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So I have a conlang...

 
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imdamoos



Joined: 06 Jul 2008
Posts: 64
Location: New York

PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:22 am    Post subject: So I have a conlang... Reply with quote

So I have a conlang, how do I go about setting up a thread for it? What info should I include? Any particular order?
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achemel



Joined: 29 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Go to "Conlangs" and start a new topic. Probably making the title the name of your conlang is good, unless you don't have one yet... Including phonology is nice, and then pronouns/nouns/adjectives/adverbs/verbs/syntax/articles/particles/conjunctions/oddities or irregulars/numbers and then some examples also is nice. I think it would depend on how much you want to reveal and, by revealing or not revealing, what sort of and how many questions you want to be asked about it.

Tolkien_Freak's Raitoliste and Kilhiryui, Aeetlrcreejl's Ithkuil, and halyihev's Alurhsa I think are really in-depth posts, if you'd want to reference them for what you might put in your own post. But, don't feel overwhelmed; put in whatever you think you should. If there's something someone wants to see, I'm sure he or she will ask. (^_^) I'd love to see what you've got myself. Very Happy
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I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 2:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pretty much what he said.
I believe you fully covered it, achemel ^_^
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Aeetlrcreejl



Joined: 08 Jun 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, I didn't even create Ithkuil! 'Tain't mine, but Ithkuil indeed was detailed.
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eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

imdamoos wrote:
What info should I include? Any particular order?
Take a look at one of these slide-shows (and listen too if you can).
http://s3.amazonaws.com/saizai-public/conlangs%20in%205%20minutes.odp
PDF: http://s3.amazonaws.com/saizai-public/conlangs%20in%205%20minutes.pdf
PPT: http://s3.amazonaws.com/saizai-public/conlangs%20in%205%20minutes.ppt

And/or, look at Zompist's (Mark Rosenfelder's) "Language Construction Kit".
http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html
Or others':
http://www.sfwa.org/members/Elgin/SHE_Excerpts01.html
http://cleansofts.org/carabao-language-kit.html

It's usually accepted that you should begin with the sounds.

Phonetics and phonology:
* Decide what sounds you want in your language.

Phonotactics:
* Decide which pairs of sounds can happen one right after another, and where.
** Which can't be together in the same word?
** Which can be only at the beginning of a word?
** Which can never be at the beginning of a word?
** Which can be only at the end of a word?
** Which can never be at the end of a word?
** Same questions, except use "morpheme", "syllable", "onset", "rime", "nucleus", and "coda", instead of "word".

That's most of your phonotactics; but just in case,

* Decide which trios of sounds can happen one right after another, and where.
** Ask all the same questions as for pairs

And an important topic usually considered part of phonotactics is
Syllable structure:

* Must syllables have an onset, or are onsets optional?
* Are there constraints on which consonants can be in onsets?
* Can onsets be clusters, or must they be single consonants?
* How many consonants can be in the longest onset consonant-cluster? It's somewhat less usual for them to be longer than three consonants, it's unusual for them to be longer than four consonants, and very unusual for them to be longer than five.
* What kind of constraints are there on which consonants can be where in an onset-cluster, and what pairs of consonants can come together in an onset-cluster?

* May syllables have a coda, or must they all be open syllables?
* Are there constraints on which consonants can be in codas?
* Can codas be clusters, or must they be single consonants?
* How many consonants can be in the longest coda consonant-cluster? It's somewhat less usual for them to be longer than three consonants, it's unusual for them to be longer than four consonants, and very unusual for them to be longer than five.
* What kind of constraints are there on which consonants can be where in a coda-cluster, and what pairs of consonants can come together in a coda-cluster?

Few languages allow three-consonant clusters both for onsets and for codas; fewer still allow four-consonant onsets with three-consonant codas or four-consonant codas with three-consonant onsets; and extremely few allow four-consonant onsets as well as four-consonant codas.

* Must syllable nuclei consist of vowels, or are there syllabic consonants that serve as nuclei of syllables?
* Are there constraints on which consonants can be in syllable-nuclei?
** What constraints are there on consonantal-nucleus syllables? For instance,
*** Must they be unstressed?
*** Must they either be without onsets or have at most one-consonant onsets (no onset-clusters when nucleus is consonantal)?
*** Must they either be open (without codas) or have at most one-consonant codas (no coda-clusters when nucleus is consonantal)?
*** May they have both an onset and a coda, or must they be either open or onset-less?

