Re: New language under development

Hello!

On 5/27/05, Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> wrote:
>
> On 5/27/05, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote:
> > Pacific-Northwestern (is that a word?)
>
> Yeah, that's a word.
Oh, good. :-)

[about whether or not to have /?/ in my new conlang]

> I almost never put ? into a language, but I always keep it around in older
> versions of the language in order to disappear and lead to interesting
> sounds and alternations.  Hmm, for some examples around your current area of
> obsession, take a look at Upper Nexaca Totonac.  The disappearance of the ?
> in certain (all, maybe?) contexts has led to the emergence of ejective
> *fricatives* -- including the extremely rare ejective lateral fricative --
> in a language that doesn't otherwise have any ejectives at all.
>
> On the topic of phonemic length, the disappearance of ? intervocalically is
> what led to long vowels in, for example, Oxchuc Tzeltal, iirc.  It's the
> only source of long @ in Itzaj.  It's a way to get a bunch of new dipthongs,
> too.  You can keep a simple vocalic inventory in the ancestor language but
> still get lots of dipthongs to work with.
Sounds fascinating. I know of some other languages where a disappeared
/?/ had, er, interesting effects (ask me about the Finnish "invisible
consonant" sometime)... so I'll be sure to keep this in mind. If not
for this language, then for some other project in the future.

And thanks for the reminder about long vowels... I just noticed that I
have made up rules about all possible vowel combinations *except*
/a/+/a/, /E/+/E/ and so on.

> > I'm sure, though, that I won't have phonemic tone. Or ablaut or vowel
> > harmony, for that matter.
>
> Aww, that's no fun.  Just last night I was reading up on  *counter-harmonic*
> suffixes in Itzaj, which is not a phenomenon I've otherwise encountered.
> Dissimilation, sure, but I'd never before come across regular vowel
> disharmony in suffixes.
So, if the harmony was based on frontness/backness, a stem containing
front vowels ("bibibe") would take affixes with back vowels
("bibibebong") and vice versa ("bobbu" -> "bobbubing")? Fascinating. I
guess there's no feature we can come up with that's too crazy for
*all* natlangs...

What about consonant harmony, by the way? I'm not talking about the
normal, "simple", assimilation/dissimilation phenomena here either
(i.e. the familiar voicing, devoicing, deaspiration etc.), but about
something along the lines of "affix XYZ contains voiced plosive
archiphoneme, which is realized at the place of articulation of the
last consonant in the stem". With some invented stems and affixes,
this would look something like:

affix 1 -aNa (where N = nasal archiphoneme)
affix 2 -FiB (where F = unvoiced fricative archiphoneme,
                    B = voiced plosive archiphoneme)

stem 1 balas -> balasana, balassid
stem 2 fetep -> fetepama, fetepfib
stem 3 simuk -> simukaNa, simukxig

Does this kind of thing occur in some natlang? Or has anyone done it
in a conlang? I know some North American languages have things like
sibilant harmony (so that a stem containing /s/ or /z/ will take
affixes with alveolar fricatives, and a stem containing /S/ or /Z/
will take affixes with postalveolar fricatives); but are there any
languages where this kind of harmony phenomenon affects consonants at
all points of articulation, and also other consonants besides
fricatives? Anyway, I kind of like it. :-)

