My Avrelang

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.
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vec
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My Avrelang

Post by vec »

I've decided to make an avrelang, a conlang that is based on all the most average features on WALS. I'm going to document my process in here. Like any self-respecting conlanger, I'm going to start with the phonology. I want to find out if something interesting comes out of this or if it will be extremely boring. I have a feeling that many of the features common in Western languages and conlangs are not necessarily that common and eventually, I will have something fun. We'll see.

Features 1-3
For my consonants and vowels, I'm going to have to do some math. According to WALS, 22±3 consonants is the average number. Since I'm trying to be average. 22 is the number of consonants for now. The average number of vowel qualities is 5-6. My feeling is that 5 is more average than 6 so I'm going with 5 for now. But the what about the 3rd feature, consonant-vowel ratio? 2.75 - 4.5 is classified as average. 22 : 5 = 4.4. It's perfect. 22 : 6 gives 3.66··· so if we decide to add a 6th vowel, it works. 21 : 5 = 4.2 also falls within the range. 21 : 6 = 3.5 and works as well. This gives some leeway in case I end up in trouble searching for my sounds. For now though, the vowels are /a e i o u/.

Feature 4-7
182 languages have no vo voicing contrast. 189 have voicing contrast in plosives only. 38 in fricatives alone. 158 in both. I'm going to go with option two. There will be voiced plosives but no voiced fricatives.
Feature 5 deals with gaps in plosive systems but this is relatively uncommon so my avrelang won't feature it. Feature 6 deals with uvulars which are uncommon and don't make the cut. Glottalised consonants (feature 7) are also uncommon. This gives us enough to construct the plosive system. There will be a full set of the normal stops only:
/p b t d k g/
Yay! We have the stops.

Features 8-9
Lateral consonants. Most languages have them. There will be an /l/. Feature 9 discusses the velar nasal. 146 have it and allow it syllable-initially. 235 languages don't have one at all. It won't feature. Tentatively, the nasals are /m n/.

Interlude—Finishing the consonantal system
Feature 9 is the last feature that speaks of consonants. But I only have 9 so I'm going to intutively have to add 13 consonants. I'm only using WALS as my source so I'm not going to look up charts. Please tell me if you find my choices too extravagant.
So far, my averlang has:
/p t k/
/b d g/
/m n/
/l/
By looking at feature 4, many languages have fricatives so I think it's safe to add some:
/f s x h/
We're up to 13. I'm going to go ahead and assume that a rhotic is not too far of a stretch, so there'll be an /r/. Maybe I'll look at other things to decide which kind of r this is later. 14—9 to go.
I'm going to go ahead and add /ŋ/ and fill in the nasal system. I'm also thinking that the glides /w/ and /j/ are probably extremely common and will feature. And I have a feeling that the affricates /tʃ dʒ/ are very common, so they'll feature. What do you guys think?
/p t tʃ k/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/
19—3 to go. I think adding /ʃ/ is in order, it matches the /tʃ/ and isn't too weird. I need two more. Since I have /h/ I think /ʔ/ isn't too much of a stretch. One more. Gosh, I can't decide. Any ideas?
The system for now looks like this, minus one:
/p t tʃ k ʔ/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ʃ x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/

It won't be a voiced fricative, it won't be a stop. It could be a nasal, liquid, glide or even a contrasting rhotic. I need some help with deciding.

Features 10-11
Now for the vowels. Vowel nasalisation (10) does not seem common enough to make the cut. Neither do front rounded vowels (11). So the vowels stay /a e i o u/ for now.

Feature 12
Syllable structure. Moderately complex is the by far most common type. That means either CCV or CVC or CCVC. I'll hold off on this for a little while. According to the article, the second consonant in CC clusters is almost always restricted and also coda consonants. I'll keep this in mind.

