Vreleksá Forum Index Vreleksá
The Alurhsa Word for Constructed: Creativity in both scripts and languages
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Polysynthetic Tri-consonantal Root Conlang

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Vreleksá Forum Index -> Conlangs
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 2:49 am    Post subject: Polysynthetic Tri-consonantal Root Conlang Reply with quote

Well - I decided to get back to doing something, even if my hard drive is unavailable.

The inspirations for this were Arabic/Hebrew for the root system, and Ithkuil/the message in the movie Contact for the morphological structure system.

The basic form is: C1[SUBJECT MARKINGS]C2[randoms]C3[OBJECT MARKINGS]
Subject: Cases, Pronoun Affixes; Moods; Manner (Verbal modifiers)
randoms: Tense, Aspect, Verbal moods and cases
Object: same as subject

Nominal Affixes include (dis)honorifics, familiar, impersonal; NOM, DAT, GEN/POSS, COM, PRIV, INSTR.

Verbal Motion cases (ABL, ALL, ILL, ELA, VIAL)

Moods: (co)hortative; COND, IMP, SUBJ; VOL, POT, THINK (I think/believe that ~)

Verbal modifiers: CAUS, copula, MAKE, NEG


And a myriad of temporal, adjectival, nominal, and numerical affixes that are cross-lexical markers (ie can be applied to more than one lexical category).

The phonology is rather excessive, but at least in the orthography (still in the works though it's already got ~200+ confirmed glyphs to use) - I think I'm going to mark the articulation (plain/palatal/labial) on the letters themselves so as to save some room for diacritics if needed.
Most likely the articulatory markings will mark the coming vowel (quality) and not be an overt quality of the consonant itself.

On to the sounds:

Several clicks (bilabial, alveolar, coronal, palatal) including one that I can't find/figure out with the IPA - it should be something along the lines of a uvular implosive click [made by pressing your tongue against the back of your throat, creating negative pressure, and sharply releasing your tongue in the same manner as in a click].

No nasals (and thus no nasalization or etc on the vowels)
Plosives: including ejectives of the voiceless {p,b,t,d,k,g,q,ʔ}
A few plosive-plosive coarticulated sounds (not very common)
Several affricates (including q͡χ)
Lots of fricatives (including a few syllabic ones that can act as syllable nuclei)
Some fricative-fricatives (mostly coarticulated with χ that sound like growling of varying degrees)
A single tri-articulated sound [χ͡rs(ː)]
Approximants w, ɹ, j
Trill/taps: r,ɾ
Laterals including ɬ,ɮ

A basic 5-vowel system which marks for length, can combine for dipthongs, and (again) can have syllabic consonants for nuclei.

If you're interested in the full chart of 179 consonants and 81 vowels (26 base consonant sounds and 5 basic vowel soudns) I can send the file Smile


SO: example:

ş-v-ʀ̉ 'to love' /ʃ-v-ɹ̩/
C1-1SG.NOM -rr-
C2-PRES-CONT -z̧t-
C3-2SG.DAT.INTIM -dv-i̅a-
ŞrrVz̧tʀ̉dvi̅a (the root consonants are capitalized - I need a capital ʀ though different from R...)
/ʃr̩vʒ̣tɹ̩dvi:a/ (I hope that shows up okay)

I don't have the orthography sorted out in a workable form yet but it's based off the Times New Roman font, along with Cyrillic letterforms, with splashes of Greek and Armenian.


Theoretically the morphology of this lang allows for much more complicated examples such as 'K̕rro̅x̤̅r̅a̅uTz̧tuve̅jB[park]stx̅r̅[money]ɬ' (don't have translations anymore for park or money...)
which is: 'I wish we weren't walking [PRES] by way of the park with our money'
In this construction, 'with our money' would be considered a pronoun phrase or object phrase, attached at the object end of the verb.

I'm considering another form of orthography based on three dimensions (which is where the whole thing started, including the tri-consonantal roots), so that each letter of the root was a dimension, and each full verb a cube of 27 individual components which could result in some incredible interaction between the subject/object, individual actors and things acted upon, etc.
But I haven't figured out how to represent it properly yet.

So: comments, criticisms, suggestions, or links I should be aware of?
I'll link up a picture of a word-phrase-sentence when I've got it figured out but I might be busy again for a while...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Tolkien_Freak



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

PostPosted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 4:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

HOLY CRAP you have a crazy phonology. I don't know of ANY natlang that has more than 90 sounds in the inventory (~80 consonants EXTREME max, maybe ~16 vowels not counting length and nasalisation).

