There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Languages' Flag
From: Padraic Brown
1b. Re: Languages' Flag
From: Padraic Brown
1c. Re: Languages' Flag
From: Herman Miller
2a. Re: OT: Texas German dying out
From: Krista D. Casada
3. Substratum theory (was: OT: Texas German dying out)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4a. A conlang with a minimal sound system
From: Jyri Lehtinen
4b. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
From: David McCann
4c. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
From: Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro
4d. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
From: Alex Fink
5a. THEORY: VC consonant contrasts (was: Lost of final-syllable rhotic.)
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
5b. Re: THEORY: VC consonant contrasts (was: Lost of final-syllable rhot
From: Alex Fink
6a. Phonology Typology
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
6b. Re: Phonology Typology
From: Logan Kearsley
6c. Re: Phonology Typology
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
7. Methods or software for creating grammars and dictionaries
From: James Kane
Messages
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1a. Re: Languages' Flag
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:09 am ((PDT))
--- On Thu, 3/14/13, R A Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> > It is, perhaps, less of an issue using the flag of, say,
> > Wales for Welsh as Welsh isn't really spoken much outside
> > of Wales
>
> Yes, sadly it seems to have more or less disappeared from
> Patagonia (I would love to be proved wrong).
There are apparently still some thousands of Welsh speakers in Argentina.
The Font of All Knowledge says 1500 to 5000; plus it has gained in
popularity and there seems to be quite a bit of cultural exchange between
Wales and Argentina, teachers from Wales help keep the language going,
locals are actively learning the language, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIy72cGRDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umM1jMsdx-c
Padraic
Messages in this topic (14)
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1b. Re: Languages' Flag
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:41 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 3/13/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've just read this article against
> using flags of countries to stand for languages:
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html. I agree with it.
Myeh. I guess some people will complain about anything. Flags are used to
identify (major) languages on websites for no other reasons than that they
are a) colorful images (and thus stand out from ordinary text) and b) they
are easily made into compact clickable icons. I can see the point, but
don't have an issue with using a flag to indicate language, and, though
American, have no issue at all with clicking on a UK flag. Or even and
English flag -- and YES, many web sites I've visited shunt their English
language link through an actual cross-of-St.-George English flag. Heck,
I'd just as happily click on an Australian or a Canadian flag.
The system breaks down, of course, when you move away from major languages
that are associated with major countries. The UK flag is clearly indicative
of the English language -- even though are also Welsh, Gaelic, Scots, and
Geordie languages native there. The US flag would also clearly indicate
English; but what if you've got a link to a page in Gullah? Gullah is
only spoken in the US, and thus by rights ought to get an American flag
for its link. Yet the US flag does nòt really scream "Gullah link" to me!
In so far as mòst multi-language web pages and even instruction manuals
and other printed matter (catalogs (print and on-line), tourism sites,
etc.) usually only have links to a small number of major languages
like English, Spanish, Japanese, French and Chinese. National flags work
just fine and, at least in my opinion are hardly inappropriate to the
task. I think most people recognise these major flags and the principle
languages they represent and I also think that most people understand that
no overt (or any other vert) nationalism is present in the choice of flag.
The message gets across and that is what is important.
There are, of course, other solutions. A very frequent one I find is a
country abbreviation (UK / US; FR; D; SP; CN; etc). Really not much better
than flags in so far as multiple languages per country goes. (This one
does actually make sense, especially if there is country specific legalese
within the link.) Still another solution is simply to write the name of
the language in that language: "ENGLISH"; "DEUTSCH"; "ITALIANO" etc. or
an abbreviation thereof: ENG, D, ITAL, etc. This one's a little harder to
visualise because the name looks just like another word of text. The flag
icon really does come in handy for quick identification!
> However, I'd like to have your opinion on creating a flag for a conlang
> (as well as creating other kinds of symbols).
