɹ]. Wikipedia has a somewhat misplaced section about the development of historical /ð/ at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroese_or ... _insertion.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Sumelic »

Magb wrote:Faroese has ð > v in some environments as well, e.g. <maður> [ˈmɛavʊɹ]. Wikipedia has a somewhat misplaced section about the development of historical /ð/ at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroese_or ... _insertion.
Are the [v]'s before [ʊ] actually directly developed from /ð/ here, though, or are they, as they apparently are in Finnish,
gach wrote: epenthetic consonants filling in the positions of older hiatuses resulting from the loss of the /ð/
?

Wikipedia at least seems to imply it is the latter, but you say that section is "misplaced" so I'm wondering if you know more about the history of this. The examples in that link that look most clearly like a development of /ð/ > /v/ are the words like <æða> [ˈɛava] , although even there it's not totally clear to me (maybe the second vowel counts as a back vowel, or counted as one historically when the glide epenthesis occurred in this word).

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by linguoboy »

Sumelic wrote:The examples in that link that look most clearly like a development of /ð/ > /v/ are the words like <æða> [ˈɛava] , although even there it's not totally clear to me (maybe the second vowel counts as a back vowel, or counted as one historically when the glide epenthesis occurred in this word).
Alternatively, historical /ð/ is followed by /u/ in every form of <æða> except the nominative singular and genitive plural, so perhaps the [v] in these forms is the product of analogical leveling.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Magb »

Sumelic wrote:
Magb wrote:Faroese has ð > v in some environments as well, e.g. <maður> [ˈmɛavʊɹ]. Wikipedia has a somewhat misplaced section about the development of historical /ð/ at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroese_or ... _insertion.
Are the [v]'s before [ʊ] actually directly developed from /ð/ here, though, or are they, as they apparently are in Finnish,
gach wrote: epenthetic consonants filling in the positions of older hiatuses resulting from the loss of the /ð/
?

Wikipedia at least seems to imply it is the latter, but you say that section is "misplaced" so I'm wondering if you know more about the history of this. The examples in that link that look most clearly like a development of /ð/ > /v/ are the words like <æða> [ˈɛava] , although even there it's not totally clear to me (maybe the second vowel counts as a back vowel, or counted as one historically when the glide epenthesis occurred in this word).
I just said "misplaced" because I felt it would make more sense for it to be in the phonology article than the orthography article, whether the consonants are epenthetic or not. I don't know much about it beyond what that article says, and you're probably right that it's more of a case of ð > Ø > v.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Birdlang »

Mavea has linguolabials. Tangoa has voiced and voiceless linguolabials. Qaqet has a fricative inventory of /B s G/. Nek has a fricative inventory of /s z G/ and /G/ is written as y, a practice used by some conlangers. Rapoisi, Ditidaht, Lushootseed and Makah have no nasals. http://www-01.sil.org/pacific/png/pubs/ ... apoisi.pdf
Edit: Rapoisi has allophonic nasals, but no phonemic nasals.
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Nymrīs »

Klallam has no k but kw and e but no o
N being phonemic in it is relatively minor

Navajo features a lot of consonants in coronal places of articulation and significantly less in other areas like other athabascan languages

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Ser »

Nymrīs wrote:Klallam has no k but kw
Musqueam Halkomelem (also Salishan) has almost no /k/ in (normally pronounced) native words either. It's mostly used to render /q/ in baby speech. (The language uses /q/ very often instead.)
N being phonemic in it is relatively minor
Does this mean it hardly has any words with /n/ (and maybe /nʼ/)?

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Frislander »

What about Tlingit? A three-way distinction between unaspirated, aspirated and ejective stops, a labaialisation contrast for velars and uvulars, an (almost) complete ejective fricative series (including a couple which as far as I know are not found anywhere else), five laterals but no bilabials or liquids! Even better, apparently n may have come from an earlier l, so the language may have previously had no nasals either! :mrgreen:
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Vijay »

I think some of those things may actually be pretty common in the area where Tlingit is spoken. There are definitely languages in the area other than (and unrelated to) Tlingit that don't have nasals.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Frislander »

Admittedly, yes, but Tlingit is on the northern edge of the Northwest Coast sprachbund, and the ejective fricatives are definitely not seen anywhere else in the region. After all, it is a Na-Dené language, and their phonologies are pretty weird to begin with, but Tlingit seems to have just taken the Pacific Northwest as an excuse to go bonkers.
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