Other than that, I like the way your grammar works (the way you conjugate for subject and object is just awesome). I'm not sure how the polysynthesis works exactly though.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 5:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The phonology count is only a technicality - those are the possible [orthographically marked?] allophones of the main phonemes (which is counted at 45 base consonants and 36 coarticulated consonants; and 10 base vowels, 5 base syllabic nuclei, and 6 base dipthongs)

As for the polysynthesis part, I think one of the members here mentioned polysynthetic languages more or less simpy integrate various parts of speech into a single lexeme/word/whatever you want to call it. The base verb is the tri-consonantal root, which is inflected for subject and object (most commonly pronouns, as well as nouns), and marked via case-like affixes for most manners of movement and of the verb itself, cases, and other verbal modifiers)

So where a language like German would mark for just cases and pronouns, the pronouns, inflected nouns, and manners and etc are all inflected upon the base verb in a more or less straightforward categorical system.

I'm not quite sure how some simple phrases are going to work but I haven't come across them or done much in the way of actually translating yet. The orthography has been taking up my time so far - and the Romanization (which is Nearly complete - I'm actually quite proud of it Very Happy).

EDIT: I just noticed that the IPA transcription for the phrase in the previous post is horrible... so let's see: K'rrōx̄r̄āuTztuvējB[park]stx̄r̄[money]ɬ hmm - the boxes should all be overlines; the Tz should have a ogonek below the z; he first x should have an umlaut below it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Tolkien_Freak



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

PostPosted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 3:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
The phonology count is only a technicality - those are the possible [orthographically marked?] allophones of the main phonemes (which is counted at 45 base consonants and 36 coarticulated consonants; and 10 base vowels, 5 base syllabic nuclei, and 6 base dipthongs)

Okay, that's not THAT bad. But still. (I would guess that's not a list of all phonemic distinctions, though.)

Quote:
As for the polysynthesis part, I think one of the members here mentioned polysynthetic languages more or less simpy integrate various parts of speech into a single lexeme/word/whatever you want to call it. The base verb is the tri-consonantal root, which is inflected for subject and object (most commonly pronouns, as well as nouns), and marked via case-like affixes for most manners of movement and of the verb itself, cases, and other verbal modifiers)

AFAIK polysynthesis is when a language incorporates more than one root into a word (so you have the actual subject and object nouns themselves as part of the verb, rather than separate words; even if the verb marks for subject and object).
You can use cases to create weird compound verb things? I love it! It's like Finnish's answer to Latin's compound verbs with prepositions.

Quote:
EDIT: I just noticed that the IPA transcription for the phrase in the previous post is horrible... so let's see: K'rrōx̄r̄āuTztuvējB[park]stx̄r̄[money]ɬ hmm - the boxes should all be overlines; the Tz should have a ogonek below the z; he first x should have an umlaut below it.

O_o
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 11:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
EDIT: I just noticed that the IPA transcription for the phrase in the previous post is horrible... so let's see: K'rrōx̄r̄āuTztuvējB[park]stx̄r̄[money]ɬ hmm - the boxes should all be overlines; the Tz should have a ogonek below the z; he first x should have an umlaut below it.


Another edit: that should be the Romanization... but the vowels are all the same, as are all consonants except x (should be the cursive x), and z with ogonek - should be ʒ.

Quote:
Okay, that's not THAT bad. But still. (I would guess that's not a list of all phonemic distinctions, though.)


No - they're not distinct in a minimal pair sense - the orthography requires that the consonants before high vowels carry an onset marker for the vowel quality, being the palatalization mark in IPA, as well as one for labialization.
Separate (though related) 'accents'/'markers' are also representative of the full /j/ or /w/ phoneme in sequence to the base consonant.

Quote:
You can use cases to create weird compound verb things? I love it! It's like Finnish's answer to Latin's compound verbs with prepositions.


