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Couple of Language Change Questions

 
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:21 am    Post subject: Couple of Language Change Questions Reply with quote

First of all, I'm not that great at generating language change in conlangs. Sound change is pretty easy, but I don't really know what to do with grammar often.

My main question is how to get rid of word-final /4/ and /K/. I somehow don't want to just drop them with no change to the original word, but I really want to get to just CV syllable structure.
I had been thinking /4/ > /4M/ but this seems pretty implausible.

Any other advice for language change in general is welcome.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You're asking about an area I'm ignorant of.
I do know a bit (not much) about some (not many) language changes, but sound changes aren't some of them.
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killerken



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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have this article I found on line a long time ago. I don't remember where I got it, but it was written by a guy named Rufio. I deals with the "Circle of Language" and some other stuff. It's pretty simple in its explanations, but maybe this will give you some ideas.

Circle of Language
Member Article by rufio

In the past couple years since I was banned, I’ve been working on creating an artificial language. There tend to be two typical ways to go about this – you start from a natural language or two (or more) that are already in existence and combine them (e.g. Esperanto), or you make a language that is beautifully, artificially logical that has nothing to do with reality (e.g. Lojban). However, I wanted to make a naturalistic language that was totally original – that came out of nothing, but which had all the strange quirks and exceptions that you find in languages like English. It’s not easy, and it lead me to do some research, and a lot of theorizing, about how natural languages develop.


First, you have your basic type of word structure – is this a isolating language, or an agglutinating language, or an inflecting language? Then again, natural languages aren’t really any one of those. English is mostly isolating, but has bits of inflections left over, and some agglutinative words as well. After I put some thought into it, it seems as though it’s not so much a matter of slotting different languages into pigeon-holes as it is marking their relative positions on a kind of circular track.


For example, we could start with a language that is, like English, mostly isolating. That is to say, when you have a word like “go” whose meaning you’d like to modify, rather than changing the stem, you add separate individual words to its vicinity; “to go”, “will go”, “go to”, “go in”, “go out”, “go up”. Many other languages represent all of these with a single word that changes slightly, rather than swapping out smaller words. And this isolating language, like English, marking semantic role by word order. That is, in the phrase


Dog bites man.


you know that the dog is the subject because it comes before the verb, whereas the man is the object because it comes after. Simple, right?


But, perhaps it’s too simple. No doubt there is a poet somewhere who would like to be able to write “dog bites man” as “man bites dog” or “man dog bites” or “bites man dog” and still have it mean the same thing. In order to avoid confusion, you’d have to have a way of marking words other than position. To steal some postpositions from Japanese, you might choose to mark the subject as always being followed by the word “ga”, and the object as always being followed by the word “o”, ala


Dog ga bites man o.


You could then happily write “man o bites dog ga” or “man o dog ga bites” or however else you wanted to phrase it, because those little words determine that the dog is the subject and the man is the object no matter where in the sentence they appear. Now, since the “ga” is always going to follow the subject, and the “o” the object, you might as well just permanently affix them to their respective words.


Dogga bites mano. (or Mano dogga bites, or bites mano dogga....)


Now we’ve reached a point where the language is agglutinative – words are made up of multiple different parts, each of which carries some small part of the meaning. However, people tend to be lazy, especially when they are English-speakers pronouncing double consonants. So in reality, while “manga newspapero reads” slips off the tongue quite easily, “dogga” might very well become “doga” after a while. And that isn’t the only word that would be trouble - “batga” is a bit weird, and the t might disappear, yeilding “baga”. “Ladga” is ok, but it could be better – it might go through a process where two letters reverse in order to become more pronounceable, and turn into “lagda”. In another instance, “mousega” might turn into “mouseka” simply because the s is unvoiced.


So what has happened to the agglutinative language? “Ga” is no longer a separable part of the subject, because nearly every word forms a subject slightly differently. It might be reasonable, though, to expect that all words ending in “g” and “t” would drop the last letter, or that all words ending in “s” would change the “g” to a “k”. The words then slot nicely into declensions – groupings – based on their final letters. This is now what we call an inflecting language – words all form slightly different, but recognizably similar forms for the same purpose.