Features 13-17
Tone (13) and fixed stress locations (14). Tones don't make the cut, they're featured in a minority of the languages sampled. However, stress lands me in trouble. The majority of languages don't have a fixed stressed position (220) but I think for convenience, I'm going to go with the second most common (110 languages), the penultimate. Am I cheating? Yes, but I find unfixed stresses very stressful. Also, the following article (15) more languages have a fixes stress position than weight sensetive stress. So weight sensetive stress will not feature. This takes care of feature 16 as well which deals with the same. Feature 17 speaks about rhythm types which has to do with secondary stress. According to the article, trochaic secondary stress (the second syllable after the main stress) receives secondary stress. So that's what we go with.

Features 18-19
Absence of common consonants is the topic of the 18th feature. Most languages BY FAR have all present. The presence of uncommon consonants is the following topic and final topic of the phonology survey. Most languages, 449, don't have any, and 45 have the second most common option labial-velars. I don't really have room to take any liberties here. But I feel like this gives me permission to allow /kp/ clusters at the start of syllables if I choose CCV or CCVC syllable structures.

Outro—Finishing the phonology
For this, I'm going to need some help. Let's summarise, shall we?

Consonants
/p t tʃ k ʔ/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ʃ x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/

Vowels
/a e i o u/
Penultimate stress, trochaic secondary stress.

Questions:
  1. Do I add a 22nd consonant? I don't need to. The ratio 21 : 5 = 4.2 is acceptable.
  2. What about adding a vowel? It's OK if I do. 21 : 6 = 3.5 and falls within the range, actually, it hits the middle of the range.
  3. What kind of syllables are there? CVC, CCV or CCVC?
  4. What are the phonotactics?
Coming up… morphology.
vec

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Ulrike Meinhof
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

This will be interesting to follow! It might actually turn into something that I could reference in uni (not in a paper, but in discussions).
vecfaranti wrote:[*]Do I add a 22nd consonant? I don't need to. The ratio 21 : 5 = 4.2 is acceptable.
Don't. It would ruin the symmetry.
[*]What about adding a vowel? It's OK if I do. 21 : 6 = 3.5 and falls within the range, actually, it hits the middle of the range.
I don't know what WALS says, but nothing screams average to me like /a e i o u/.
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Torco »

cool idea, yours... but I disagree with the choice of the velar nasal: most langs don't have it, so shouldn't it not be in your repertoire?

Also, this could do with a survey of the world's more common sounds. WALS isn't comprehensive.

Still, if this was a youtube channel, I would hit the subscribe button.

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by masako »

Torco wrote:Still, if this was a youtube channel, I would hit the subscribe button.
"Subscribe Topic" is at the top left of the topic title.

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Abi »

vecfaranti wrote: Consonants
/p t tʃ k ʔ/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ʃ x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/

Vowels
/a e i o u/
Looks incredibly like most newblangs. :P

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Torco »

sano wrote:
Torco wrote:Still, if this was a youtube channel, I would hit the subscribe button.
"Subscribe Topic" is at the top left of the topic title.
never clicked it
*clicks it*
let's see what it does

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Nortaneous »

Abi wrote:Looks incredibly like most newblangs. :P
Nah, they usually don't have the glottal stop. And it feels out of place here too, actually. Maybe a palatal nasal instead?
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Torco »

I think contrasting gemination might be more common than any funky nasals [velar, nasal] or a glottal stop

or contrasting series of palatalized or something

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by el morón »

/p t tʃ k/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ʃ x h/
/m n ɲ/
/l ʎ r/
/w j/

Makes more sense IMHO, because you'd be able to describe a palatal series contrasting with a «plain» series: /tʃ ʤ ʃ ɲ ʎ/ vs. /t d s n l/. It seems pretty average to me.

EDIT: would /c/ and /ɟ/ instead of /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ be far too alien? Are they too unstable/uncommon for an avrelang?