Sometimes they come out as compound verbs, such as 'go.VOL' "to want to go." The 'cases' if they're to be called such, can most often be marked on three different lexical categories, meaning slightly different things in each case.
For example: the morpheme <e> indicates the benefactive or laudative, depending on it's parent lexeme:
ADJ - cheap (which is a good thing)
NOUN - you (to your benefit)
NOUN - friend (good ~; helpful ~, etc)
VERB - go (for the benefit of OBJ)
or the causative:
ADJ - green (make green); liquid (liquify)
NOUN - response (causing/eliciting a response) - possibly a verb phrase
GERUND - want (because of/as a result of wanting)
VERB - speak (to make OBJ speak)

I'm not well versed (at all) in Finnish but have heard of it's incredible morphological qualities - so I don't know if this is really anything like that but it would be neat Smile

I'll be back soonish with some orthographic examples I hope!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright - it's got a name! Razz

I decided to use the two sound (clusters) I thought most different/interesting, so it is :

XrsoG (Romanization: xrs with overline, s with caron below; and small capital G) which is pronounced: [χrs* ; o; (implosive uvular click)]
* (all pronounced simultaneously), labialized
The implosive uvular click I can't find on the IPA chart at all so I'm using the series [implosive uvular plosive][combining tie][post-alveolar click] which is rather imperfect but yeah.

I'll have the orthography up soon enough - I have 19 base glyphs so far which can be inflected into PAL, Cj, LAB, and Cw forms (the Cj/Cw are simply the full j/w phoneme afterwards) - and in both capital and miniscule form! (which I almost never do.)

The orthography for this has Definitely taken longer than any other, but I hope by the end of it it will be the best functioning and most natural Smile
I'm not sure if Serali will really like it though seeing how there aren't a LOT of curves...

Oh: and a by-the-way: the phonology was somewhat inspired by Ubykh (at least the plosives/etc).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Tolkien_Freak



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

PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 11:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
XrsoG (Romanization: xrs with overline, s with caron below; and small capital G) which is pronounced: [χrs* ; o; (implosive uvular click)]
* (all pronounced simultaneously), labialized

TRIPLE COARTICULATION?
öü.

Quote:
Oh: and a by-the-way: the phonology was somewhat inspired by Ubykh (at least the plosives/etc).

And the volume.....

Your script sounds interesting. Lookin forward to it!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eldin raigmore
Admin


Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan

PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is extremely interesting. I'm sorry I missed the early part of it.
I'll have to look into it some more.
...
You know that you can get over a million five-phoneme roots (or words) with inventories of just 20 consonant phonemes and 5 vowel phonemes, using zero to three consonants and one to three vowels per root, with no vowel-clusters, at most one consonant cluster, and no clusters of more than two consonants?
CVCVC
CCVCV
VCCVC
CVCCV
VCVCC
VCVCV
?

20 consonant phonemes is a rather averageish consonant-phoneme inventory size; and five vowel phonemes is a rather averageish vowel-phoneme inventory size.

If you have triconsonantal roots, and don't allow the same consonant to appear twice in a row in the same root, you could get over 3,000 roots with and inventory of 16 consonant-phonemes and over 5,000 roots with an inventory of 18 consonant-phonemes. Both of those are a bit fewer than the average size for consonant-phoneme inventories (which is 19 to 25).
If you don't allow the same consonant to appear twice in the same root, you could still get over 3,000 roots with an inventory of 16 consonant-phonemes, but to get over 5,000 roots you need an inventory of 19 consonant-phonemes; which is still averageish.

With 22 consonants and 6 vowels you could get over a million CVCVCV words or roots or morphemes without repeating any of the consonants or any of the vowels. With 23 consonants and 5 vowels you could get over 625,000. With 19 consonants and 5 vowels you could get over 225,000.


. . . . . . . . . . . .


The point is:
I don't think you really need more than 25 consonant phonemes/segments or more than 6 vowel phonemes/segments in your phoneme-inventory to get a really large lexicon of roots.

Consonant Inventories wrote:
The range of resulting inventories extends from a low of 6 consonants to a high of 122. Rotokas (West Bougainville; Papua New Guinea) has only six consonants. These might be represented in a simplified transcription with the letters /p, t, k, b, d, g/ although the range of pronunciations heard in different word positions covers a considerably wider range of sounds than these letters suggest. !Xóõ (Southern Khoisan; Botswana) has 122 consonants, mainly because it has a very large number of different click sounds with which a word may begin. The more typical consonant inventory size is in the low twenties, with the mean for the 562 languages being 22.7, the modal value 22 and the median 21. Consonant inventories close to this size (22 ± 3) have been categorized as average , and the remainder divided into the categories small (from 6 to 14 consonants), moderately small (15-18), moderately large (26-33), and large (34 or more consonants). As Figure 1 illustrates, the particular cut-off values for the categories were chosen so as to approximate a histogram with a normal distribution, although there are somewhat more languages with inventories smaller than the band defined as “average” than with larger than average inventories.