Now, if you go completely crazy with this, you can cause every conceivable role in the sentence to be represented by an inflection, and you can write things in any order you like, because everything is marked, and word order is secondary. Really long sentences in really inventive poetry would read like scrambled eggs. After a time, for the sake of communication, people might pick a few word orders to be more commonly used and favored than the others. Eventually, the suggestion would be reinterpreted as a rule, and strict word order would settle back in. Now, the inflections are no longer necessary, and though some of them might stick around (the new word for “dog” might be “doga”), they would no longer mean anything. And that’s the full circle – the language is once again completely isolating.


The moral? An agglutinating language might be in the process of evolving into an inflecting language, or it might be in the process of evolving from an isolating one. It’s quite improbable that it would simply be strictly one or the other.


I got to thinking about making a writing system, and it seemed again that writing systems tend to walk in the same circle. Conventional understanding of writing systems says they evolve from pictographs to ideographs to alphabets, in one direction. These letters that I am writing with right now themselves have their roots in pictographs and ideographs. For example, look at this Hebrew letter:


http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:dLwl2pL262Mr8M:http://www.yivo.org/images/alef/07.gif


Ideographically speaking, this is a door. It doesn’t really look like a door, but you can see how it could have evolved from a picture of a door into this more minimal form. It would have been used only to indicate doors, or in conjunction with other ideographs to indicate doorways, or doorknobs, perhaps. The name of this letter is “daled” which is conspicuously similar to the Hebrew word for “door”, or “delet”. Eventually, someone said, this letter is too good to be used only for talking about doors, and now, instead of just doors, it represents every instance of the letter “d”, because the word it originally stood for began with it.


Over time, other people decided they liked the Hebrew alphabet, and stole it for their own languages. They got sloppy, and wrote that crossbar a bit slanted. Someone decided they wanted their language to read left to right and not right to left, and reversed all the letters back to front that no one would be confused. Someone else decided that having another slanted line from the bottom would not be out of place, because symmetry is pretty. The straight lines rounded out, and we wind up with what we all know to be the letter D.


The rest of the alphabet got here in much the same way, though it didn’t stop there. The Romans decided they needed more letters for i and u, and made up j and v. The Greeks contributed k and y, and some other letters were left by the roadside. And now here we are – ideography to alphabet.


But if you stop to think about it – is English really phonetic? Of course not. English spelling wasn’t even standardized until recently. Why did it get standardized in such an illogical way? Why not standardize it into something vaguely phonetic? The reason English looks the way it does now is that this way it preserves the Latin and Greek roots that are buried where we don’t quite consciously comprehend them. The word “fiction” comes from a set including “factory”, “fictive”, “effect”, “affect”, “infect”, “defect”, and “fictitious”; the word “station” mimics “static” and the word “induction” looks like “conduct”, “deduct”, and “product”. They are spelled with t instead of sh because they recall the roots and what they mean (“to make”, “to stand” and “to lead”, respectively), not the sounds that are pronounced.


Isn’t this starting to look more like an ideography than an alphabet?


Have you ever wondered why reading things like “she sed 2 b they’re 2mahrah” makes your eyes bleed, but stuff like “they’re there with their baggage” doesn’t? We can read a word like “two” and forget the w and the single o, and pronounce it the way that the the word that means 2 should be pronounced. Connecting sounds with meaning is easier than connecting sounds with spelling. We don’t sit here sounding out words because we’ve learned to recognize patterns like “fict” and “duct” and associate sounds with their meanings.


It seems an alphabet isn’t everything either. Like word structure, the writing system will probably be overcome with encumbrances in its present state, and will wrap back around into a more ideographic approach, once it’s been borrowed a few more times. Every part of language is probably another cycle that will continue to run over the same tracks again and again until the end of time.
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, nice, thanks. It is pretty simple, and doesn't deal with phonological change in as much depth as I need, but it's definitely giving me ideas about morphophonetic (word use?) changes.

It's kinda interesting that I figured out the circle-of-language idea independently a few months ago. I never really thought about applying it to scripts though, but it works well.

