Re: How to minimize "words" (was "Re: isolating conlangs")

Hi Eric

On 25/02/07, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> wrote:
>
> On Feb 22, 2007, at 11:05 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to get rid of pronouns; does anyone know of a language
> > which uses
> > no pronouns (not even nouns instead of pronouns, like Japanese) at
> > all?
>
> Pirahã seems to have recently borrowed all of its pronouns from
> Nheengatu. I haven't seen anything yet hypothesizing whether they had
> their own pronouns before that, or how they otherwise referred to
> people and things. One idea worth considering, I think, is using
> locatives like "here:there:over there"... but if you use those, they
> will become de facto pronouns, which kind of defeats the point of not
> using pronouns in the first place.

Well, as I replied in a previous email (to someone else, I think), Japanese
usually gets by without pronouns at all - sentences like:

"_anata wa_ amerikajin desu"/"_I [TOP]_ America-person am (be)"

are "gaijin-isms" for:

 "amerikajin desu" "I am American", lit "there is an America-person".

Spanish also does not use subject pronouns, although unlike Japanese it:

(a) does use object pronouns/clitics; and

(b) does have verbal agreement with the subject (and, depending on the
analysis, sometimes with the DO and IO too):

"A Juan _le_ |dio| un regalo"/"|I gave| [_him_] Juan a present";

"Ya _me lo_ |dijiste|!"/"|You| already |told| _me that_!"

("le, me, lo" are written as separate words but are analysed by some as
clitics, and the first example demonstrates clitic-doubling.)

[...]
> > Gender/noun-class: I'm trying to move beyond the traditional
> > masculine/feminine(/neuter) gender distinction into a Bantu-inspired
> > noun-class system for things like professionals, one for languages,
> > and one
> > for inhabitants ( e.g. as if one said "the wise-r bak-er", "the
> > passionate-an Itali-an", "broken-ish Engl-ish". Has anyone designed a
> > language like this? What do you do about the alternation between
> > roots/suffixes ending/beginning in a consonant or a vowel?
>
> What about the alternation? As I read it, your language doesn't have
> a restriction against medial CC; does it have one against VV?
> Otherwise, I don't see this as a problem (although it might make for
> some interesting sandhi).

Well Vallian (like Finnish) doesn't have a restriction on -CC- but, like F,
stems ending in a consonant have alternate forms before suffixes beginning
in consonants. (Sometimes in F these are easy, like "-l -> -le-", sometimes
hard, like "-s -> -kse-", and sometimes just plain weird, like "-nen ->
-se-".) Also, there IS a restriction on VV in unstressed syllables (often
the last), particularly against open diphthongs. I'm thinking of "relaxing"
these, particularly with like consonants (e.g. -l + -le -> -lle NOT -lele),
but I'm a BIG fan of "-nen -> -se"

But anyway, I'm considering elision of final vowels before NCM's beginning
with vowels, (i.e. vanka + o -> vanko). Or maybe metathesis (vanka + o ->
vankoa?). That would probably render the system rather opaque, but perhaps
no more than vanka -> vanko or English "The dog  runs" vs. "The dogs run."

At the moment I'm also seriously considering pairing down the consonant
system, keeping maybe the Finnish system minus b, d, f, g, x, z and adding c
(t_s), č (t_S), š (S), ž (Z), ñ (N), ŋ (J), final m, and ľ (L) (F has /J/
and /m/, but the former only as a result of leniting "nk", and the latter is
never final.) Tones will probably stay if I can find a satisfactory solution
for three tones over umlauted letters.

[...]
> > 5. Palatalised consonants, even in the face of words like "atja" /
> > atja/
> > (bird) are easy, since the Roman alphabet has both j and y, which
> > can be
> > used for either palatalisation or a [j] phoneme, and "j" is not
> > used for
> > anything else (such as Z, the "s" in "pleasure"). However,
> > combinations such
> > as "nyk" and even "nyj" are ugly and are apt to be pronounced by
> > English
> > speakers as "nick" and "nidge" anyway - any thoughts? (Perhaps
> > palatalised
> > consonants in clusters (and at the end of words) should be denoted
> > by -j-
> > instead of -y-?)
>
> You could use an apostrophe, if you're not opposed to punctuation.

Yeah, I was thinking that myself but as I said earlier, I might drop Pn.

> 6. Labialised and aspirated consonants also present a problem,
> > since the
> > language can have both aspirated "t" and "t" followed by "h" (and
> > other
> > combinations), and the Roman alphabet has no variations on h or w
> > analogous
> > to the j/y split. Any suggestions? (Maybe I could make a rule that,
> > say,
> > "lh" represents aspirated /lh/ and that an /l/ followed by a
> > ("full") /h/ =>
> > "lk"?)
>
> <lk> for /lh/ seems a little strange, IMO. Does the sequence /lk/ not
> occur?

Sorry. What I meant was that /lh/ could change automatically to /lk/
phonetically, not orthographically.

On Feb 22, 2007, at 11:05 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote:
> > PS As an aside: I've talked about palatalised, prenasalised,
> > labialised, and
> > aspirated consonants; Wikipedia reports that there are also
> > languages which
> > have post-nasalised (bn) and pre- and post-stopped nasals (pn, mp).
> > I'm not
> > aware of any language that uses pre-palatalised or pre-labialised
> > consonants. Anyone?
>
> Palatalization and labialization, as I understand it, are usually to
> be understood as occurring *simultaneous* to whatever other gestures
> a consonant involves; however, I believe I have heard of
> prepalatalization vs. postpalatalization (but I don't have any
> sources to cite). In any case, I use prepalatalization in a conlang,
> although in later forms of that language it shifts to regular
> palatalization.
>
> I believe there are probably phonetic reasons nasalization differs
> from e.g. labialization and palatalization, in that in occurs before
> or after consonants, but not necessarily simultaneously with them;
> someone who has actually studied phonetics should correct me, but I
> think that if you pronounce e.g. a [b]-like phone with simultaneous
> nasalization, the result is [m], not a prenasalized [b] (which I am
> unsure how to show in XSAMPA).

Wikipedia has a few pages which claim this or that language has
prenasalation - it even claims that some Australian languages have both
pre-nasalization and post-stopping (e.g. ~d, n_d)

Anyway, I believe that prenasalization (whether considered coarticulation or
prearticulation) is considered to occur whether the language allows a
sequence like "mb" in a place where normally, no consonant clusters are
allowed. (Otherwise, if the language allows -rp-, say, it might also allow
-rmb-.)


> Also, are there any languages that use pre-fricativized
> > consonants?
> >
> > I.e., given a language in which "pam" could be a word, but not "pram"
> > (because of a restriction on consonant clusters in initial
> > position) are
> > languages any words in which "spam" could be a word, despite the
> > aforementioned restriction, due to pre-fricativized consonants?
>
> As I understand it, Gaelic has sequences of fricative+stop which (I
> think) can be considered as single units, at least orthographically;
> I am not sure about whether they are so phonologically or
> phonetically. They are homorganic, though, so [st] could occur, but
> not [sp].

Ah, yes, think I read about that once.

You might also want to consider preaspiration, especially since you
> like Finnish anyway.
>
Indeed. At least on Sami dialect has this; I don't remember reading anything
to that effect but maybe the dialects of Finnish spoken in Sami areas have
them too.)

Jeff

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