Vowel-Quality Inventories wrote:
2. Establishing the values
When vowel qualities are counted in this way in the sample of languages surveyed for this chapter, the average number of vowels in a language is just fractionally below 6. The smallest vowel quality inventory recorded is 2 and the largest 14. There are 4 languages in the sample with only two contrasting vowel qualities; these are languages in which only the height of the vowel has any distinctive function according to at least one possible interpretation of their phonetic patterns. An example of this extreme is Yimas (Lower Sepik-Ramu; Papua New Guinea). Only one language in the sample, German, uses 14 vowel qualities and only 2 make use of 13, namely the variety of British English included here and Bété ( Kru, Niger-Congo; Côte d'Ivoire). Considerably more languages have an inventory of five vowels than any other number — 188 or just over one-third. The next most frequent inventory size is six vowel qualities, with 100 languages (or 17.8% of the sample). In plotting the data on the map, vowel quality inventories with 5 or 6 members have therefore been grouped together in the category of “average” while those with 4 or fewer are classified as “small” and those with 7 or more are classified as “large”.


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

Languages with more than 9 vowels always have a second (or subsequent) series of vowels.
That is, languages with an inventory of 9 or fewer vowel phonemes may have all their vowels distinguished by only height or closeness (e.g. close vs open, or close vs mid vs open, or close vs close-mid vs open-mid vs open), backness (e.g. front vs back, or front vs central vs back), and roundedness (rounded vs unrounded); (or some subset of those three parts of vowel-quality). But languages with more than 9 vowel-phonemes also have either phonemic length for vowels, or distinctive nasalization for vowels, or phonemic diphthongs.

It's unusual, but not unheard-of, for a language to distinguish long nasal vowels, in addition to long vowels and nasal vowels; most languages with more than two series of monophthongs don't have more than three series of monophthongs, namely short oral vowels and short nasal vowels and long oral vowels (though of course most languages don't have two series, and most that do don't have three series).

Most languages that have any phonemic diphthongs just have one. Most that have more than one have just two. Most that have more than two have just three.

Languages with a system of nasal vowels usually have fewer of them than of oral vowels, and never or almost never have more.

But languages with a system of long vowels usually have at least as many long vowels as short vowels, and often have more, though sometimes they have fewer.

With five vowel-qualities, and distinguishing long vowels from short vowels and nasal vowels from oral vowels, if you have five short oral vowels and five long oral vowels and five short nasal vowels and five long nasal vowels, that'd be 20 monophthongs.

Assuming diphthongs can be made only from short vowels, and either both components are oral or both are nasal, you could have 5*4=20 oral diphthongs if you have 5 short oral vowels, and 5*4=20 nasal diphthongs if you have 5 short nasal vowels.

I think that's a grand total of 80 vowel sounds. I don't know how you got 81; can you tell us?

And you don't in fact distinguish nasal vowels from non-nasal vowels; so I'd get 5 short vowels, 5 long vowels, and 5*4=20 diphthongs, for a total of 40 vowels.

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

Can your laterals and rhotics and approximants and liquids and glides all serve as syllabic nuclei?

Must consonant-nucleused syllables be unstressed?

Can a consonant-nucleused syllable have a cluster for a nucleus?
Can a consonant-nucleused syllable have a cluster for an onset?
Can a consonant-nucleused syllable have a cluster for a coda?
Can a consonant-nucleused syllable have both an onset and a coda?

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

With 19 consonants and 5 vowels you could get over 5,000 CVCV words or roots or morphemes without repeating any of the consonants or any of the vowels.

With 19 consonants and 5 vowels you could get over a million CVCCVC or CCVCCV words or roots or morphemes without repeating any of the consonants or any of the vowels.

With 25 consonants and 5 vowels, or 23 consonants and 6 vowels, you could get at least 3,000 CVC syllables, or at least 3,000 CCV syllables.

With 19 consonants and 6 vowels, or 20 consonants and 5 vowels, you could get over 30,000 CCVC syllables. With 22 consonants and 6 vowels, or 23 consonants and 5 vowels, you could get over 50,000 30,000 CCVC syllables.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eldin raigmore
Admin


Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan

PostPosted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And, oh, by the way:
I really like the morphology and the beginnings of syntax I see so far.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 8:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, thanks for the detailed response!