As others have said, this is really a concultural issue more than a
conlinguistic one. Much will depend on the culture and history of the
people in question. Unless the country in question is a philoligarchy
and therefor ruled by linguists chances are good a language in and of
itself won't get a flag. There are other possibilities, of course. Perhaps
one empire is composed of two or more linguistic groups, and in order to
foster a kind of regional pride, these linguistic groups are flagged
rather than some geographical or ethnic entity.
As for my concultures: most countries in the World do not have flags as
we'd recognised them. Most countries have some kind of standard or
standards associated with them (the standard of old Hoopelle had a lamp
upon a long pole with a broad ribbon attached; Auntimoany has a round
shield showing the bum of an oliphant, all placed atop crossed mammoth-like
tusks). The closest thing they have to flags are the
embroidered tapestry-like banners that a number of entities (cities,
guilds, schools, etc) have as symbols. They aren't flown from poles, but
rather are suspended on walls or above gateways or inside guildhalls or
other public places.
These sort of standards are probably modernised versions of ancient totems
and ultimately serve the same purpose as flags -- identification at a
distance.
In the Eastlands, various kinds of colored pennants have historically been
used by seamen for intership communications. Anymore, the old pennant
codes have been replaced by semaphores. On land, the old optical systems
have largely been made obsolete by the farspeaker system.
A ship's home port and any fleet affiliation are signalled by the designs
painted upon their sides. An individual ship is identified by the
figurehead -- each one is as distinct as a name or a coat of arms and
indeed there are books published for the well informed captain containing
images of all known figureheads and the trading houses or fleets the ships
belong to.
Padraic
> -Mathieu
Messages in this topic (14)
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1c. Re: Languages' Flag
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:59 pm ((PDT))
On 3/14/2013 12:28 AM, George Corley wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Herman Miller<[email protected]>wrote:
>
>>
>> I guess Nunavut probably has a flag. But what about Cantonese, does the
>> Cantonese-speaking part of China have an associated flag? Hindi vs. Urdu?
>> Zulu vs. Xhosa? Even Bokmål vs. Nynorsk would be problematic with the flag
>> representation of languages.
>>
>
> You could use the Hong Kong flag to represent Cantonese (and China probably
> won't even block you for it).
Wu might be a better example, then.
> Hindi and Urdu are 1) basically the same
> language, and 2) closely tied to India and Pakistan, respectively, but all
> good points. I guess one issue is that many of the smaller languages I'm
> talking about aren't always getting their own site versions (though they
> often get translations on Wikipedia, which by the way, uses the more
> appropriate system which represents languages by their native names).
Basically the same spoken language, but the different writing systems
would be a barrier to reading.
> Of course, while the flag convention just breaks spectacularly, the native
> name method isn't perfect. Some languages have multiple names, meaning you
> have to choose one or show them all. If it's just two names that are
> common, this isn't to big of an issue (eg 'español/castellano') but when
> you have something like Mandarin, which has three or four common names,
> some of them with political implications, it gets a little more difficult.
Korean is a problem either way: two flags, two names.
In my world I've got Zirinka and Simik (two names for the same
language), but I could use the flag of Simikal to represent this
language (if Simikal had a flag).
Messages in this topic (14)
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2a. Re: OT: Texas German dying out
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:33 am ((PDT))
I have a friend from New Jersey whose family lect retains some interesting
Norwegian vocabulary; is that close enough??
Krista C.
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on behalf of Paul
Schleitwiler, FCM [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:50 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: OT: Texas German dying out
Old Wisconsin joke: "Ay ban gettin tired from Yewnited Stayuts. Ay tink ay
go back tew Minny-SOtah."
Told by Germans, of course.
I think that television, with national broadcasters, killed local dialects.
Que Dios te bendiga de siempre y de todas maneras,
Paul
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 6:13 AM, BPJ <[email protected]> wrote:
> It may be that the accent is lingering while the grammar and vocabulary
> are gone. It's not quite as likely when two different
> languages are involved but quite common when local dialects
> give way to a prestige/'standard' variety of the same language.