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Hah :D

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Zaarin »

Karero wrote:Admittedly, yes, but Tlingit is on the northern edge of the Northwest Coast sprachbund, and the ejective fricatives are definitely not seen anywhere else in the region. After all, it is a Na-Dené language, and their phonologies are pretty weird to begin with, but Tlingit seems to have just taken the Pacific Northwest as an excuse to go bonkers.
That's a pretty good assessment of Tlingit--a Northwest Coast language taken to the extreme. It's certainly much more intriguing than its Eyak and Athabaskan cousins, IMO. Also the four major Tlingit dialects have complete different tonemes. Haida is pretty weird, too, with its epiglottal consonants (in a couple dialects) and what not.
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Frislander »

Nymrīs wrote:Klallam has no k but kw and e but no o
The k thing seems to be a general palatalisation trend of the Central Northwest Coast, also being found in the related North-Straits Salish and in Quileute. North-Straits has the additional interesting feature of having this vowel system:

Code: Select all

i   ə
e   ɑ
There is also u, but it's only found in loans, thus leaving a vowel system which has no native rounded vowels. (I like it so much that I'm thinking of using some day).
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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by 8Deer »

Karero wrote:
Nymrīs wrote:Klallam has no k but kw and e but no o
The k thing seems to be a general palatalisation trend of the Central Northwest Coast, also being found in the related North-Straits Salish and in Quileute.
I did research for a paper on this very topic, never ended up writing it tho. The velar series (*k *k' *x) fronted to *č *č' *š in all 10 Central Salish languages, plus most Tsamosan Salish and a couple of Southern Interior Salish languages. The Southern Wakashan languages and the Chemakum language (part of the Chimakuan family, which has only one other member) which neighbour the Central Salish languages also have the shift.

There are later shifts of *č > c, *c > s and *c > θ in some Central Salish languages, so Proto-Salish *k ends up as s/θ in Saanich, merging with *s *c *x. In Halkomelem, these shifts are in a chain shift order so they don't merge.

Basically, it seems stops have a tendency to front in languages of this area. Interestingly, none of the languages have a shift *q > k or *kʷ > k to fill in the missing velar series.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Vijay »

8Deer wrote: Interestingly, none of the languages have a shift *q > k or *kʷ > k to fill in the missing velar series.
Which then helps keep the uvulars and palatals more auditorily distinct from each other, right?

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by 8Deer »

Vijay wrote:
8Deer wrote: Interestingly, none of the languages have a shift *q > k or *kʷ > k to fill in the missing velar series.
Which then helps keep the uvulars and palatals more auditorily distinct from each other, right?
I would assume so, but *qʷ *kʷ are perceptually quite similar, and yet they don't shift at all.

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by Vijay »

I remember finding that a surprising number of European language varieties have retroflexes (well, OK, maybe it isn't actually that weird, but at least it was surprising to me at the time because I'd never heard of this before). For example, I can very clearly hear [ɭ] between /a/ and /t/ when Viennese people speak (Standard) German (OK, this one might be kind of weird because it only ever seems to be in that specific environment, although I guess that still isn't weird).

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Re: Weird natlang phonologies

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

If this has already been mentioned, it still deserves a re-visit: Liangshan Yi/Nuosu's syllabic consonants.

Wiki provides: "The syllabic consonants y(r) u(r) are essentially the usual Sinological vowels ɿ ʮ, so y can be identified with the vowel of the Mandarin 四 sì "four", but they have diverse realizations. Y(r) completely assimilates to a preceding coronal except in voice, e.g. /ɕz̩˨˩/ [ɕʑ̩˨˩] "to marry", and are [m͡l̩] after a labial nasal, e.g. /m̥z̩˧sz̩˧/ [m̥m͡l̩˧sz̩˧] "cloth". U(r) assimilates similarly after laterals, retaining its rounding, e.g. /l̥v̩ʷ˧/ [l̥l̩ʷ˧] "to stir-fry", and is [m̩ʷ] after a labial nasal, e.g. /m̥v̩ʷ˧/ [m̥m̩ʷ˧] "mushroom"; moreover it induces a labially trilled release of preceding labial or alveolar stops, e.g. /ⁿdv̩ʷ˨˩/ [ⁿdʙv̩ʷ˨˩] "to hit"."

A SIL source, for what it's worth, provides similar. https://arts-sciences.und.edu/summer-in ... atough.pdf

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