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Limits to the phonological shapes of roots, affixes, words

 
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Are there limits to the phonological shapes of words in your 'langs?
No.
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
Not separate from those for roots, particles, and affixes.
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
Yes, different for different parts of speech, and I'll tell you about them.
0%
 0%  [ 0 ]
Yes, other; and I'll tell you about them.
100%
 100%  [ 1 ]
Total Votes : 1

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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 5:04 pm    Post subject: Limits to the phonological shapes of roots, affixes, words Reply with quote

So what do you guys think of these ideas?

_____________________________________________________________

Phonological shapes of roots:

1. Maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of phonemes per root.
1a. For instance maybe roots have to have at least four phonemes. (Or the minimum could be lower or higher.)
1b. For instance maybe roots can't have more than six phonemes. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

2a. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of consonants per root.
2a'. For instance maybe roots have to have at least two consonants. (Or the minimum could be lower or higher.)
2a". For instance maybe roots can't have more than four consonants. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

2b. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of vowels per root.
2b'. For instance maybe roots have to have at least one vowel. (Or the minimum could be higher.)
2b". For instance maybe roots can't have more than three vowels. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

3. And/or, maybe, if the language's stress-pattern is weight-sensitive, there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of morae per root.
3a. Maybe roots have to be at least two morae (two light syllables or one heavy syllable). (Or the minimum could be lower or higher.)
3b. Maybe roots can't have more than four morae (two heavy syllables, a superheavy syllable and a light syllable, or two light syllables and a heavy syllable, etc.). (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

4. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of syllables per root.
4a. Maybe roots have to be at least two syllables (Or the minimum could be lower (one syllable) or higher (that seems unlikely).)
4b. Maybe roots can't have more than three syllables. (Or the maximum could be lower (e.g. two syllables) or higher.)

_____________________________________________________________

Phonological shapes of affixes and particles:

1. Maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of phonemes per non-root morpheme.
1a. For instance maybe affixes, and/or maybe particles, have to have at least one phoneme. (Or the minimum could be higher.)
1b. For instance maybe affixes, and/or maybe particles, can't have more than four phonemes. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

2a. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of consonants per non-root morpheme.
2a'. For instance maybe particles, have to have at least one consonant. (Or the minimum could be higher, or there may be no minimum, or there may be a minimum for particles but not for affixes.)
2a". For instance maybe affixes, and/or maybe particles, can't have more than three consonants. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher.)

2b. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of vowels per non-root morpheme.
2b'. For instance maybe particles have to have at least one vowel. (Or the minimum could apply to affixes too or instead.)
2b". For instance maybe affixes, and/or maybe particles, can't have more than two vowels. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher, or could be different for affixes than for particles.)

3. And/or, maybe, if the language's stress-pattern is weight-sensitive, there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of morae per root.
3a. Maybe particles, and/or maybe affixes, have to be at least one mora. (Or the minimum could be higher, or apply only to particles, or be different for particles than for affixes.)
3b. Maybe affixes, and/or maybe particles, can't have more than four morae. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher; but the max for roots won't be smaller than the max for particles which won't be smaller than the max for affixes.)

4. And/or, maybe there are maximum and/or minimum numbers of syllables per root.
4a. Maybe particles have to be at least one syllable (Or there may be no minimum (not likely for particles IMO) or it might apply to affixes as well (also not likely IMO).)
4b. Maybe particles, and/or maybe affixes, can't have more than two syllables. (Or the maximum could be lower or higher or different for particles than for affixes; though the max for affixes won't be more than the max for particles or the max for roots; and the maxes for particles and for roots probably won't be too different from each other.)

_____________________________________________________________

Superheavy Syllables:

(1) Maybe a word can't contain more than one superheavy syllable.

(2) Maybe affixes can't contain superheavy syllables; maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in root morphemes.

(3) Maybe particles can't contain superheavy syllables; maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in words that have been or can be inflected.

(4) Maybe superheavy syllables can't occur in "function words"; maybe they can only occur in words with "lexical content" or "semantic content".

(5) Maybe superheavy syllables can't occur in words belonging to closed or small word-classes (parts-of-speech, syntactic categories); maybe they can occur only in words belonging to open classes (words in which word-coining and word-borrowing are still productive, still going on).

(6)
6a. Maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in verb-roots, noun-roots, adjective-roots, and adverb-roots.
6b. Or, maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in verb-roots, noun-roots, and adjective-roots.
6c. Or, maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in verb-roots and noun-roots.
6d. Or, maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in verb-roots.
6e. Or, maybe superheavy syllables can occur only in noun-roots.


