Re: Delurking...

Thanks for the warm welcome, all who've replied so far! :)


--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, # 1 wrote:
>I also used to give more than one symbol to the letters that appear more
>often like "e, a, i ,o u, t, s" and I was giving independant symbols for
>some words such as articles, pronouns, prepositions...
I have considerer the former, but not the latter... though I could imagine
that independant symbols for the commonmost words could well arise by their
letter symbols merging and simplifying.
...which in turn reminds me: modern Latin typography already has the at-sign
and the et-sign (ampersand); should there be perhaps be symbols for "it",
"ot" and "ut" too? At least the first two would seem useful. :D


--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>Still there was some interest some time ago in constructed
>names of chemical elements and composites. :-)  My first conlang
>had some strange words for elements for some now unknown reason. :-)
I actually started my vocabulary by translating the scientific names of the
elements, to see how would they conform to my phonology. Given that
scientific names allow pronounciation of proper names according to the
original language, some of them have become quite mangled (eg 97: b'rk'li
/b=.r`=k.'lI/, 106 sieboaRgi /siI.'boOR\.G\I/).
Of course, I'll have to think up some native names too, at least for the
more important metals & carbon.


>Though many people here are linguists, many others are not. :-)  Any
>many don't have concultures (e.g., me). :-)
Well, I guess so... but from what I've read so far, it seemed to me that it
was unusual to be both. OK, maybe I've stared too much at the few "finished"
ones, then.


> > I've got a few artlang ideas in the queue - one is an entirely
>non-pulmonic language,
> > the other an entirely unvoiced one...
>
>Haha! :-)
>
>A lang where you can breathe through the nose while speaking would be
>fun, too. ;-)
>
>**Henrik
The first one IS such! :b The phonemic inventory consists of five clicks
(blb, dnt, alv, rfx, pal), a labiodental ejective fricative /f`/, and a
weird rhotic sound which I cannot quite classify ("interdental unvoiced
ejective asymmetric lateral fricative trill" could be a guess). More variety
is added by a 3-way labialization distinction.
...And that's all I have yet. Sometimes I've pondered if it could be edited
into an IAL for the mute.


--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Michael Potter wrote:
>(I lurked for 3 months before my 1st post)
I've been lurking for, hmm, at least 9. However, that might be because of
the Finnish (compulsory) military service - I'ven't had too much free time
since January. My next weekend off will be two weeks from now...


>Once you have something to show, be sure to post it to the list!
Okay then... here's what I have for uwjge, in a nutshell:

Vowels:
aeiou = /aEIOu\/. Long variants exist, too. These are not plain long vowels
- I currently analyze them as diphthongs: /aV eE iI oO u\U/, but it might be
something like a falling tone, too. My own alphabet has a /:/ equivalent,
but I haven't settled on a suitable romanization yet. For ASCII purposes, I
use aa ea ie oa uw, but this looks less than optimal. I've also considered
circumflex and acute accent marks. Other suggestions are welcome.
-Also, two "true" diphthongs, wi wa = /MI MV/, which have their own symbols.

Stops: /p t d k q G\/
q tends to come out somewhat aspirated. /G\/ has an allophone /g/.
I'm hesitant about adding b. I guess I should have a better reason for its
absense than just "I don't wanna", though - especially given that it
*should* be the more common one out of the bilabial stops. And the language
is starting to develop an internal chronology anyway.

Nasals: m n N
I originally had /N\/ too, but that has shrunk to the status of an allophone
(appearing only before other uvulars.)

Fricatives: f s c x cs
c USED to mark /S/, then /s\/, and I think it's become /s`/ now. x can range
anywhere between [C] and [X] (nominally still /x/.)
cs is a fricative diphthong. I see no reason why diphthongs should be
limited to vowels, there's continuum elsewhere, too. :) It has an
interesting flap-like effect midway through...

Others: l r R h
/l r` R\/. I like to romanize the r's as r breve and r circumflex, but this
is - alas - not supported by Unicode. Also, I think this section could use
some renewal (looks a little too "generic" to me.) I've consider getting rid
of /r`/, and maybe adding another lateral....
h appears only between vowels, signifying a syllabe break.

Other phonology:
Nine syllabe-initial clusters are allowed: pl, tl, dl, tr, dr, gR, qR, cs.
They have their own letters in my alphabet. The only allowed syllabe-final
cluster is cs.
I mentioned wanting rid of r... however, I certainly want to keep dr and tr.
Maybe I should only delete lone r... or make these retroflex stops... eh,
we'll see.
Syllabic consonants are commonplace, and marked with the same "break" symbol
elsewhere romanized as h. There're even syllabic stops, which have emerged
from long consonants (which I deemed too similar to my L1.)
Stress generally goes on the 2nd vowel syllabe.

Grammatically, I'm going for a fairly noun-based system; there will only be
a couple of auxiliary verbs, and all verbal constructs will need a further
noun to describe the action itself (so each "verb" would seem like an
idiom). Simple relations, like identity or existence, will be expressable
without verbs at all; most likely with conjunctions.
This means that all verbal constructions will be at least transitive (and I
wouldn't be surprized by eg. tetratransitives!)

Also:
*a Bantu-style gender system (currently with four classes, roughly "people",
"other living beings", "inanimate objects", "abstract things")
*a 2-level noun case system - I'll have a few generic main cases, which may
be further marked for further disctinctions. One idea was to merge
locative/separative/lative with intransitive/ergative/accusative for 3 core
cases, but after the recent postings here on ditransitive vs. monotransitive
case markings, I think I should think this part over again...
*basic aspect differentiation between singular / beginning / ending
(originally also merged with the trio above)


> > I *do* have a load of questions, too, but I'm not going to pour them on
>you
> > right now...
> >
>
>Ask away! There's a daily message limit, though.
How does that work anyway? Does it give you an error message after a certain
limit, or just queue leftover messages for the next day?
And while I'm at it, why isn't posting via yahoogroups allowed??

...I've made a list with the topics I want to ask about; it seems that
there's loads of phonetics on the list, so I've considered starting a, I
dunno, maybe biweekly series with them (like I've mentioned above, I won't
be able to follow the list continuously, so receiving replies in small
dosages only would be better for me).

John Vertical

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