> There is a stereotype heard here in Scandinavia thot people
> in Minnesota and Wisconsin still speak English with a noticeable
> Swedish/Norwegian accent. Don't know how accurate it is.
>
> /bpj
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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3. Substratum theory (was: OT: Texas German dying out)
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 8:12 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:13:43 +0100 BPJ wrote:
> It may be that the accent is lingering while the grammar and
> vocabulary are gone. It's not quite as likely when two different
> languages are involved but quite common when local dialects
> give way to a prestige/'standard' variety of the same language.
Indeed, many linguists assume that this kind of thing is a major
driving force behind language change. That is called "substratum
theory", and has been a matter of constant controversy for many
years. Some substratum scenarios indeed make some sense but are
actually very hard to prove (e.g., the Dravidian substratum in
Indo-Aryan), others are so out of the way that one can safely
dismiss them (such as the infamous Semitic substratum in Insular
Celtic).
Of course, substratum theory has been employed by many diachronic
conlangers, Andrew Smith with his Brithenig perhaps being the
best-known example.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. A conlang with a minimal sound system
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 9:12 am ((PDT))
Hi all,
I've recently found again my old hobby of conlanging and just joined this
list. Regaining this hobby means means going through a pile of old ideas
and trying to build something concrete out of them.
The quickest project to get into an interesting stage has been creating the
phonology for a language that was originally only meant to be merely a
phonetic test and a naming language. The idea was to create a language with
as minimal phonology as possible while still remaining plausible and within
the borders of naturalism. The system that I've now settled into is /t k ?
s n/ for consonants and /a o i/ for vowels with high or low surface tones
on each single vowel. There are also productive lenition processes working
within the system:
t > s / V_i
k > [j] / V_i
k > [w] / V_o
? > [h] / _C,#
s > [h] / _#
and the vowels /o/ and /i/ can become desyllabic [w] and [j] following the
sonority hierarchy a > o > i and rules that I haven't pinned down yet. The
phones [w] and [j] are true allophones of other phonemes.
There's still much to do with the phonotactics and tones and I need to work
with the sound history to get those right. The language will, however,
certainly be quite tolerant to vowel sequences (at least those surfacing as
long vowels and diphthongs) and especially to moderately long consonant
clusters. /n/ can be surrounded by other consonants and become syllabic.
The system is still a sketch but it's possible to get an idea how it will
work. Especially including tone feels important in making the phonology
seem natural. To me this system feels pretty balanced and reasonably stable
and something that could in principle happen in the real world. On the
other hand, removing any of the phonemes would make the phonology seem
unbalanced. This is an interesting result since there shouldn't be any
attested language with this few phonemes. I've seen one reconstructed
language (the proto language of the Lakes Plain languages of West Papua)
that has as few consonant phonemes and looks much less likely. It's
reconstructed consonant inventory is /p t k b d/ with [w j] being
allophones of /i u/. If that has been possible, I don't see any reason why
my system wouldn't be.
So, do you have any thoughts on the plausibility of such minimal systems?
I'd also like to know if anyone has done any similar experiments than this.
Messages in this topic (4)
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4b. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:13 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:02:47 +0200
Jyri Lehtinen <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've recently found again my old hobby of conlanging and just joined
> this list. Regaining this hobby means means going through a pile of
> old ideas and trying to build something concrete out of them.
Welcome to the list!
> The quickest project to get into an interesting stage has been
> creating the phonology for a language that was originally only meant
> to be merely a phonetic test and a naming language. The idea was to
> create a language with as minimal phonology as possible while still
> remaining plausible and within the borders of naturalism. The system
> that I've now settled into is /t k ? s n/ for consonants and /a o i/
> for vowels with high or low surface tones on each single vowel.
> So, do you have any thoughts on the plausibility of such minimal
> systems? I'd also like to know if anyone has done any similar
> experiments than this.