For the phoneme inventory though, I think you misunderstand (or I could easily have misrepresented it): there are 47 base phonemes, each of which are represented orthographically as having one of 5 possible (manners?) of articulation - uninflected, /Cj/, /Cw/, /C[sup]j[/sup]/, /C[sup]w[/sup]/; as well as possible syllbic consonants or lengthened vowels. Syllabic consonants as opposed to base, as well as the length of the vowels are minimal pairs, while the palatalization/labialization is mostly due to orthographical regulations/constraints (PAL coming before front vowels, LAB before back).

There are the 'standard' five vowels: /a e i o u/ as well as a few dipthongs. No nasals (as there are no nasal consonants [I'm actually considering taking out the bilabial consonants as well] - it's not supposed to be a human-based language, though I don't want to call it alien because I would want to do an alien language properly, completely different from anything I could conceive of in an Earth natlang).

As for the vowel count itself, I'm using the five vowels, with length, as well as syllabic /v z ʒ r ɹ/ and dipthongs /ai ao au ei oi ou/, all of which can be marked for: palatalization, labialization, and tenseness (which I'm considering taking out). I doubt the distinctions in BASE/PAL/LAB/TENSE will be minimal pairs. [15*4=60 + dipthong count 21]

All syllabic consonants can serve as syllabic nuclei.

I'm not sure about stress as yet unfortunately - I don't know enough about the constraints of natural consonant-nucleused syllables, or what kind of stress the language itself is going to employ - I may have to stress the base roots (possibly by way of tenseness).

It depends what you consider the nucleus for the possibility of clusters - would you consider a syllabic coarticulated [dz] to be a nucleus cluster or the syllabic z alone to be the nucleus?

Yes, any onset or coda can be a consonant cluster.

A consonant-nucleused syllable (being in the position of the verb-sentence it necessarily must be) has to have both an onset and coda.

I'm not worried about the number of possible roots or morphemes at this time - I know it will be enough Razz

Thanks for your helpful comments and questions, and I'm glad it's looking somewhat decent so far Smile
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 8:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's a bit of a teaser for the orthography (still very unfinished but maybe half done): http://www.flickr.com/photos/28228492@N05/4748613998/sizes/l/
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eldin raigmore
Admin


Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Aert: Thanks to you, also, for your detailed reply.

Aert wrote:
there are 47 base phonemes, each of which are represented orthographically as having one of 5 possible (manners?) of articulation - uninflected, /Cj/, /Cw/, /C[sup]j[/sup]/, /C[sup]w[/sup]/; as well as possible syllabic consonants or lengthened vowels.

What's the difference between /Cj/ and /C[sup]j[/sup]/, or between /Cw/ and /C[sup]w[/sup]/ ?
In Z-SAMPA would you mean
/ C_j / for / C[sup]j[/sup] / (palatalized) and
/ C_P\ / for / C[sup]w[/sup] / (labialized (not labiovelarized))?


Aert wrote:
it's not supposed to be a human-based language, though I don't want to call it alien because I would want to do an alien language properly, completely different from anything I could conceive of in an Earth natlang).

Most of what you've talked about actually happens in human natlangs, though much of it is pretty rare.

Aert wrote:
There are the 'standard' five vowels: /a e i o u/ as well as a few dipthongs.
...
As for the vowel count itself, I'm using the five vowels, with length, as well as syllabic /v z ʒ r ɹ/ and dipthongs /ai ao au ei oi ou/, all of which can be marked for: palatalization, labialization, and tenseness (which I'm considering taking out). I doubt the distinctions in BASE/PAL/LAB/TENSE will be minimal pairs. [15*4=60 + dipthong count 21]

I still think I'm not getting it.
IF each of / a e i o u v z Z r r\` ai ao au ei oi ou / can be:
long or short, and
palatalized or unpalatalized, and
labialized or unlabialized, and
tense or lax;
THEN why aren't there 16*16=256 vowel segments in the phoneme inventory?

Which do you mean can be long or short?
Obviously you mean / a e i o u / to have not only short, but also
long / a: e: i: o: u: / versions (i.e., phonemic length).