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Re: Morphology

Post by vec »

Features 20-22
20 deals with fusion of case and tense-aspect-mood markers. 75% of languages use concatenation for marking of these features. So thats what the averlang will do. 21: exponence of case and tense-aspect-mood markers. Exponence refers to how many induvidual categories each affix marks—basically, where on the scale between agglutinative and fusional it falls. 75 languages do not inflect for case, 72 do and are monoexponential for it. 127 languages are monoexponential for TAM (tense-aspect-mood) and this is a clear majority. So the language will mark TAM on the verb with monoexponential affixes. But do nouns mark case? I'll hold off on that. Feature 22 is about inflectional synthesis of the verb, i.e. how many categories a verb is marked for. The most common is 4-5 categories (52 languages), the second most common are 2-3 and 8-9 (24 languages each), the third is 6-7 (31 languages). The fact 8-9 is more common than 6-7 is interesting and I feel it gives me some leeway to decide what the number of categories is. It seems the average lies between 5 to about 8 categories per verb.

Features 23-25
These deal with locus. According to WALS,
Johanna Nichols and Balthasar Bickel wrote:Locus is a convenient one-word term for what is also known as head/dependent marking . In any kind of phrase, overt morphosyntactic marking reflecting the syntactic relations within the phrase may be located on the head of the phrase, on a non-head (i.e. on a dependent), on both, or on neither.
Head marking is the most common type of locus in clauses with 71 languages, but dependent marking is done by 63 and double marking by 58. What to do? Well, it seems double marking is out of the question and dependent marking doesn't exactly scream "default" so we'll go with head marking.
For possessive noun phrases (feature 24), dependent marking is more common with 98 against 78 languages. This means the possessor is marked, not the thing possessed.
The third chapter on locus discusses whole-language typology. Inconsistent marking is by far the most common, which matches the two previous features. Result: So the verb marks for subject and object, but nouns do not have case markers, except for a possessive case or other form of marker.

Features 26-27
Prefixing vs. suffixing. Strongly suffixing gets 382 languages. The runner up is equal prefixing and suffixing, 130 languages. Strongly suffixing does not imply exclusive suffixing, so there might be some prefixes but the language will feature mostly suffixes.
Feature 27 deals with reduplication. 277 langugages have productive full and partial reduplication, 35 have full only, 56 have no. It seems clear that the language will utilise reduplication.

Features 28-29
Feature 28 deals with case syncretism but since we already found that there probably will not be any case marking, and that matches the statistics here so that's covered. Feature 29 deals with syncretism in verbal person and number marking. So let's look at that a little bit, shall we? 81 languages are found to be not syncretic, 60 are syncretic and 57 have no person/number marking. So my avrelang's verbs will not be syncretic. Syncretic means that certain forms are identical such as 1p and 3p in German: both machten 'we/they made'. All verbal forms in the avrelang will contrast.

Features 30-32
Feature 30 deals with the number of genders, in which case no genders wins and the language will not have genders. 31-32 are about genders too. Covered.

Features 33-36
Coding of nominal plurality. 492 languages have a plural suffix, 150 use a plural word, 118 a prefix, 86 have no plural. So it is, my avrelang will have a plural suffix. The following article, number 34, is about the occurrance of plurality. While it states that human nouns are more likely to be obligated to mark plurals than other nouns, the majority (133) of the surveyed languages have plurals be mandatory in all cases. The runner up, all nouns always optional, doesn't even lick it's heels: 55 languages.
Article 35 is about plurality in personal pronouns. Most languages by far have a stem that encodes person and number. So it will be.
Finally, associative plural is looked at. In mos cases, it is the same as additive plural so we don't have to worry about that.

Features 37-38
These are about articles. Most languages have a definite word, not an affix, and it is separate from demonstratives. So there's a definite article. According to 38, most languaged do not have a separate indefinite article, so the avrelang will not have it.

Features 39-40
Clusivity marking in pronouns and verbs, respectively. Most languages don't have it, even though many do, so the avrelang will not have it.