Firstly, /a o i/ would be better as /a u i/. Vowels tend to spread out
to get the maximum contrast. When Old French lost /u/, it shifted [o] to
replace it.
The smallest set of phonemes I've got listed is 11, for Pirahã.
Languages tend to have much the same level of redundancy: 8 phonemes
for 9 features (which is what your language is using) is not
unreasonable according to my figures.
Messages in this topic (4)
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4c. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
Posted by: "Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:38 am ((PDT))
Welcome Jyri,
Recently I tried to create a phonology system (full of allophones) in order
to create words that could be read by anyone in the world and yet
comprehend by any other person.
I tried to avoid features/distinctions that some languages don't have. For
example, I would not use consonantal clusters in the beginning of words
because Finnish lacks them (compare Swedish "franska" with Finnish
"ranska").
But my phonology system became very small.
The vowels:
- Several languages lack tone distinction, so this system would not have
tones;
- Some languages lack stress distinction;
- Marshallese lacks backness distinction;
- If PIE is correct, then there is/was a language with no height
distinction.
This left my phonology system with only one vowel. Assuming PIE had a, it
would have two, like Ubykh.
The consonants:
- Some languages lack voicing distinction;
- Central Rotokas lacks distinction between voiced plosives and
approximants/flaps/fricatives/nasals;
- Hawaiian distincts only two places of articulation for plosives (p and
t~k);
- Pirahã also lacks distinction between voiced plosives and nasals.
Taking into account the statements above, one would deduce that only 2
consonants would be part of this minimal phonology chart. Nevertheless,
every language has at least 2 voiceless sounds (usually plosives) and at
least 2 voiced ones (usually sonorants, but they can be voiced plosives in
languages that lack the voiced plosive/sonorant distinction, e.g. Rotokas
and Pirahã). Therefore, this phonology chart could have up to 4 consonants.
Conclusion: the phonology chart I created was something not very "human".
It had only 2 vowels and 4 consonants (and, of course, several allophones).
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Jyri Lehtinen <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've recently found again my old hobby of conlanging and just joined this
> list. Regaining this hobby means means going through a pile of old ideas
> and trying to build something concrete out of them.
>
> The quickest project to get into an interesting stage has been creating the
> phonology for a language that was originally only meant to be merely a
> phonetic test and a naming language. The idea was to create a language with
> as minimal phonology as possible while still remaining plausible and within
> the borders of naturalism. The system that I've now settled into is /t k ?
> s n/ for consonants and /a o i/ for vowels with high or low surface tones
> on each single vowel. There are also productive lenition processes working
> within the system:
>
> t > s / V_i
> k > [j] / V_i
> k > [w] / V_o
> ? > [h] / _C,#
> s > [h] / _#
>
> and the vowels /o/ and /i/ can become desyllabic [w] and [j] following the
> sonority hierarchy a > o > i and rules that I haven't pinned down yet. The
> phones [w] and [j] are true allophones of other phonemes.
>
> There's still much to do with the phonotactics and tones and I need to work
> with the sound history to get those right. The language will, however,
> certainly be quite tolerant to vowel sequences (at least those surfacing as
> long vowels and diphthongs) and especially to moderately long consonant
> clusters. /n/ can be surrounded by other consonants and become syllabic.
>
> The system is still a sketch but it's possible to get an idea how it will
> work. Especially including tone feels important in making the phonology
> seem natural. To me this system feels pretty balanced and reasonably stable
> and something that could in principle happen in the real world. On the
> other hand, removing any of the phonemes would make the phonology seem
> unbalanced. This is an interesting result since there shouldn't be any
> attested language with this few phonemes. I've seen one reconstructed
> language (the proto language of the Lakes Plain languages of West Papua)
> that has as few consonant phonemes and looks much less likely. It's
> reconstructed consonant inventory is /p t k b d/ with [w j] being
> allophones of /i u/. If that has been possible, I don't see any reason why
> my system wouldn't be.
>
> So, do you have any thoughts on the plausibility of such minimal systems?