I just realized that Emitarjei is beginning to progress from agglutinative to fusional. Wonder how it ends up after another 2000 years of evolution.
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Count Iblis



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's also the process of grammaticalization to consider. Roughly speaking, this is when lexican words become function words (which can then become clitics and affixes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammaticalization

For example, the word "back" can come to be a locative preposition. This is what happened in English. Body parts frequently become locative adpositions. The verb "go" can become a future auxiliary verb or particle. I've heard that first person pronouns often derive from the word for "head".
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Grammaticalization and most other kinds of grammatical change are now taken into account in my lang work, since I have read a historical linguistics textbook and know a wonderfully large amount of stuff on the subject.

Historical linguistics is now my favorite field of linguistics ^_^
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tolkien_Freak wrote:
Grammaticalization and most other kinds of grammatical change are now taken into account in my lang work, since I have read a historical linguistics textbook and know a wonderfully large amount of stuff on the subject.

Historical linguistics is now my favorite field of linguistics ^_^
I know precious little about it.
What can you tell us?
Try to think of something you seem to remember some discussion about recently. Maybe the switch from ergative/absolutive to accusative/nominative; or the switch from Subject-Initial (SVO or SOV) to Verb-Initial (VSO or VOS) or back; or the switch from clause-chaining to subordination or vice-versa; or the switch from tonal to non-tonal.

Just concentrating on word-order for the moment, if
Aux is the (inflectable) Auxiliary word,
V is the (main) Verb,
I is the Indirect Object,
O is the Object
S is the Subject
and
X is the Oblique:

Are all six orders of
Aux V O
Aux O V
O Aux V
O V Aux
V Aux O
V O Aux
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
Aux V S
Aux S V
S Aux V
S V Aux
V Aux S
V S Aux
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
I O V
I V O
O I V
O V I
V I O
V O I
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
I S V
I V S
S I V
S V I
V I S
V S I
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
I O S
I S O
O I S
O S I
S I O
S O I
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
I O X
I X O
O I X
O X I
X I O
X O I
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
I V X
I X V
V I X
V X I
X I V
X V I
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

Are all six orders of
O V X
O X V
V O X
V X O
X O V
X V O
attested in natlangs? And how do 'langs change from one to the other?

And so on.

Of course, maybe word-order change isn't your favorite. In which case; how are grammatical (or syntactic) relations (or functions) formed, or lost? How does a language change from topic-prominent and non-subject-prominent, to non-topic-prominent and subject-prominent? Or vice-versa? How does a language change from or to topic-prominent and subject-prominent, to or from either of those other states? How does a language change to or from non-topic-prominent and non-subject-prominent from or to any other state?

And, what about objects? How does a langauge with three GRs (say, Subject and Direct Object and Indirect Object) lose one of them and wind up with just two GRs (say, Subject and Object)? How does it go the other way (two GRs to three GRs)?
What about changing from just one GR (Subject) to two (Subject and Object), or the other way -- two GRs to just one?
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Aeetlrcreejl



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 6:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe /K/ could debuccalise to /h/ and eventually lengthen the preceding vowel, and then you could make some interesting sound changes with that if you don't like lengthening.

/4/ I'm unsure about. The only solution I see is /4/ > /?/ > null.
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm sure I can't answer any of Eldin's questions (T_T) - I really don't know much about word order shifts and the like. (I could probably better answer ones about grammatical changes, and much better about sound changes.) The one exception - he mentioned 'the switch from tonal to non-tonal' and I can explain the opposite process slightly Razz (i.e. tonogenesis)
Tonogenesis occurs when final consonants affect the tone of their syllable and then are lost, with voiced consonants generating low tones and unvoiced generating high (lag > là, lak > lá). I don't know how it goes further from there to contour tones, though.

Quote:
Maybe /K/ could debuccalise to /h/ and eventually lengthen the preceding vowel, and then you could make some interesting sound changes with that if you don't like lengthening.