Did you also mean / v z Z r r\`/ to have short and long / v: z: Z: r: r\`: / versions (phonemic length)?
If so, wouldn't that be 20*4=80 + diphthong-count instead of 15*4=60 + diphthong-count?
So, can I take it the answer is "no, I didn't mean for / v z Z r r\`/ to have phonemic length"?

I take it you did not mean /ai ao au ei oi ou/ to have phonemic length; right or wrong?.

Which ones can occur palatalized or unpalatalized?

I take it you did not mean /ai ao au ei oi ou/ to be palatalized; right or wrong?.

Is that alternation independent of the long-vs.-short alternation?
So do you mean that / a e i o u a: e: i: o: u: v z Z r r\` / each has an unpalatalized vs
a palatalized / a_j e_j i_j o_j u_j a_j: e_j: i_j: o_j: u_j: v_j z_j Z_j r_j r\`_j / version?
How about / v: z: Z: r: r\`: / and / v_j: z_j: Z_j: r_j: r\`_j: / ?

Which ones can occur labialized or unlabialized?

I take it you did not mean / ai ao au ei oi ou / to be labialized; right or wrong?.

Is that alternation independent of the long-vs.-short alternation?
So do you mean that / a e i o u a: e: i: o: u: v z Z r r\` / each has an unlabialized vs
a labialized / a_P\ e_P\ i_P\ o_P\ u_P\ a_P\: e_P\: i_P\: o_P\: u_P\: v_P\ z_P\ Z_P\ r_P\ r\`_P\ / version?
How about / v: z: Z: r: r\`: / and / v_P\: z_P\: Z_P\: r_P\: r\`_P\: / ?
Is the palatilized-vs-unpalatalized alternation independent of the labialized-vs-unlabialized alternation?
You don't allow a sound to be both palatalized and labialized, do you? (Although a close rounded vowel or approximant already is nearly a little of both.)
Do you have / a_j_P\ e_j_P\ i_j_P\ o_j_P\ u_j_P\ v_j_P\ z_j_P\ Z_j_P\ r_j_P\ r\`_j_P\ / ? (I'm guessing "no".)

Which ones occur tense or lax?

I take it you did not mean / ai ao au ei oi ou / to be tense; right or wrong?.

How do you tense / v z Z r r\` / if you meant to do that?
Do you intend to have / v_x\ z_x\ Z_x\ r_x\ r\`_x\ / ? (I'm guessing "yes"; but I don't know what that means.)

Is the tense-vs-lax alternation independent of the long-vs-short alternation? (I'm guessing "yes".)
Do you intend to have / a_x\: e_x\: i_x\: o_x\: u_x\: /
distinct from both / a_x\ e_x\ i_x\ o_x\ u_x\ /
and from / a: e: i: o: u: / ? (I'm guessing "yes".)

Is the tense-vs-lax alternation independent of the palatalized-vs-unpalatalized alternation?
Do you intend to have / a_j_x\ e_j_x\ i_j_x\ o_j_x\ u_j_x\ /
distinct from both / a_x\ e_x\ i_x\ o_x\ u_x\ /
and from / a_j e_j i_j o_j u_j / ? (I'm guessing "no".)

Is the tense-vs-lax alternation independent of the labialized-vs-unlabialized alternation?
Do you intend to have / a_P\_x\ e_P\_x\ i_P\_x\ o_P\_x\ u_P\_x\ /
distinct from both / a_x\ e_x\ i_x\ o_x\ u_x\ /
and from / a_P\ e_P\ i_P\ o_P\ u_P\ / ? (I'm guessing "no".)

..........................................................................................................

How do you get twenty-one diphthongs?
You must be doing something to / ai ao au ei oi ou / .
But you'd have to be doing two-and-a-half things to each of them to add 15 more diphthongs to these six.
Can each be palatalized, and each be labialized, and three of them be tensed? If so, which three?
Or can each be palatalized, and each be tensed, and three of them be labialized? If so, which three?
Or can each be labialized, and each be tensed, and three of them be palatalized? If so, which three?
Or maybe there's phonemic length for all or for three of the diphthongs?

..........................................................................................................

Aert wrote:
Here's a bit of a teaser for the orthography (still very unfinished but maybe half done): http://www.flickr.com/photos/28228492@N05/4748613998/sizes/l/

Looks great!
But still doesn't answer some of my questions.
As for the difference between / C j / and / C_j /,
and between / C w / and / C_P\ /, you show how to write the difference, but not how to pronounce the difference nor how to tell the difference from listening.