> I'd also like to know if anyone has done any similar experiments than this.
>
Messages in this topic (4)
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4d. Re: A conlang with a minimal sound system
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:42 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:13:22 +0000, David McCann <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:02:47 +0200
>Jyri Lehtinen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I've recently found again my old hobby of conlanging and just joined
>> this list. Regaining this hobby means means going through a pile of
>> old ideas and trying to build something concrete out of them.
>
>Welcome to the list!
>
>> The quickest project to get into an interesting stage has been
>> creating the phonology for a language that was originally only meant
>> to be merely a phonetic test and a naming language. The idea was to
>> create a language with as minimal phonology as possible while still
>> remaining plausible and within the borders of naturalism. The system
>> that I've now settled into is /t k ? s n/ for consonants and /a o i/
>> for vowels with high or low surface tones on each single vowel.
>
>> So, do you have any thoughts on the plausibility of such minimal
>> systems? I'd also like to know if anyone has done any similar
>> experiments than this.
The system looks fine to me. I'm sure I've seen another Pirahã-inspired
language or two in my time, but they're not coming to mind right now. There
was a "9 phoneme challenge" on I think the ZBB, though it made a few waves
here, some time back, but I'm sadly not managing to find any documentation of
it now.
>Firstly, /a o i/ would be better as /a u i/. Vowels tend to spread out
>to get the maximum contrast. When Old French lost /u/, it shifted [o] to
>replace it.
Eh, they tend to, but not with such reliability that it's unbelievable if they
haven't. I think Jyri's fine.
Yanesha' and Tehuelche, for instance, has vowel inventory /e a o/. Pirahã
itself has exactly this /i a o/, and a lack of /u/ with /o/ being the closest
thing to it seems pretty common in North America: Algonquian shows this, for
instance. Then there are things like Saanich with /i e @ A/ and /u/ restricted
to loans, or Wichita with /i e a/, and surface [o] but in nèarly all cases
words with [o] have acceptable variants with VwV.
>The smallest set of phonemes I've got listed is 11, for Pirahã.
>Languages tend to have much the same level of redundancy: 8 phonemes
>for 9 features (which is what your language is using) is not
>unreasonable according to my figures.
Well, there're different feature systems for different purposes, too. If you
were setting up a _phonemically_ rather than a phonetically oriented feature
system for an 8-phoneme language, it'd be silly to introduce any more than 7
features, one to distinguish each pair.
Though, if one of the features you counted is tone, your feature count might be
less silly after this fashion, but stating only "8 phonemes" and not the number
of supersegmentals is a bit underhanded!
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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5a. THEORY: VC consonant contrasts (was: Lost of final-syllable rhotic.)
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:38 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:05:49 -0500, Alex Fink wrote:
>On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:43:08 -0200, Njenfalgar wrote:
>
>>I think there is a universal tendency to drop word-final and syllable-final
>>stuff. :-)
>
>On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:52:57 +0000, David McCann wrote:
>
>>Obviously there's a general tendency to simplify syllables to CV, which
>>different languages resist to different degrees.
>
>There's certainly a pretty strong tendency to these things. But,
>crosslinguistically, I'd want to ascribe the bulk of it to ultimate
>effects of perceptual factors. Stops before vowels, e.g., have a
>brilliantly salient and distinctive release burst that's easy to latch
>onto in a speech stream, something which stops after vowels have no
>analogue of. So it's only natural for a language's speakers to
>generalise this and pay more attention to CV transitions in general
>than VC ones, and as a consequence of this comparative neglect,
>consonants which only have a VC transition -- like final ones -- would
>be subject to more erosion, since it's easier to miss the cues for
>what they are.