Features 41-43
Demonstratives. Most languages by far have in place a two-way distinction for distance. For most, adnominal and pronominal forms are identical. And in most cases they are not related to the 3rd person pronouns. So that's that.

Features 44-47
Other pronouny things. Gender-distinctions in pronouns are uncommon, so the language will not feature them. Most don't feature politeness distinctions. Most languages' indefinite pronouns are based on the interrogatives, so we'll have those be related. And reflexive pronouns and intensifiers are more often than not identical.

Features 48-52
These deal with adpositions and case. So 48 tells us, the avrelang will not does not have person marking for adpositions. 49 and 50 will confirm to us that it does in fact have no case, so no possessive. Then 51 gives us trouble. It is about the position of case affixes. Here more languages are surveyed than in the previous articles and 430 languages are listed as having case suffixes while 338 languages have no case affixes or adpositional clitics. What to do, what to do? Well, four articles have said that no cases is more common, so I'll stick to it. No cases. Finally, we get to know that comitatives and instrumentals are differentiated in the great majority of cases. Yay! Something that is not European!

Features 53-55
Here we learn about what my avrelang does with numerals. Well, we get to know that the word for "first" will be irregular, but other ordinals will be regular (110 languages, runner-up has first and second be irregular with 61 strong behind it, but not enough). Distributive numerals apparently are most common as reduplicates. How surprising! Well, that's what we'll do. Distributives are formed with reduplication. Finally, in 55, we learn that the avrelang does in fact not use numeral classifiers.

Feature 56
This is about conjunctions (also, and) and universal quantifiers (all, every). Apparently, it is most common for languages to have these be formally similar and employ the interrogative for the formation. More to do for the interrogative. I'm sure it's happy.

Features 57-59
Now we are into the dodgy area of ownership rights. Is it constitutionally protected? Well, apparently, 41% of languages employ possessive suffixes rather than none or prefixes (25% and 29% respectively). So nouns get plural suffixes and possessive suffixes. Now we know. How this is going to work with the fact that possessors are marked, not possessions, we'll have to find out. Feature 58 is about whether possessive inflection is obligatory for certain lexical entries. Apparently, the avrelang does not have any obligatorily possessive-inflected words. Finally, 59 talks about possessive classification—whether some words are marked differently for possession based on some lexical information. It will not be the case in the avrelang.

Features 60-61
Adjectives, genetives and relative clauses are the subject of these. Well, apparently, in my avrelang, these are highly differentiated and 61 tells us that adjectives can stand as heads of NPs without marking or any kind of fuss. Yay for adjectives.

Feature 62
Action nominal constructions such as: the destruction of the city or the performance of the sonata by the pianist. Are they ergative or accusative or something else? Well, sorry to get your hopes up, but the language does not allow them, majority rules. No, greatest number rules. Hm. This is somewhat of a conundrum. 42 languages do not allow them, 126 languages do. Only 36% don't have them. I am king of this language and I decree that those 36% don't apply. I'm going to choose the majority out of the available strategies for this which is possessive-accusative (barely, beating sentential by 3 languages). So what does this mean? My writing of the letter which is ultimately a transformation of I write the letter is rendered as My writing letter-acc.

Features 63-64
These are about conjunctions. In the avrelang, and and with are different and NP and VP conjunctions are identical. And so it is.

Features 65-69
Excitement! Aspects and tense. Well, the first news is that the avrelang does not differentiate grammatically between perfective and imperfective. There is a past tense, but it does not have remoteness distinctions. There is no future tense, but it was close. It was beaten by merely two languages. Damn them? Sure, if you want. There is no perfect, either. And the tense-aspect marking, which we found out in 20-22 definitely exists, is achieved with suffixes, which we already knew. So I guess nothing new here, except we now know that there is a past tense and there is subject and object marking on the verb. And there is a plural. So that's three categories out of at least five. Avrelang's verbs are going to have to have some moods and maybe we'll add some aspects. Who knows? Not me.

