Conlang Random Thread

[Man in Space]

(And also, tangentially: what font did you use for the Latin labels? I like it, yet it doesn’t look like your usual choice of TT Marxiana…)

That is correct. For some reason, some font families don't populate correctly in GIMP on Mac, so here I used a flavor of Goudy Old Style.

[bradrn]

(And also, tangentially: what font did you use for the Latin labels? I like it, yet it doesn’t look like your usual choice of TT Marxiana…)

That is correct. For some reason, some font families don't populate correctly in GIMP on Mac, so here I used a flavor of Goudy Old Style.

Ah, nice. I didn’t recognise it in the boldface…

[Emily]

how common is /q/ > /ʔ/, and more generally uvulars changing to glottals?

[Man in Space]

how common is /q/ > /ʔ/, and more generally uvulars changing to glottals?

Happens all the time in colloquial Arabic varieties (my professor was from Cairo so we learnt some about Mașri specifically which does this) and this happened on the way to Manam (Lichtenberg 1983).

[Travis B.]

how common is /q/ > /ʔ/, and more generally uvulars changing to glottals?

Happens all the time in colloquial Arabic varieties (my professor was from Cairo so we learnt some about Mașri specifically which does this) and this happened on the way to Manam (Lichtenberg 1983).

Also, voiceless dorsal fricatives may become [h], as happened initially in Germanic and IIRC happens in some dialects of Castilian.

[Emily]

how common is /q/ > /ʔ/, and more generally uvulars changing to glottals?

Happens all the time in colloquial Arabic varieties (my professor was from Cairo so we learnt some about Mașri specifically which does this) and this happened on the way to Manam (Lichtenberg 1983).

Also, voiceless dorsal fricatives may become [h], as happened initially in Germanic and IIRC happens in some dialects of Castilian.

??? PG <*h> wasn't uvular and didn't descend from a uvular unless i'm completely mistaken

[foxcatdog]

*a) Dorsal can refer to velar consonants too and *b) some hypothesis's consider PIE unpalatised velars to be uvulars

[foxcatdog]

how common is /q/ > /ʔ/, and more generally uvulars changing to glottals?

Dunno but its hypothesises Proto Oceaning *q was originally Uvular given its velar reflexes in certain languages

[Travis B.]

Happens all the time in colloquial Arabic varieties (my professor was from Cairo so we learnt some about Mașri specifically which does this) and this happened on the way to Manam (Lichtenberg 1983).

Also, voiceless dorsal fricatives may become [h], as happened initially in Germanic and IIRC happens in some dialects of Castilian.

??? PG <*h> wasn't uvular and didn't descend from a uvular unless i'm completely mistaken

I said dorsal not uvular ─ voiceless velar fricatives are also dorsal.

[Emily]

Also, voiceless dorsal fricatives may become [h], as happened initially in Germanic and IIRC happens in some dialects of Castilian.

??? PG <*h> wasn't uvular and didn't descend from a uvular unless i'm completely mistaken

I said dorsal not uvular ─ voiceless velar fricatives are also dorsal.

then i don't understand why you presented it as a response to my question about uvulars

[Travis B.]

??? PG <*h> wasn't uvular and didn't descend from a uvular unless i'm completely mistaken

I said dorsal not uvular ─ voiceless velar fricatives are also dorsal.

then i don't understand why you presented it as a response to my question about uvulars

Because velar and uvular fricatives tend to pattern together, so if voiceless velar fricatives are liable to become [h] I picture the same is also true of voiceless uvular fricatives.

[Emily]

I said dorsal not uvular ─ voiceless velar fricatives are also dorsal.

then i don't understand why you presented it as a response to my question about uvulars

Because velar and uvular fricatives tend to pattern together, so if voiceless velar fricatives are liable to become [h] I picture the same is also true of voiceless uvular fricatives.

ok, i understand the connection now that you have made it. in the future i would recommend being a little more explicit in responses because the relevance was not clear at all until you explained your thinking further

[Ahzoh]

I can't find a way to diachronically justify the selective preservation of intervocalic glides when glides, even geminate ones, are elided in virtually every environment except word-initially. Part of me also thinks the nominative plural should be -n to be in line with the subject and possessive suffixes also having plural -n, as well as the independent pronouns. But then I cannot think of good morphemes for the genitive and its plural.