> > I also added the concept of noun classes (I'm thinking of something
> > Bantu-ish -- or rather, something along the lines of animate-male,
> > animate-female, plus a number of nonanimate classes like those found
> > in Bantu languages). This means that, like in Bantu languages, some of
> > the things we achieve in "standard average European" languages with
> > derivational morphemes will happen by inflecting a noun stem with
> > affixes from a noun class that's not its "own, natural" one. (Of
> > course, in a language that does this extensively, most nouns probably
> > wouldn't have their "own, natural" class. But you get the idea.) And I
> > hope I'll end up with a system that allows the forming of (at least
> > some) deverbal nouns by simply adding an appropriate noun class's
> > inflectional affixes to a verb stem. ("Writer" would be the verb stem
> > "write" with affixes from one of the animate classes; "book", "pen",
> > "literature" etc. would be the same stem with various appropriate
> > nonanimate class affixes.)
>
> A quick look at Jakaltek might be interesting; it's the only Mesoamerican
> language I can think of with a healthy inventory of noun classes.  There are
> about 24 of them.  They're used like classifiers, definite articles, and
> pronouns.  Take "naj", which is for non-kin males.  "naj Pel" = Peter, "naj
> winaj" = the man, "naj" = he.  There are different classifiers for kin (like
> one for siblings) and for respected community members.  There's even one for
> corn and corn products -- "ixim ixim" = the corn.
Now of course I had to go and dig out my copy of Mithun's "Languages
of Native North America" (my main source for all sorts of strange and
interesting linguistic phenomena -- apparently for almost any possible
feature and twist, there is at least one NA language that actually
uses it!)... The book doesn't have much material on Mesoamerican
languages, of course, but apparently there's a language called Yuchi,
still spoken by a few elders in Oklahoma, that has a class inventory
similar to the one you described in your other mail:

> aj = male, generic non-kin (aj-tsyak "Diego")
> ajho' = male kin (ajho'-mam "Father")
> ajtat = respected male (ajtat-mam "male elder")
> ajtxe = male child (ajtxe-tsyak "Diego Jr.")
> ajik = groups of males (ajik-tij "war party")
>
> ix = female, generic non-kin (ix-kal "Katherine")
> ixho' = female kin (ixho'-mam "Mother")
> ixtat = respected female (ixtat-mam "female elder")
> ixtxe = female child (ixtxe-kal "Little Kate")
> ixik = groups of females (ixik-patx "knitting circle")
>
> lo' = food (lo'lo' "banana")
> lo'tat = sacred food (lo'-ixim "corn")
> lo'txe = small food (lo'txe-mij "millet")
> lo'bol = round food like fruit (lo'bol-mel "mango")
> lo'ik = groups of food (lo'ik-lo' "bunch of bananas")
>
> ta' = thing (ta'-lo' "boomerang")
> ta'txe = small things (ta'txe-mij "gravel")
> ta'bol = round & large things (ta'bol-xim "moon")
> ta'ik = groups of things (ta'ik-tsil "bundle of arrows")
>
> And so on.  Maybe even extend the derivations to personal pronouns ("ma"
> you, "ma'tat" you (respectful)).  Or working its way into the possessive
> system, "ma'ajtatmam" your father.
In Yuchi, there are the following classes (with article form):

nO~      Yuchi, except certain female relatives (used by male speaker)
sEnO~    female Yuchi relative, same or descending generation (used by
         male speaker); female Yuchi, same or descending generation
         (used by female speaker)
s?EnO~   male Yuchi relative, same or descending generation (used by
         female speaker)
EnO~     female Yuchi relative, ascending generation (used by both
         male and female speakers)
onO~     male unrelated Yuchi, same or descending generation (used by
         female speaker)
inO~     male Yuchi of ascending generation (used by female speaker)
w@nO~    any non-Yuchi; animals (!) (used by both male and female
         speakers) [or let's just call that one "+animate, -Yuchi"
         lest any non-Yuchi on the list be offended ;-) ]
fa       vertical inanimate objects (used by both male and female
         speakers)
?E       horizontal inanimate objects (used by both male and female
         speakers)
dZi      round inanimate objects (used by both male and female
         speakers)

Mithun mentions that the three last articles match positional verbs
(_fa_ "stand", _?e_ "lie", _dZi_ "sit"). It also looks to me like all
the animate articles share an element /nO~/. (There are also different
pronouns, as well as pronominal prefixes for verbs, for each class,
that I didn't cite. I just hope I've interpreted the somewhat unusual
phonetic symbols in her list correctly when I translated it to ASCII
IPA.)

Hmm... maybe I'll go for a large number of animate classes, instead of
two, and a smaller number of inanimate classes than I'd originally
planned. But then again, maybe not. Decisions, decisions... ;-)

[snip]

> Good luck!
Thank you!

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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