>
>One reason I think this is an argument of Blevins, regarding the
>Australian sprachbund, whose languages are barse ackward
>phonologically in a lot of ways: for instance, *initial* consonant
>weakening and loss is extremely common; languages like Arrernte have
>been reasonably analysed as having basic syllable structure VC. But
>there are other features of the area which suggest that VC transitions
>are more important than CV. For instance, retroflexion and laminality
>contrasts on consonants (and graveness???), which Australia has in
>spades, are among the few consonantal contrasts which have more
>distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following. And
>Australia has lots of non-assimilated nasal plus stop clusters, which
>again aren't so awkward if you're reading the place of the nasal off
>its effects on the previous V. It's reasonable to think that the VC
>syllable stuff might also be an effect.
That's a most interesting thought. For instance, most German varieties
have a tendency to loose the contrast between homorganic consonants in
medial or VC position (minimal pairs like _Egge--Ecke_ or
_Leiter--leider_ are very rare and tend to be neutralized), while they
are more clearly distinguished in initial or CV position. The opposite
happens in some varieties like Swiss German, which have a tendency to
loose the contrast between homorganic consonants in initial or CV
position, while the contrast is very markedly retained in medial or VC
position (in minimal pairs such as _Schade--Schatte_ or _Hase--hasse_).
Your account (of Blevin's argument -- that would be Juliette Blevins, I
assume?) provides a nice interpretation of this difference: The
aspiration contrast (possibly with some concomitant voicedness
contrast) has more distinctive effects on the following vowel.
Therefore, varieties that have an aspiration contrast (like many German
varieties) have a tendency to retain initial or CV contrasts while
loosing medial or VC contrasts. Varieties with the opposite tendency,
e.g. Swiss German varieties, might have a contrast that has more
distinctive effects on the preceding vowel. The contrast of homorganic
consonants in Swiss German is not based on aspiration or voice, but on
quantity. So I wonder whether consonant quantity is indeed a contrast
that has more distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following,
just like the Australian retroflexion and laminality contrasts that you
have mentioned. Would you know anything about that?
Finnish seems to be (according to Wikipedia etc.) another language
where the contrast of homorganic consonants is not based on aspiration
or voice, but on quantity. And similar to Swiss German, the contrast
does not occur in initial position, but only in medial position. This
would again be explained by the hypothesis that consonant quantity has
more distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (2)
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5b. Re: THEORY: VC consonant contrasts (was: Lost of final-syllable rhot
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:06 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:37:58 -0400, J. 'Mach' Wust
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:05:49 -0500, Alex Fink wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:43:08 -0200, Njenfalgar wrote:
>>
>>>I think there is a universal tendency to drop word-final and syllable-final
>>>stuff. :-)
>>
>>On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:52:57 +0000, David McCann wrote:
>>
>>>Obviously there's a general tendency to simplify syllables to CV, which
>>>different languages resist to different degrees.
>>
>>There's certainly a pretty strong tendency to these things. But,
>>crosslinguistically, I'd want to ascribe the bulk of it to ultimate
>>effects of perceptual factors. Stops before vowels, e.g., have a
>>brilliantly salient and distinctive release burst that's easy to latch
>>onto in a speech stream, something which stops after vowels have no
>>analogue of. So it's only natural for a language's speakers to
>>generalise this and pay more attention to CV transitions in general
>>than VC ones, and as a consequence of this comparative neglect,
>>consonants which only have a VC transition -- like final ones -- would
>>be subject to more erosion, since it's easier to miss the cues for
>>what they are.
>>
>>One reason I think this is an argument of Blevins, regarding the
>>Australian sprachbund, whose languages are barse ackward
>>phonologically in a lot of ways: for instance, *initial* consonant
>>weakening and loss is extremely common; languages like Arrernte have
>>been reasonably analysed as having basic syllable structure VC. But
>>there are other features of the area which suggest that VC transitions
>>are more important than CV. For instance, retroflexion and laminality
>>contrasts on consonants (and graveness???), which Australia has in
>>spades, are among the few consonantal contrasts which have more
>>distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following. And
>>Australia has lots of non-assimilated nasal plus stop clusters, which
>>again aren't so awkward if you're reading the place of the nasal off
>>its effects on the previous V. It's reasonable to think that the VC
>>syllable stuff might also be an effect.