Features 70-72!
The IMPERATIVE! Well, that's one! There is a morphological imperative and it distinguishes number! The prohibitive has a special negative! We learn that in 71! And 72 tells us that our imperative-hortative system is neither minimal nor maximal! What?! Well, that means that… well, honestly, I don't quite understand! TELL ME!

Coming up… more verbal categories! Some word order rules! Clausal formation!
R.I.V.E.T.I.N.G. Are you guys as excited as I am?
vec

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

I have some thoughts on the consonants.
First of all, I have a sense that most languages, on average, are a little weird. So it is average to be odd. I also have an idea that palatal consonants in general are not that common. Palatalised, yes, maybe, but not fully palatal. And glottal stops are extremely common worldwide, although they are not phonemic in most languages. But most languages don't have /x/. /x/ is not less weird than /ŋ/ and /ʔ/. However, Torco's comment about contrasting geminates is very apt. And I think I'm in the end going to drop both /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ for /n:/ and /l:/. It makes sense.
However, I'm at a loss as to what to do with syllable structure. What do you guys think?
vec

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Trailsend »

(C)(V)

doooo iiiiiiiiit

:D

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by makvas »

Trailsend wrote:(C)(V)

doooo iiiiiiiiit

:D
This is likely but I think something like (C)V(N) or (C)V(N,A) would be "more average", N = nasals A = approximants

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

And just to finish of the morphological typology:

Features 73-76
Moods. Is there an optative? No. Is there situational possibility marking? Yes, but not morphological. Verbal constructions are used.
Is there epistemic possibility marking? Well, yes, but not morphological and it does not use verbal constructions. Fun! We have options. Well, what are they? Clitics or adverbs. Adverbs is way boring, and since we have the option, here, we are going with epistemic possibility clitics. It may not be the most average way to do it, but hey—it will make the language look average on WALS and CALS, and that is largely the goal here. And finally, there is no overlap between situational and epistemic possibility and necessity marking. That is consistent with what we have so far. And it gives us the possibility to mark necessity morphologically. Filling those empty slots on 'em verbs, one by one.

Features 77-78
Evidentiality. Well, bummer. There are no grammatical evidential in avrelang.

Features 79-80
These conclude our morphology section. These articles answer the question we have all been waiting for. Does my avrelang utilise suppletion in verbs? Well: Not according to tense/aspect. And what do you know? Not according to number either.

That concludes morphology typology. Now I just have to fill in the gaps. But first I must finish that pesky phonology. I've been thinking about that syllable structure, and here's what I think:
CVC is really boring and since we don't have to go with the most boring feature, that's not the goal here. We are aiming for interesting, yet average. That leaves CCV and CCVC. Let's have a vote, shall we? While there are some initial clusters, does avrelang have coda consonants or does it not? Trailsend, can I count you as not in favour of codas?
vec

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

vecfaranti wrote:And I think I'm in the end going to drop both /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ for /n:/ and /l:/. It makes sense.
If you want to do something just a bit out of the ordinary for the sake of it, I thought the idea of adding the palatal lateral to form a contrasting series with the central consonants was a nice idea. Geminates sticks out as quite non-average to me. Gut feeling.
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

Maybe you're right. Grr… I don't know what to do. To be honest, I have a little bit of a gripe with palatal laterals. Besides, I don't think the lateral really is forming any kind of symmetry with other things, there. There's no back-lateral, for example. So adding a palatal one would not add symmetry. So how about a palatal nasal and something else? Maybe even a full series of nasals, including a velar one? Or a palatal nasal and a glottal stop? Or a palatal nasal and a flap, introducing a third liquid?
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Cockroach »

I had this Idea before, but never followed up on it. I might start it up again, but it looks like you're much more committed to it

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Civil War Bugle »

I have no idea which is more average but aesthetically I like CCVC.