That's exactly the solution I picked. In Emitare it's effectively /K/ > /h/ > //, since it doesn't have any effect on the vowel, but in Kisjire it will lengthen. (I'm planning a vowel length contrast for Kisjire (a relative of Emitare, in the same subfamily))

Quote:
/4/ I'm unsure about. The only solution I see is /4/ > /?/ > null.

I actually ended up picking /4/ > /j/ > /i/, with ensuing monophthongization. (Maybe it's actually /4/ > /r\/ > /j/ > /i/).
So /a4/ > /ar\/ > /aj/ > /ai/ > /e/.
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Aeetlrcreejl



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think /4/ > /r\/ > /j/ > /i/ makes sense. Good.

In Jinnic, my dear conlang, tonogenesis didn't occur like that. Long vowels > high vowels, and nasals disappeared and made the preceding vowel low. The rising and falling happened as a result of tone sandhi - for example, -ān > -áà > -â. I hope I don't have to change it.
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aeetlrcreejl wrote:
I think /4/ > /r\/ > /j/ > /i/ makes sense. Good.

Thanks.

Quote:
In Jinnic, my dear conlang, tonogenesis didn't occur like that. Long vowels > high vowels, and nasals disappeared and made the preceding vowel low. The rising and falling happened as a result of tone sandhi - for example, -ān > -áà > -â. I hope I don't have to change it.

I'd be surprised if you had to change it, that sounds perfectly fine to me. AFAIK that tonogenesis scenario is for Sino-Tibetan languages, I'm sure it's not the only method.
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Aeetlrcreejl



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In Panjabi, according to Wikipedia:

A historical murmured consonant (voiced aspirate consonant) in word initial position became tenuis and left a low tone on the two syllables following it: ghoṛā [kò:ɽà:] "horse". A stem final murmured consonant became voiced and left a high tone on the two syllables preceding it: māgh [mɑ́ɑːɡ] "October". A stem medial murmured consonant which appeared after a short vowel and before a long vowel became voiced and left a low tone on the two syllables following it: maghāṇā [məgàːɳà:] "to be lit". Other syllables and words have mid tone.

I just read that in Cheyenne, long vowels became high vowels, so part of it is definitely plausible.
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Tolkien_Freak



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Definitely. That looks like a good explanation to me.

I don't really do much with tonal languages (I don't intend to have them in the main area I'm working on in my conworld), so I don't really know much about tonogenesis.
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Count Iblis



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PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's some info from the Universals Archive:

IF the dominant order is VSO, THEN an inflected auxiliary always precedes the main verb.

IF the dominant order is SOV, THEN an inflected auxiliary always follows the main verb.

IF basic word order is free, THEN an auxiliary is clause-initial or clause-medial.

IF word order is verb-initial, THEN modals, auxiliaries (if such exist), negative particles or words, desideratives and volitionals, if expressed by separate words, always precede the main verb.

IF basic order is OV, THEN verbal modifiers like those for negation, causation, and reflexive or reciprocal are placed after verb roots.

IF basic order is VO, THEN verbal modifiers like those for negation, causation, and reflexive or reciprocal are placed before verb roots.

Case affixes can be grammaticalized from adpositions only if the noun is not separated from the adposition in the unmarked word order in the NP; i.e., if the unmarked order is either (a) (Modifiers and/or Numerals) N Postposition, or (b) Preposition N (Modifiers and/or Numerals).

IF basic order is SOV and determining elements precede determined elements in noun phrases, THEN there will be at least some postpositions, which historically derive either from verbs or from nouns.

Nouns denoting body parts are the preferred sources for the grammaticalization of local adpositions.

A hierarchy of grammaticalization from verb to complementizer to adverbial conjunction.
If a language uses the morpheme at a given level on the hierarchy, it will use it at all the previous levels:
1. quotative particle;
2. quotative/complementizer with ‘say’;
3. quotative/complementizer with ‘know’;
4. quotative/complementizer with ‘believe’;
5. quotative/complementizer with ‘hope’;
6. conjunction with purpose clause;
7. conjunction with reason clause;
8. marker with question word;
9. complementizer with embedded question;
10. conjunction with conditional clause;
11. comparative marker.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks, T_F. Smile
Thanks loads, Count Iblis. Very Happy
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