And, you don't have anything in the "long" column nor in the "syllabic" column, and you don't have a "tense" column at all; but, you said it was only half-finished, so I guess you'll fix that soon. I wish I could get half-finished as fast as you did!
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2010 10:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alrighty; sorry I'm not explaining this very well,

Cj is just what it is in IPA - a consonant with the approximant /j/ afterward, same as Cw. The [sup] tags are supposed to make the approximant a superscript, which would be either palatalization or labialization. PAL/LAB aren't minimal pairs, while /Cj/ and /Cw/ are.
(Sorry, I don't know X- or Z-sampa, just IPA).

For the vowel system:
you're right - I wasn't intending for syllabic consonants or dipthongs to be marked (minimal pairs) for length. After your question though I realized I might need to - it could be odd to have one set and not the other. I think I'll leave the syllabic consonants, but add minimal pair distinctions between long/short dipthongs.

For inflectional vowel marking (is that the right term?): all basic (non-dipthong) vowels can be marked for PAL, LAB, or TENSE, but some will almost never be used . Also: marking for vowels will be much less common than for consonants as there's not usually a second vowel to instigate the marking.
Also: as would be expected anything /-i/ + PAL -> /-j/ and /-u/ + LAB -> /-w/.
Dipthongs can be marked for most PAL/TENSE, and some LAB, but I don't know how often these are going to be used yet - I haven't finished the morphology that it's going to be used within yet Razz

Labialization: all base vowels (though the LAB of /e/ and /i/ sound kinda nasal Razz and will not be used often at all); all syllabic consonants, and: ao, au, ou.

Count: 15*4 single vowels, 6 base dipthongs, 6 PAL dipthongs, 3 LAB dipthongs, 6 TENSE dipthongs = 81.
This will almost certainly change before things have finished organizing themselves Razz

A sound cannot be both palatalized and labialized, as they are manners(?) of articulation. However, the same sound (eg /k/ can be PAL /k<sup>j</sup>/ and LAB /k<sup>w</sup>/ as well as /kj/ and /kw/. The articulations don't make for minimal pairs, but some words will be pronounced with a certain manner in that respect, even without a vowel to require it.

As for tenseness, I'm still not sure if I'm even going to keep it, but for the moment all vowels (including the second in the dipthong) can be tense. I don't know much about it though so I'll have to do more research first.

Independent of length: yes
Independent of BASE/PAL/LAB: yes

21 total dipthongs, but only 6 of which (the base) are minimal pairs.
I think I answered which can be what above.

I hope I answered the difference between / Cj / and / C_j / above.

Yeah I don't have anything yet in the long/syllabic columns, or tense.
Just so you know: this orthography has taken me maybe two weeks already :O I had to make a glyph derivation chart, then choose the ones I liked, then find out how I was going to do the PAL/LAB/etc, then make derivations for all those, and I still don't even have all the base sounds done yet Razz

I hope this has sorted a few things out, and I'll post the full orthography (with examples) when it's more or less done.
Hopefully I'll get some of these unknowns figured out soon too Razz
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 4:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The orthography has been updated a bit, so the earlier link won't work anymore.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28228492@N05/4750588997/sizes/l/

It's coming together Smile
I'm wondering whether or not to add length to consonants (likely not minimal pairs, just as allophones or something) as gemination.

No updates on morphology/etc just yet - one thing at a time Razz
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Tolkien_Freak



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

PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 4:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like Old Church Slavonic, somehow. I see a lot of cyrillic, and the various modifications make the rest look like it too ^_^

Seems a bit hard to read, what with all the values being shifted around weirdly.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
eldin raigmore
Admin


Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan

PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 6:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
...
I hope I answered the difference between / Cj / and / C_j / above.
...
I hope this has sorted a few things out, and I'll post the full orthography (with examples) when it's more or less done.
...
Thanks bunches! That did indeed answer all the questions I'd already thought of. If I think of more, I'll aske them.

Aert wrote:
A sound cannot be both palatalized and labialized, as they are manners(?) of articulation.
Do you mean, in your conlang? Then, since you're the author, whatever you say goes.
But do you mean, in any language? Then that's not so.
For one thing, they're often considered manners of co-articulation or secondary articulation, rather than manners of articulation.
For another, "palatalization" often means "pre-palatalization" or "post-palatalization"; likewise, "labialization" often means "pre-labialization" or "post-labialization".