Other issues i don't know how to tackle is the subject pronouns and how identical they should be to pronominal suffixes

A lot of my decisions always involve trying to avoid horror aequi

casesincomparison.png (64.38 KiB) Viewed 16421 times

[Ahzoh]

I think maybe I'll reduce the number of grammatical genders to Animate and Inanimate. This should allow for some greater flexibility in what phonemes are used for morphemes.

The original case system:

fourgenderednouns.png (34.65 KiB) Viewed 16393 times

The new case system:

twogenderednouns.png (23.64 KiB) Viewed 16393 times

[Ahzoh]

Wikicode/CSS continues to be a pain in the ass.

This code for one of my template's style sheet is suppose to allow it to be collapsible, but it doesn't fucking work and I don't know why.

Code: Select all

/* Collapsibility */

html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed > table,
html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed > table > tbody > tr > td,
html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed > table > tbody > tr > th {
	border-color: transparent;
}

html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed > table > tbody {
	visibility: collapse; /* the perfect solution for this use case, but is not implemented in some browsers (Safari - the new IE) */
}

html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed > table > caption {
	margin-bottom: -0.15em; /* reduce excessive height of collapsed box - not entirely sure where this height originates from, so this is a hack */
}

html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsed .inflection-table-notes {
	display: none; /* collapse notes */
}

/* workaround for browsers that do not support visibility: collapse. The .no-vc class is removed by JS code when not needed */
html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsible.no-vc.inflection-table-collapsed {
	max-height: calc(1.5em + 8px); /* almost 1lh (= 1.6em) + padding and border on .inflection-table-wrapper */
	overflow: hidden;
}
html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsible.no-vc.inflection-table-collapsed > table > tbody {
	visibility: hidden;
}
html.client-js .inflection-table-collapsible.no-vc > table > caption {
	white-space: nowrap; /* if there was ever more than one line of text, it would get occluded by the <div>'s max-height */
}
.no-vc-spacer {
	display: inline-block;
	width: 4em;
}

[Glass Half Baked]

Ahzoh, I don't know if this will work, but one way to preserve intervocal semi-vowels in a language where they are mostly deleted is to say that the grammatical endings represent recently attached clitics.

Kayaka ya = kayaka plus the plural particle
becomes...
Kaaka ya
and finally...
Kaakaya

[malloc]

I can't find a way to diachronically justify the selective preservation of intervocalic glides when glides, even geminate ones, are elided in virtually every environment except word-initially. Part of me also thinks the nominative plural should be -n to be in line with the subject and possessive suffixes also having plural -n, as well as the independent pronouns. But then I cannot think of good morphemes for the genitive and its plural.

Perhaps stress or something similar prevents glides from eliding in certain positions. Admittedly the elision of even geminate glides surprises me since gemination normally makes phonemes more resistant to change or elision.

[Ahzoh]

I can't find a way to diachronically justify the selective preservation of intervocalic glides when glides, even geminate ones, are elided in virtually every environment except word-initially. Part of me also thinks the nominative plural should be -n to be in line with the subject and possessive suffixes also having plural -n, as well as the independent pronouns. But then I cannot think of good morphemes for the genitive and its plural.

Perhaps stress or something similar prevents glides from eliding in certain positions. Admittedly the elision of even geminate glides surprises me since gemination normally makes phonemes more resistant to change or elision.

Akkadian is strange about it, it has a doublet situation with the words dân-u and dayyān-u where both mean "judge" but the latter preserves the glides while the former elides them.

[DorotheaBrooke]

Anyone know of any relatively simple sound change appliers that play nice with tone/stress? Have a relatively simple set of changes that convert my tonal protolang to its pitch accent system daughter (and eventually to its stress accented granddaughter) but annoyed at the challenges of doing it in SCA2.

[Man in Space]

Anyone know of any relatively simple sound change appliers that play nice with tone/stress? Have a relatively simple set of changes that convert my tonal protolang to its pitch accent system daughter (and eventually to its stress accented granddaughter) but annoyed at the challenges of doing it in SCA2.

Brassica and phonix handle this better than the others I’ve tried.