* Can nuclei be vowel-clusters, or must they be single vowels?
* How many vowels can be in the longest nuclear vowel-cluster? Diphthongs? Triphthongs? Tetraphthongs? (Longer polyphthongs are rarely if ever tautosyllabic.)
* What kind of constraints are there on which vowels can be where in a nucleus, and what pairs of vowels can come together in a nucleus-cluster? For instance, maybe the first vowel must be close or rounded; or maybe the last vowel must be close or rounded; or maybe the middle vowel of a triphthong can't be close and can't be rounded.

* Is there a phonemic length-difference between otherwise identical vowels? If so, how does the presence of a long vowel in a nucleus affect the above questions about diphthongs etc.?
* Is there a phonemic length-difference between otherwise identical consonants? If so, how does the presence of a geminated consonant in an onset or coda affect the above questions about consonant-clusters?

The above decisions may cause some phonemes to be pronounced as allophones rather than as their central phones. Such mutations and sandhi etc. are usually considered an important part of Phonology:
* Is a lax short vowel, or lax unstressed vowel, or short unstressed vowel, always pronounced clearly as its "central" phone, or is it allowed to be somewhat underspecified?
* If such a vowel occurs near or next to a long stressed vowel, or a long tense vowel, or a stressed tense vowel, does the less-prominent vowel sometimes take on some of the character of the more prominent vowel?
* If morphology causes two vowels to come together in a way that would violate the above rules, what happens?
** One of the vowels changes? (That's "sandhi").
** An epenthetic consonant is inscerted between them?
** something else?
* If morphology causes two consonants to come together in a way that would violate the above rules, what happens?
** One of the consonants changes? (That's "mutation").
** An epenthetic vowel is inscerted between them?
** something else?

If you've settled all that, you've got your phonology, and some of your "morpho-phonology".

Next thing to look at is your morphemes and words.

* First; Do you want every word to be a chain of syllables, and every syllable to be a chain of phonemes? Most languages are like that; each segment in the word belongs to one and only one syllable, the beginning of the word is also the begining of a syllable, the end of a word is also the end of a syllable, and the syllables neither overlap one another, nor is there any "gap" between one syllable and the next that has any segments in it, nor is any syllable interrupted by a phoneme that's not part of it.

But, in some languages, some sounds of some words may not be a part of any syllable of the word; usually that's the first sound or the last sound, if it happens at all. And, in some languages, a word may begin or end in the middle of a syllable. (That is, a syllable may straddle a word-boundary.)

* Second; Do you want every word to be a chain of morphemes, and every morpheme to be a chain of phonemes? Most languages are like that; each segment in the word belongs to one and only one moprheme, the beginning of the word is also the begining of a moprheme, the end of a word is also the end of a morpheme, and the moprhemes neither overlap one another, nor is there any "gap" between one morpheme and the next that has any segments in it, nor is any morpheme interrupted by a phoneme that's not part of it.

However there are lots of famous exceptions. Sometimes, out of two consecutive morphemes, the end of the first one and the beginning of the second one can't come together without violating some phonotactic rule, so an epenthetic sound is inserted that has no meaning. Also, some languages have some morphemes that are best described as "infixes", which interrupt another morpheme; and some are best described as "circumfixes", which are ordinarily interrupted by one or more other morphemes. And Tri-Consonantal Verb-Root Languages ("3Cons"), such as Semitic languages, are famous for "non-concatenative morphology"; they have a discontinuous root-morpheme, and a "transfix" or template of vowels that "shoots through" the root to make the word.

* Be aware that in most languages the division of most words into morphemes and their division into syllables have little to do with each other. A syllable can easily start and/or end in the middle of a morpheme, and a morpheme can easily start and/or end in the middle of a syllable.

* What are your word-classes?
** Nearly every language has both nouns and verbs, and in nearly every language they are clearly different from each other, although in some languages they're not as different as they are in your own language.
** Do you have any adjectives different from verbs? Do you have any adjectives different from nouns?
** If you have a word-class of modifiers which is clearly distinct both from "nouns" and from "verbs", do you have a class of adverbs that is different from adjectives?