Co-articulation is when your mouthparts articulate two phones at once. Obviously these can't be in the same place-of-articulation, and obviously they can't have different voicings, or different airstream-sources (glottalic, pulmonic, velaric) and/or directions (egressive, ingressive), and they have to be either both nasal or neither nasal. But they don't have to be the same manner-of-articulation. Palatal co-articulation of a non-palatal consonant is usually articulating a palatal approximant at the same time; but it can be articulating a palatal fricative, or sometimes even a palatal stop, at the same time, instead. Likewise, labial co-articulation of a non-labial consonant is usually articulating a labial approximant at the same time; but it can be articulating a labial fricative, or sometimes even a labial stop, at the same time, instead.

(Usually the primary articulation is more closed than the secondary; the primary may be a stop while the secondary is a fricative or approximant, or the primary may be a fricative while the secondary is an approximant. If they're both stops or both fricatives, though, it should be harder, or even impossible, to decide which is primary and and which is secondary.)

Anyway:
Any close (high) vowel, especially if it is tense, might be regarded as "palatal(ized)"; and any rounded vowel, especially if it is tense, might be regareded as "labial(ized)". So any close rounded vowel is already both palatalized and labialized.

So a sound might be triply-articulated; it might have one or another of most primary articulations, and have two co-articulations, for instance both palatalization and labialization.

Or, if we go with pre- and post- -labialization and -palatalization, we could have triphthongs like
((jaw ((jew ((jiw ((jow ((juw ((waj ((wej ((wij ((woj ((wuj
which are either pre-palatalized and post-labialized, or pre-labialized and post-palatalized.

And labialization and palatalization are not the only forms of secondary articulation.
For instance, a consonant may be pre-aspirated or post-aspirated or pre-affricated or post-affricated or even pre-nasalized or post-nasalized. (Those aren't "co-articulations", but they are "secondary articulations".)

........

Nevertheless, I understand that, in your conlang, no consonant nor vowel can be both palatalized and labialized at the same time.

I take it that means that, for instance, [j_P\] and [w_j], if either occurs in your conlang, are not heard as having two secondary co-articulations.

Aert wrote:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28228492@N05/4750588997/sizes/l/
I can see much additional work! It looks good.
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 9:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Aert wrote:
A sound cannot be both palatalized and labialized, as they are manners(?) of articulation.

Sorry, yeah I meant in my conlang Embarassed

Quote:
Or, if we go with pre- and post- -labialization and -palatalization, we could have triphthongs like
((jaw ((jew ((jiw ((jow ((juw ((waj ((wej ((wij ((woj ((wuj
which are either pre-palatalized and post-labialized, or pre-labialized and post-palatalized.

In this lang, these would all be written with the first consonant as a consonant, then the vowel marked for either labialization or palatalization. eg: wa<sup>j>/sup> -> úâ.

As for aspiration, the idea for this lang is that all plosive consonants are aspirated (some ejective), so that's not marked on the orthography or Romanization. I'm not using nasals at all (mentioned earlier), and I'm not actually sure how a pre- or post-affrication would work Question

I think it's mentioned on the orthography chart, but /j/ and /w/ can't be marked for either PAL/LAB.

Glad the script is looking alright - I hope it's got enough variety within itself to go a bit beyond a simple 1:1 alphabet...

(Looks up Old Church Slavonic and Glagolitic): interesting Smile
I suppose it is a bit hard to read, at least coming from Latin as one's script. But I wasn't going for direct correlation here, the D/B/d/b-like glyphs were just going to be some plosive sounds and happened to be those ones.

Also: I'm adding some more variation for the palatalization - one going one direction one the other (I suppose this could be indicative of pre- or post-palatalization, but I doubt I'm going to use that as a feature in this lang.)

EDIT: there have been some morphological changes now: instead of All noun phrases (subject/object) being within the verb, they take place on either side, so as to allow for more complex formations including adjectives and adverbs etc, without cluttering the verb conjugation and confusing the speaker/listener with what the verb and conjugation forms are out of all that Razz
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Vreleksá Forum Index -> Conlangs
All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
Theme ACID © 2003 par HEDONISM Web Hosting Directory


Start Your Own Video Sharing Site

Free Web Hosting | Free Forum Hosting | FlashWebHost.com | Image Hosting | Photo Gallery | FreeMarriage.com

Powered by PhpBBweb.com, setup your forum now!
For Support, visit Forums.BizHat.com