Vreleksá

eldin raigmore

Tone, whether pitch tone or register tone; length aka duration; and stress; are regarded as "diacritical" features of phonology. They're mostly produced by those parts of the body's speech-sound-producing mechanism before or up to the vocal "chords", rather than those parts from the vocal chords forward. They are also "syntagmatic rather than paradigmatic"; that is, they are recognized by comparison with what else occurs nearby-but-elsewhere in the same utterance, rather than by what else could have occurred in exactly the same place but did not.

Each one of these features may be used for several purposes.
Maybe they're used pragmatically; to communicate parts of the utterance's meaning this specific time, that wouldn't necessarily be the same if the same sentence or clause had been said in other circumstances or a different time or place. (This can include illucotionary force, etc. For instance maybe there's a rising high tone at the end of an interrogative but a falling low tone at the end of an imperative.)
Maybe they're used semantically.
Maybe they're used syntactically; like if the subject, or the direct object, were always pronounced with a longer first syllable or a longer last syllable.
Maybe they're used morphologically, like in English "project" may be a noun (if the stress is on the first syllable) or a verb (if the stress is on the second syllable). (A more obviously "morphological" use would be to have the plural to have a lengthened final vowel and maybe a shortened penultimate vowel. There might be a language where something like that happens.)
Maybe they're used lexically; that is, there may be pairs or bigger sets of words composed of the same phones in the same sequence, but differing by tone or length or stress, whose meanings are not only different, but semantically and etymologically unrelated.
Maybe they're used phonemically. A short vowel and a long vowel may be different phonemes, for instance.

If your conlang has lexical or phonemic (or even morphological) pitch or tone, and/or lexical or phonemic (or morphological) length, and/or lexical or morphological stress;

How does your con-script or neography represent these "diacritical" features?
Actual written diacritics? Many natlangs' natscripts must do that.
If the feature is phonemic, maybe you just have different characters? Like the difference between omicron ("short o") and omega ("long o") in the Greek alphabet?
If your 'script is a pure logography, you might not need to represent these "diacritical" phonological differences; your 'script may not represent the phonology or phonetics of your spoken words at all.
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"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission

Aert · Joined: 03 Jul 2008 Posts: 354

Шээ-и-Ќу uses vowel length, which is indicated by a diacritic mark; and stress patterns on roots, the first letter of which is capitalized, so they have a 'different' grapheme given that the capital forms of the letters aren't used for anything else.

Pitch and register tone aren't marked orthographically, and also aren't phonemic. Intonational differences in English, for example, express things represented by particles in Шээ-и-Ќу, eg. questions, etc.

Not sure yet if emphasis can be used given the strange stress patterning, but there may be a way of doing it syntactically, by topicalization. I'll have to figure out if the language will allow it.

LingoDingo · Admin Joined: 25 Oct 2011 Posts: 102 Location: Eastern US

Stressing rules are somewhat complex for Aalmok. They are tied to the position, or lack of position, of long vowels, which are expressed as separate graphemes. Given a lack of long vowels, primary stress falls on the last syllable of the word, excluding inflections. Given a single long vowel, said long vowel will take primary stress. Given 2 or more long vowels, the first long vowel will take primary stress and all subsequent long vowels will take secondary stress. Secondary stressing will also occur on every third syllable out, in either direction, from each grounded stressing.

Intonation is used pragmatically and marked by encircling pairs of punctuation.
Only 3 of the Aalmok punctuation pairs have a direct impact on intonation.
Vertical lines placed on either side of the sentence denote a relatively steady increase in stress approaching the end of the sentence. Vertical lines looped towards the middle outwards and then back down denote rising tone in the last few syllables in the sentence. And tall obtuse angles pointing outwards denote an unsteady rising and falling throughout the sentence. These symbols can be used together to consolidate their properties. This allows the intonations generally considered most vital to be clearly marked graphically, allowing, for instance, for the clarifying of sarcasm and rhetorical statements I've often seen complaints about the lack of clarity through the Latin alphabets punctuation system for. Other intonations also serve a pragmatic pertinence but are not graphically represented, as sentence content is generally enough to go on.
One could say that the simple tick marks on either side of the sentence I transliterate as periods also has an effect on intonation; however, that effect is just to mark a general evenness in tone and stress. They function just as periods do in English: more as a way of seeing the beginning and end of a sentence than as a marker for intonation.
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Fluent or nearly fluent in: English, Japanese, German
Mildly capable in: Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese

Constructed Languages: Aalsen, Aalmok Repurpose, Samamisu

.aď sodai peťâs sokâs na asnâ;šustâs buntai mokâ aaťal. - One never truly knows a culture until they learn its language.

eldin raigmore · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 11:54 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Aert and Lingodingo.
Did either of you answer the poll?
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission

LingoDingo · Admin Joined: 25 Oct 2011 Posts: 102 Location: Eastern US

Yes. I chose the phonemic only option. However I did modify two of the vowels to allow the addition of a pair of optional symbols for denoting primary in secondary stress in words with more than one point of stress, when at least one of them is not a long vowel.

There is the issue, though, that, Aalšik being an alphasyllabary, I've seen many sources describing vowel marks in alphasyllabaries as being diacritics in of themselves. The question being whether or not I can call Aalšik vowels graphemes. And, if so, what would distinguish a grapheme from a diacritic.
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Fluent or nearly fluent in: English, Japanese, German
Mildly capable in: Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese

Constructed Languages: Aalsen, Aalmok Repurpose, Samamisu

.aď sodai peťâs sokâs na asnâ;šustâs buntai mokâ aaťal. - One never truly knows a culture until they learn its language.

eldin raigmore · Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 1:20 am Post subject:

eldin raigmore · Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 9:09 pm Post subject:

Did anyone else (besides LingoDingo) ever vote in this poll?

I think so, but I can't tell who voted, nor how they voted.

Right now there are three votes recorded: one each for

All those features that make any difference in my 'lang are phonemic, so I can just use different graphemes (or "letters"), and that's what I do. 33% [ 1 ]
I use diacritcal marks. 33% [ 1 ]
I use a combination of diacritcal marks and different "letters" or graphemes. 33% [ 1 ]

_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission

Kiri · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy

I think I voted. If I voted, I definitely voted for diacritics