Zompist Bboard Again

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 7:35 pm I'm done with the relay and i got two languages to reconstruct from. So i don't see how i can't work on a new one.

True. I guess now I'd be happy to join another relay.

foxcatdog wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 4:41 pm Just putting it out there that since our reconstruction relay has failed to attract attention i started one on the CBB. Teams are currently using a discord to coordinate things.

We haven't even finished the last one yet, and we especially hadn't finished it when you proposed the next relay here.

I wrote the other half of the final in poetic meter à la The Rime of the Ancient Mariner on a dare. Specifically, Prof. O'Neill dared me to. He mentioned someone doing something similar in a previous class and he thought I was the kind of guy who could actually pull it off. (Again, I got full marks...

And anyway those features brad mentioned are true of normal Australian English as well.

Are there any languages without or with few phonetic alveolar or dental stops? I'm playing with a conlang where the single alveolar stop has lenited to [ts] in onset and coda and to [r] intervocalically, leaving [t] only in the geminated [tː], the realisation of /pt tt kt/ sequences. Most Mekeo var...

Synchronically the rule makes sense; <c g> are /s ʒ/ before <i e y> and /k g/ anywhere else. The first <c> or <g> is before an anything else, so it's /k/ or /g/. There's only one good inherited example I can think of, which is VL *auccidere → Old French ocire , which only later got its first <c> bac...

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 12:16 pm

Is it something worth learning?

no

Thanks! (that's the answer I wanted)

For that kind of stuff, I highly recommend Yip’s book Tone . It has a lot of great information about tone sandhi, autosegmental analysis, and so on. (Its only problem is that it relies heavily on Optimality Theory, but that’s not a huge issue.) What actually *is* Optimality Theory? Is it something ...

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 2:27 pm I like this!

Anything in particular you like about it?

Zju wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 3:36 pm I.e. can I get away with deleting intervocal /r/ provided that there weren't many minimal pairs to begin with?

Absolutely. Numerous Lakes Plain languages did it, and they only had five other consonants in intervocalic position. Hell, you can delete anything intervocalically really.

/p t k/ /b d g/ /h/ This with suprasegmental nasalization, where nasalization starts at any given vowel and regressively assimilates to /b d g/ and any other vowels, such that /b d g/ my be realized as either [b d ɡ~ɣ] or [m n ŋ], and is blocked by /p t k h/. Also, /p/ is realized as [p~f]. A good ...

/p t k/ /b d g/ /h/ This with suprasegmental nasalization, where nasalization starts at any given vowel and regressively assimilates to /b d g/ and any other vowels, such that /b d g/ my be realized as either [b d ɡ~ɣ] or [m n ŋ], and is blocked by /p t k h/. Also, /p/ is realized as [p~f]. A good ...

Putting it all together The minimum size seems to be four consonants and three vowels. It's impossible to go any lower without violating "all languages have multiple consonants which are less sonorous than the most sonorous series of consonants". There's a very large (maybe infinite depen...

Guiarrangue [ʄərəŋɨ] /ˀjərəŋɨ/ [p ɓ ⁿb t ɗ ⁿd tʃ ʄ ⁿɟ k ⁿg kʷ ⁿgʷ ʔ] <p b mb t d nd ch gui ngui c/qu ng(u) qu/cu ngu/ngü> (/ʔ/ not written) [ɸ s ʃ x xʷ] <f(u) s s j/g ju> [m n ɲ ŋ ŋʷ] <m n ñ ng(u) ngu/ngü> [ˀm ˀn ˀɲ ˀŋ ˀŋʷ] <m n ñ ng(u) ngu/ngü> [r ⁿr] <r(r) nr> [j w] <y hu> [aː eː oː ei ou ie uo i...

Finally there's the most obscure of all, which is the 5-consonant system proposed for Biritai in a talk by Mark Donohue. This would be a normal Lakes Plain inventory save for the lack of */k/, and complete unconditional loss of /k/ is attested, so I'll accept this inventory as true even though ther...

I also wonder if the following universal is true: All languages have multiple consonants which are less sonorous than the most sonorous series of consonants. This would have major implications for inventory size. Currently something like t b d Is acceptable, but with this new universal you'd have to...

3b′′. All languages have >2 vowel phonemes unless a) consonants or words have markedness for F2, or b) resonant phonemes are permitted in nucleus position. The only thing that would counter this would be a language with phonemic /i u/ and epenthetic [a] and I'm fairly sure that doesn't exist. Why t...

3e (sadly the ugliest one) Looking at that one again, I think you can merge it with 3b: 3b′. All languages have >2 vowel phonemes unless consonants or words have markedness for F2. Because all the two-vowel systems I know of co-occur with secondary articulation. That being said, depending on how yo...

I must admit, I was expecting to find some kind of hyper-minimal conlang at the end. Oh, don't you worry, it's a-coming! ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 3a. All languages have at least one vowel phoneme. Several languages have been analysed to have zero vowels. Most famous of these is Kabardian, which Aert Kuipers claim...

Overly thorough minimalism As you may have divined from the phonology of Pchekeho, I like small phoneme inventories; the smaller the better. This got me wondering, what's the smallest I could go? In natlangs we seem to have a lower bound of ten phonemes, or just possibly nine. But is that a hard li...