>
>That's a most interesting thought. For instance, most German varieties
>have a tendency to loose the contrast between homorganic consonants in
>medial or VC position (minimal pairs like _Egge--Ecke_ or
>_Leiter--leider_ are very rare and tend to be neutralized), while they
>are more clearly distinguished in initial or CV position. The opposite
>happens in some varieties like Swiss German, which have a tendency to
>loose the contrast between homorganic consonants in initial or CV
>position, while the contrast is very markedly retained in medial or VC
>position (in minimal pairs such as _Schade--Schatte_ or _Hase--hasse_).
>
>Your account (of Blevin's argument -- that would be Juliette Blevins, I
>assume?)
Juliette Blevins, yes. I read this in her _Evolutionary phonology_.
>provides a nice interpretation of this difference: The
>aspiration contrast (possibly with some concomitant voicedness
>contrast) has more distinctive effects on the following vowel.
>Therefore, varieties that have an aspiration contrast (like many German
>varieties) have a tendency to retain initial or CV contrasts while
>loosing medial or VC contrasts. Varieties with the opposite tendency,
>e.g. Swiss German varieties, might have a contrast that has more
>distinctive effects on the preceding vowel. The contrast of homorganic
>consonants in Swiss German is not based on aspiration or voice, but on
>quantity. So I wonder whether consonant quantity is indeed a contrast
>that has more distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following,
>just like the Australian retroflexion and laminality contrasts that you
>have mentioned. Would you know anything about that?
I don't know anything about it for sure, but I do like the sound of it. It
does seem plausible that consonant quantity would have more distinctive effects
on a preceding vowel than a following: not colouring effects, though, but
quantitative effects, just like elsewhere in Germanic we see the developments
VC: > V_XC, VC_X > V:C. (The mechanism for this would be something like
equalisation of the length of the stressed syllable, with long C being
ambisyllabic and sticking into that syllable while short C don't.)
>Finnish seems to be (according to Wikipedia etc.) another language
>where the contrast of homorganic consonants is not based on aspiration
>or voice, but on quantity. And similar to Swiss German, the contrast
>does not occur in initial position, but only in medial position. This
>would again be explained by the hypothesis that consonant quantity has
>more distinctive effects on a previous vowel than a following.
It could. But I betcha the explanation here (& perhaps in part above) is
simpler: it's, as far as I know, inaudible when I start a word-initial stop;
it's only audible when I release it. You probably won't find many word-final
stop quantity contrasts either, in languages where word-final stops are
unreleased, 'cause that's similarly inaudible.
Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Phonology Typology
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:25 am ((PDT))
Hello list, I found this guide on conlanging. I'm working through the
report, and have started reading some linguistics works. I'm finding the
sociolinguistics info to be interesting, and have some linguistic
anthropology books to work on that section.
I'm currently going through the language Universals and Typology chapter in
Language, its Structure And Use, since it's the only text I have that has,
with that info, and I need it for one of the sections in the guide, I'm
working through. The guide's author, Sheri Beth, has promised to look my
final write-up when it's complete. A .pdf excerpt I found and one of my text
state that P T and K are the three stops in the enventory. Yardish has no K.
Also, in creating a conlang, am I allowed to break a language universal by
creating my language with voiced stops, but no voiceless stops, or creating
a language with neither voiced or voiceless stops?
Also, I'll be going through A Course In Phonetics to for the phonetics
transcription. I'll still use Language it Structure and Use for creating the
lexicon, therefore, I won't use the entire textbook, though I do recommend
it. I think if I had to read these books in Braille, I'd lose interest.
While doing the phonetic transcription, I want to do audio pronunciation, as
others have done on this list.
The guide I'm using can be found at
www. <http://www.fridaynightlinguistics.org/languagecreation>
fridaynightlinguistics.org/languagecreation
I'll zip the files and send it your way when it's complete. If I can figure
it out, I'll dropbox it to you, if not, I'll use another method like Mail
big file.