_____________________________________________________________

Limits to phonological shapes of words?

Should there be any such limits?
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bump?

Adpihi is intended to be a triconsonantal-verb-root language; so its roots will mostly have three consonants (though two and four will also occur).
Technically speaking they'll have no vowels, but if you apply the transfix and the reduplication of one consonant, the resulting word-base could have one to three vowels and therefore one to three syllables.
Roots will max out at six phonemes, up to four of which can be consonants and up to three of which can be vowels.
Mostly what applies to verb-roots applies to roots in general, including noun-roots and adjective-roots.
Adpihi affixes, OTOH are mostly one-consonant and one-vowel, and can't have more than two consonants nor more than two vowels. The same applies to Adpihi function-words.


Reptigan descends from Adpihi. It may have some five-consonant roots, but mostly its roots are like Adpihi's.

Arpien one-syllable words are of the form (C)(C)V(C)(C); its word-initial syllables are of the form (C)(C)V(C); its word-final syllables are of the form (C)V(C)(C); and its word-medial syllables are of the form (C)V(C).
Roots are mostly two-syllables, but one-syllable and three-syllable roots exist. (However most three-syllable "roots" tend to be derived from shorter archaic ones in some unknown ancestor of Arpien.)
Arpien particles and grammatical-function words tend to be one-syllable long; though several are two-syllables long.
Arpien's morphology is totally isolating/analytic so it has no prefixes nor suffixes nor infixes nor other affixes.
Consonant-clusters can't be longer than three consonants without spanning a word-boundary.
Word-internal consonant-clusters that are not word-initial nor word-final must span a syllable-boundary.
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LingoDingo
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 5:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In Aalmok, things aren't really set to such standards, mostly because I don't have a set of defined syllable layouts and I use a non-linear compression of existing words to create new ones (in order to maintain a more naturalistic appearance; keep the sound consistent; use more sounds and acquire more unique, non-english meanings).

one of the main things keeping me from being able to define this for you is the lack of a consistent definition for the nature of a syllable. There are a lot of words in Aalmok that could have a dispute as to how many syllables are actually present in the word. Take, for example, the word 'hâzn' meaning "question, inquiry, interest". You could say that that is one syllable, since there's only one vowel present; or you could say that the 'n' is syllabic and, therefore, it has two sillables.

There's a lot of other issues preventing me form really being able to give you an answer, and, to be honest, I don't know what most of those issues are.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"I don't know" is a good enough answer.

Maybe I should have separated it from "no"; I intended "no" to include "not yet", "maybe never as far as I know at the moment", and so on.

Anyway:
About what a syllable is.

In all of my conlangs so far, a syllable begins at a sonority-trough (or the beginning of a word) and continues until just before the next sonority-trough (or the end of a word).

In Arpien, consonant clusters can't be longer than two consonants.
Two-consonant onset clusters can occur only in word-initial syllables; two-consonant coda clusters can occur only in word-final syllables.
So if there's a word-medial or word-internal consonant-cluster, there must be a syllable boundary between the two consonants.

In all of my conlangs so far, the preference is to assume a consonant is part of an onset if that assumption doesn't contradict certain rules.

My conlangs have a sonority-hierarchy among their consonants (not necessarily the same hierarchy from one language to another, but similar). They also have a rule that sonority must climb in onsets and sonority must fall in codas. Thus, if two consonants belong to the same syllable, the one closer to the nucleus has to be more sonorous than the one further from the nucleus; if they are exactly the same distance from the nucleus, the one in the coda has to be more sonorous than the one in the onset.

If the above rules aren't enough to figure out which syllable a consonant is part of, I decide that it's part of an onset instead of part of a coda.

_____________________________________________________________

I chose such a system because several natlangs have such a system.

For your conlang, look at all possible codas (including no coda) and all possible onsets (including no onset). Look at all consonant-clusters formed by one of those codas followed by one of those onsets. Only if the same cluster occurs twice (say, as a coda and as an onset, or as a coda and a coda+onset, or an onset and a coda+onset, or a longcoda+shortonset and a shortcoda+longonset), will you need a rule to figure out where to put the syllable-boundary. For any cluster that does in fact occur more than once, decide on a rule that allows only one place for the syllable-boundary.

OTOH it's possible some natlangs don't have unambiguous syllable-boundaries, particularly those that allow long clusters, or allow fairly arbitrary consonant-pairs. It's not a requirement AFAIK for a language to be able to unambiguously decide what the syllables are; unless some other part of speaking or understanding the language requires it.

So you might not ever decide how to syllabify your conlang.
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