* What are your morphemes?
* Roots: In some languages noun-roots are clearly different from verb-roots; but in some languages a root is just a root, and you have to inflect it to make it be plainly a noun or plainly a verb or plainly a modifier (adjective or adverb).
* Do you want the language to be mostly isolating and analytic (the average word is just one morpheme and the average morpheme is a whole word), very synthetic (the average word is four-or-more morphemes and the average morpheme is neither the first nor the last morpheme in its word), or somewhere in between?
* Do you want the language to be mostly agglutinating ("wordsticktogetherish"), with nearly every morpheme having just one meaning, or largely fusional, with most morphemes having more than one meaning?
* Do you want grammatical changes to be communicated by separate words (e.g. prepositions, postpositions, auxiliaries, articles, numeral-classifiers, etc.), by prefixes, by suffixes, by changes to the word-stem (e.g. ablaut of the last syllable or of the first syllable), or by nothing except word-order? If you want some to be shown by changes to the stem, is that usually going to be the last syllable, or usually the first syllable, or frequently some other syllable that gets changed? How frequent will be "suppletion", where two different "forms of the same word" appear to have nothing in common phonologically?

Morphotactics: Maps of words.

The most complex word-classes (if there are any) are usually the verbs and/or the nouns.
"Morphotactics" is about what sort of morphemes can come one right after another.
Unless your verbs are almost all one-morpheme-only, you should lay out a template of your verbs showing which morphemes go where, and which are optional; especially, which come before the root and which after, and, of any two, which comes closer to the root. If there are some morphemes that can go in more than one slot, you need to say so, and say when.
Similarly, unless your nouns are almost all mono-morphemic, you should lay out a template of your nouns showing which morphemes go where, and which are optional; especially, which come before the root and which after, and, of any two, which comes closer to the root. If there are some morphemes that can go in more than one slot, you need to say so, and say when.

Now, you may have very complex verbs and very simple nouns; or very simple verbs and very complex nouns; or both may be complex; or both may be simple.

Odds are, though, your modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) will not be very complex. Degree-of-comparison (such as: positive, comparative, superlative, or equative) probably applies to both adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives, (but not adverbs), may also inflect to agree in case, gender, and number (and, I suppose, sometimes, person) with the noun they modify. So, you may need to lay out templates for these, but that probably won't be as much work.

Speaking of cases; you may want to talk about adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, ambipositions, circumpositions, inpositions).

If your language is highly synthetic, it probably has lots of different kinds of morphemes but few word-classes ("parts of speech"). If, OTOH, it is highly isolating or analytic, it probably has few kinds of morphemes but many word-classes.

-----------------------------------------

That's definitely not all there is to morphology, and I haven't even touched syntax yet. But there's a good guide to describing morphosyntax. The highly surprising title is "Describing Morphosyntax", and it's by Thomas Payne (but not the one who wrote "These are the times that try men's souls...").

You should also look at the WALS.info site and decide where in each feature your language should go. There's a database being collected for such information for conlangs; it's called CALS.

------
I hope that helps.
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Last edited by eldin raigmore on Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:30 pm; edited 2 times in total
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achemel



Joined: 29 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yay, Eldin!! Very Happy I love your posts and replies! Very Happy (^_^)

Quote:
Pretty much what he said.


僕は女ですよ~。「僕」って男のことばだって分かっているけどね。

Quote:
I believe you fully covered it, achemel ^_^


Too bad I can't put down everything I suggested to imdamoose myself, haha. I think Eldin put in lots more useful stuff, though. I'm going to have to make use of it as well for my own work. (^_^)
_________________
I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.

PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 2:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

achemel wrote:
Quote:
Pretty much what he said.


僕は女ですよ~。「僕」って男のことばだって分かっているけどね。


ああ、すみません!!見分けは難しい~

(女は「僕」って言うと俺が見たが。)


Last edited by Tolkien_Freak on Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:40 am; edited 1 time in total
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Aeetlrcreejl



Joined: 08 Jun 2007
Posts: 839
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 3:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

翻訳せよ 下さい.
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Iwocwá ĵọṭãsák.
/iwotSwa_H d`Z`Ot`~asa_Hk/
[iocwa_H d`Z`Ot`_h~a_Hk]
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 3:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My (bad) translation:

achemel: I am a girl~ (using 'boku' for 1sg). 'Boku' is a boy word though, so I understand.
Me: Aa, sorry! It's hard to tell. (I've seen girls use 'boku' though.)
Aeetl: Translate! please. (^_^ it should be 翻訳して下さい)

'Boku' is a pronoun of a rather male flavor, but as I said I have seen girls use it. Especially in music.
It's not as male as my 'ore' that I used there.
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achemel



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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

T_F - 大丈夫なの。 (that's okay.)

I tend to accidentally annoy people around me by using Japanese and not translating... (^_^) They always assume I'm saying bad things or something, but I just forget that not everyone is taking Japanese at college with me, heh. Rolling Eyes I'll try to remember translations when I put Japanese on the forum.
_________________
I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah
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