This looks like fun and I shall pay attention.

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Re: My Avrelang

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

Well, sorry to naysayers but those statistics settle the issue. /ʔ/ and /ŋ/ it is. They are both on the top ten list of the most common consonants in the world. The original inventory stands. Good. That settles it.
Also, I've been reading up on syllable constraints all night and I have come up with two schemes that seem to be really normal for them.

In case CCV is what's decided, it will go like this:

V
CV
KV
where K equals:
p,t,k,b,d,g,f,r,x+r,l,w,j excluding same POA clusters pw, bw, tl, dl and kj, gj, xj and also sj (but including tr and dr). We can assume the affricates and ʃ developed from kj, gj and sj/xj. According to that list and various other sources, they are less common than others. I think no same-POA when there are no nasals involved is a good rule. It seems common, but not with rhotics, for some reason.

I'm considering adding gb and kp to the mix, they are among the most common clusters in the world (especially African languages). Also, aspirated stops, or what could be analysed as unvoiced stop + /h/.

In case of CCVC, it will go the same except adding:
CVF
KVF
where F equals a liquid, glide or nasal:
r,l,j,w,m,n,ŋ
vec

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by dhok »

I would submit that you use a nominative/oblique case system for nouns instead of just adding a possessive. It's quite common: many older Romance languages and loads of Indo-Aryan ones do that, as does Nama. So too do many Northwestern Caucasian languages, and a quick search on Google Books reveals a very similar system (semantically identical, but morphologically analytical) in a very obscure Austronesian language of Taiwan by the name of Seediq.

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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

Well, WALS feature 49 has 100 languages without case marking, the runner-up is six to seven with 37, two cases comes fourth and fifth along with 8-9, after 10, with 23 members. Doing that would really screw up the statistics for this one feature. However, in total, 161 languages have some kind of case marking against the 100 without. Chapter 23 also states that it is more common to mark the verb for constituents than overtly marking the actual constituents. Chapter 50 agrees, more without case marking than some kind of case marking. But then, Chapter 51 shows many more languages having case-suffixes than no case marking. Whom to believe? Chapter 51 is looking a little outnumbered here.
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by vec »

Actually, I just read the theoretical issues in 49 and it says that 51 is more loose in its definition of case and includes clitics and adpositions as case markers, while 49 only includes suffixes. That explains the inconsistency. I'm staying caseless (according to chapter 49's definition of case). But thank you for your input.

I've been reading the UPSID and related materials and I can happily tell you that the number of phonemes in languages is on average 29 and my avrelang has 26 which is very close to the median. I might add 3 diphthongs or so and work out some changes to the phonotactics I mentioned before.
vec

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dhok
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by dhok »

vecfaranti wrote:Actually, I just read the theoretical issues in 49 and it says that 51 is more loose in its definition of case and includes clitics and adpositions as case markers, while 49 only includes suffixes. That explains the inconsistency. I'm staying caseless (according to chapter 49's definition of case). But thank you for your input.

I've been reading the UPSID and related materials and I can happily tell you that the number of phonemes in languages is on average 29 and my avrelang has 26 which is very close to the median. I might add 3 diphthongs or so and work out some changes to the phonotactics I mentioned before.
I'd add /1/.

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Přemysl
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Re: My Avrelang

Post by Přemysl »

This is my understanding of the imperative situation. A minimal system means method/process of marking 2S is not the same as any of the other persons. A maximal system covers all 2nd, all 3rd, and at least 1P Inclusive. So if I have it right then a system could use the same method for 2S, 2P, 1P Inclusive, and not cover 3rd and be neither minimal (2P and 1P both use the same process as 2S) nor maximal (no 3rd). So for the lang yoou could mark the imperative on the verb for 2S, 2P, and 1P and then either ignore 3rd person.

I think the inventory is fine as it is. As for syllable structure I am a fan of CCVC.

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