The Dailies. July 14
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you’ve already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?
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7 thoughts on “The Dailies. July 14”
Eeee! I just figured out how I’ve got s, sh, and ch all showing up in copular constructions.
There’s a glottal stop + t combination, ‘t, that was a vestigial definite article, combined with a copula that created the parallel -a’ch and -a:sh affixes.
Now, I’m not entirely sure what this definite article looked like, especially when I’ve got -sut in other contexts, which kind of looks like a copula + definite article but isn’t divisible that way. But it’s a serious breakthrough and I’m happy.
I’ve been working a bit on my phoneme inventory and romanization today. Decided to remove all the phonemes I hadn’t used yet from my table (I had a buuunch marked with a ?). Here’s how it looks now.
I’m pretty happy w it though I wonder if I need a few more to make it feel more… rounded, somehow? I’m also a bit concerned that /ʐ/ feels out of place and pondering if I can add one or two to make it less lonely. I don’t even know if it is out of place or if it’s just the IPA that’s fooling me cuz it’s the only one with a little curly tail XD
Feedback appreciated! Does anything seem to stick out or be missing?
And here’s my current romanization:
Finally decided to go with æ for /ɛ/. It feels weird as a Swede, heh, but it works with macrons so I think it’s the best.
Still really struggling with what to use for /ʎ/ and /ʍ/… I do want them to have their own things though, especially /ʍ/. /ʎ/ is so far only an allophone but as I am just romanizing to show how the language is spoken and not representing a naturalistic script I’d like to have it (reasonably) phonological. Plus if I spell /ʎ/ “ll” or something I’ll have to consider how to spell other allophones too, especially since the others I have so far are also their own phonemes so to say…
I’m also unsure of š because I’m considering adding the voiceless version of /ʐ/ (maybe as an allophone of /ʐ/?) and then I think that should have the caron and might give /ʃ/ s with an accent instead or something…
I actually prefer diacritcs over digraphs most of the time. I mean, Swedish distinguises a, å and ä and that doesn’t seem to phase anyone, Arabic has hella diacritics too so I’m pretty used to them. Since I’m not making a naturalistic script but rather a representation only, I’d prefer if the writing was transparent and one didn’t have to guess which the digraphs were, especially since I (so far, at least) have to phonological rules against for example /h/ following /s/ without becoming /ʃ/.
That being said, there’s also the “don’t be weird/confusing” factor so unless I have some epiphany regarding /ʎ/ and /ʍ/ I may end up with just those two as digraphs (as ll and hw). I feel like the others I have (except maybe g with caron, as proven by that it won’t paste into here without separating, unlike the others with caron) are commonly enough used in various languages that it won’t alienate people too much.
Well as for your retroflex, look at it as the voiced alternate of your post-alveolar. Basically, I would merge the three middle columns post-alveolar through palatal to look at how balanced the inventory is.
Glancing vertically, it looks fine, with three phonemes hanging out on the front and the back each. Though I will say it looks odd to have a voiced velar fricative without an unvoiced one. Though if the labials behave as a voiced/unvoiced pair: p/f, then it would make more sense for the k/gh.
I know that’s not your romanization, it was just easier to type.
Love it!
ETA: those labials are both unvoiced, just noticed. That does strike me as odd. The labials are more likely to be voiced and missing unvoiced. The velar-uvular region is more likely to be unvoiced and missing voiced. This pattern is flipped in your language. It’s not entirely implausible but it strikes me as odd.
Thank you for the feedback! I didn’t even know that sounds could “pair up” across places of articulation like that so that’s good to know!
I thought it was more common for languages to have /p/ than /b/? But I am not attached to either /p/ or /f/, could replace them if it makes more sense… Though /ɣ/ I’m keeping cuz I love it 😛
I still feel like it’s a bit on the low end of how many phonemes it has. Since you seem to know a lot about phonology, if you were to add like 2-5 sounds to the system, what would you add? Either as allophones or distinguished phonemes (I’m consdering adding /ʂ/ as an allophone of /ʐ/ depending on which vowel precedes since I have that sound as always being in the coda, for example).
Really, all I’d change is to make my labials more voicy than my velar-uvulars, which would mean I’d probably go b/f and k/gh OR b/v and k/gh, both of which feel more realistic than the total swap of which gets which.