What's key for me is finding a particular feel that I'm interested in. That applies to phonology, but also to grammar.
To take Wenthish, for example: years ago, repeatedly, I wanted to make a sister language to English, derived from Old English. But I never found something that really grabbed my attention. Then at some point, I had the core idea for Wenthish: a Germanic language in the north atlantic, reminiscent of English, but not necessarily its closest relative.
The setting gave me a few ideas to narrow down the 'feel' - there could be a nordic influence, there could be eth. The setting gave me more of an idea: windswept islands, deforested (mostly), rocky outcroppings, rain, fog, more wind. That didn't necessarily tell me what the language was going to be like, but it gave me, as it were, a measuring stick. With previous attempts, I never knew who spoke the language, so I never had anything concrete to aim at. Now I could keep in mind this measuring stick to see how much I intuitively felt the language matched the people.
Then I read up a lot on historical sound changes in Germanic. I basically started with the changes leading to Old English, and played around a bit - what happens if you skip this change, or expand that one, or shift the order around a little? I found there were a few changes that I wanted to keep from real life. I wanted intervocalic fricative voicing, for instance, and I kind of liked the idea of extending it to initials, as in West Country or Dutch. I liked the 'rural' feel of that. And I also found some interesting shifts I could add. The biggest one sounds small: redefining the allophonic rules governing early voiced stops/fricatives, so that there is no hardening after nasals. That matters because it means the ingvaeonic spirant law has a much wider effect than in English. That helps give the language its distinctive feel: Germanic, knotty, archaic, but also sort of soft.
So for me, it's not exactly fixing an objective and reaching it. It's having a general idea, and then trying to find developments that didn't just match that, but that helped solidify it and make it more specific.
_________________ Blog:
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
|