Lol, I remember a time when I swore up and down, linguistics was too
technical. I guess it wasn't time for me to study it..
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Phonology Typology
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:21 pm ((PDT))
On 14 March 2013 15:24, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> A .pdf excerpt I found and one of my text
> state that P T and K are the three stops in the enventory. Yardish has no K.
> Also, in creating a conlang, am I allowed to break a language universal by
> creating my language with voiced stops, but no voiceless stops, or creating
> a language with neither voiced or voiceless stops?
That depends on your goals. As usual, the generic answer is "of
course, you can do whatever you want in a language you make up". And
as I understand it, Yardish wasn't supposed to be spoken by normal
Earth humans anyway, so our universal tendencies in phonetics may not
apply, and could be reasonably ignored.
If you were to run with that, though, and then show someone else and
ask them for on opinion or advice, it's highly probable that they'll
point out that it's very strange to not have a 'k' at all. At that
point, you can either explain "oh yes, that was on purpose", or you
can decide that maybe you wanted it to be more naturalistic after all.
Even at that point, though, you can just look at the example of
Hawai'ian, which has both K and T sounds in it, but does not
distinguish them as separate phonemes, and explain away your Yardish
consonant inventory by just saying "sure, Yardish people sometimes
pronounce K, but they just always write T."
Also, keep in mind that *most* claimed universals are not anything
like natural laws- they're just summaries of things that seem to be
true given all of the languages we already know about. It is entirely
possible that someone will go out and find a new,
previously-undiscovered real life natural human language in a jungle
tribe somewhere that breaks a whole slew of previously-accepted
universals.
-l.
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
6c. Re: Phonology Typology
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:27 pm ((PDT))
Great! I thought that, but thought I should ask.
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Logan Kearsley
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Phonology Typology
On 14 March 2013 15:24, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> A .pdf excerpt I found and one of my text
> state that P T and K are the three stops in the enventory. Yardish has no K.
> Also, in creating a conlang, am I allowed to break a language universal by
> creating my language with voiced stops, but no voiceless stops, or creating
> a language with neither voiced or voiceless stops?
That depends on your goals. As usual, the generic answer is "of
course, you can do whatever you want in a language you make up". And
as I understand it, Yardish wasn't supposed to be spoken by normal
Earth humans anyway, so our universal tendencies in phonetics may not
apply, and could be reasonably ignored.
If you were to run with that, though, and then show someone else and
ask them for on opinion or advice, it's highly probable that they'll
point out that it's very strange to not have a 'k' at all. At that
point, you can either explain "oh yes, that was on purpose", or you
can decide that maybe you wanted it to be more naturalistic after all.
Even at that point, though, you can just look at the example of
Hawai'ian, which has both K and T sounds in it, but does not
distinguish them as separate phonemes, and explain away your Yardish
consonant inventory by just saying "sure, Yardish people sometimes
pronounce K, but they just always write T."
Also, keep in mind that *most* claimed universals are not anything
like natural laws- they're just summaries of things that seem to be
true given all of the languages we already know about. It is entirely
possible that someone will go out and find a new,
previously-undiscovered real life natural human language in a jungle
tribe somewhere that breaks a whole slew of previously-accepted
universals.
-l.
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. Methods or software for creating grammars and dictionaries
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:10 pm ((PDT))
Hi all
I am newish to conlanging and so far my attempts are all recorded in
either (very) unorganised paper form or on Microsoft Excel which isn't
the best way to store a lexicon. Most of the grammars of the languages
exist mostly in my head.
I was wondering what people's methods were for documenting their
conlangs; what specific programs or software do you find very useful?
How do you structure dictionary entries or grammar points? Is there a
link to a resource that could help in this aspect?
For people with conscripts, how do you store those on the computer? I
have a fair computer and internet literacy.
Many thanks
James
Messages in this topic (1)
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