The Conlang Coven

For my own conlang, I came up with a set of rules so that original /s/ only remains unaltered next to voiceless consonants.

• First, it becomes voiced [z] before voiced consonants. (This is part of a larger rule that makes all obstruent clusters have the voicing of their second element. /s/ is affected before resonants, unlike stops.)
• It later also becomes [z] between vowels.
• When [z] occurs between a vowel and a consonant, it disappears. If the vowel is short, it becomes long.
• Remaining [z] merges with /r/.
• When /s/ occurs after a resonant, it disappears, and the resonant becomes voiceless and geminated. If it occurs before a resonant (which at this point only happens word-initially), it disappears and causes devoicing but not gemination.
• /s/ becomes /h/ next to a vowel and not a consonant.

Edited by TotallyNotAnAlien on Nov 30th 2020 at 5:28:52 AM

So essentially, whatever grapheme your culture would use for this language would have a single letter representing four different phonemes.

Heck, if you introduced palazalization, it could even get six of them!

Haven't decided if all of these happen before or after the development of writing, but potentially yes.

As for palatalization, that's how /s/ gets reintroduced. /tj, tʰj/ become /s/ (/ss/ between vowel) and /dj, dʰj/ become /z/ (/zd, zdʰ/ between vowels).

Edited by TotallyNotAnAlien on Nov 30th 2020 at 5:33:12 AM

An example:

• kas > kah
• kas-os > karoh
• kas-du > kādu
• kas-ke > kaske

Pretty interesting.

I do find it interesting at times that I always seem to like /sk/ clusters getting simplified into sh-sounds, but maybe that's just because of my exposure to Romance and Germanic languages.

Hm... I could use that. It would make it feel a little less specifically Greek.

But it would also get rid of the /sk/ cluster, which wouldn't be resolved by the palatalization rule...

I also plan on having ablaut inspired by Proto-Indo-European, which could have interesting effects when /s/ occurs in a syllable that then loses its vowel...

How would one go about mutating /p/ into /f/ and /b/, respectively? Perhaps it could be a side effect of gemination, wherein double p's lenified into f's and single p's lenified into b's. While p's may exist at the end of a word due to consonantal devoicing, it may very well also lenify into an /f/.

I've basically revamped my verbal tense system, so that should be fun.

There are now two moods; indicative and subjunctive, that are conjugated as they should be. There are five different tenses as well: present, habitual, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. The remote past is always indicative, never subjunctive, as it has no effect on the present day.

One thing I wonder what I should do is whether to make a separate simple past tense for storytelling or something along those lines or have it having been folded into the perfect or pluperfect.

I feel inspired again after falling out of conlang for a few weeks.

What sparked it is the Japanese pitch accent, and I wanted something somewhat similar in a conlang, and I also looked into Ancient Greek for inspiration.

Happy Holidays! What are some holiday words you have in your langs?

I've been thinking about how case and numeral systems erode over time, and I was wondering how that could apply to my high registers of Alfeme vs. lower registers.

For example, I was thinking that in its current state, the genitive and instrumental are currently going through a merger. The dative has already merged with an old locative and allative form, so this may very well work.

Also, I added a paucal number that is only really used when discussing time or people, and is often used for specificity; however, the dual number often takes up that function in casual speech as well, if it's not eroded entirely.

Currently Alfeme is also a Fluid-S lang, being active/stative (nominative/absolutive), but I wonder if some people would default to using one variation or the other. Perhaps it could instead become split-ergative, wherein past tenses are ergative and non-past are accusative. In some dialects, they may have already gone one way or the other.

And perhaps in the language's future, there may also be a merger of the absolutive/accusative into the dative (at least in the accusative dialects).

I like linguistic evolution for sure, but I also like noun cases. So I don't know what I want to do just yet...

I've made plenty of multi-duty cases that help get around the whole ordeal of usage of adpositions. I think perhaps one of my most important ways of measuring is how I do comparatives and superlatives.

If you wanted to say "Hotter than the sun," one would say "Letos Letvafal"—"Hot to the sun." (hot Sun-DAT). To say "Hot as the sun," say "Letos Letvafen"—"Hot at the sun." (hot Sun-LOC) For "Less hot than the sun," "Letos Letvafig"—"Hot from the sun." (hot Sun-GEN).

Seriously wondering if I should just get rid of some of these cases I've made. I want it to be somewhat inflectional, but also simple. I've already made an ablative case, but I also wonder if I should maybe fold the locative into the dative (in the plural and dual they are often syncretic).

Heck, I'm starting to wonder if I even need a dual for every single noun!

Finally started hacking together a proper conlang while I barely know any of the words for the IPA sounds or what easily half of the IPA characters are, and an understanding of linguistics limited to how languages as a whole are related to one another and what parts most easily drift over time combined with how word roots work. (That is, very little knowledge about how to construct a language as a whole, just a lot of knowledge about how it would likely change and develop regional accents and how to make individual words rather than ways those words can act upon one another.)

The most interesting thing that I think I've got in it so far is that "from" is purely a suffix appended to a location or a concept, which means that it only takes one word to ask the question "where are you from", literally translated as "wherefrom(?)"

No idea what real-world language it'll sound like when it's some degree of speakable.

Awesome, Florien! Glad you got to start out! If you need advice, I can be there for you. I'm more into the present state of a conlang as opposed to its evolution, since that is somewhat hard for me to think about in a long way.

Ah! There's an opportunity for some teaching. It looks like you've made yourself an ablative case: that is, the form a noun takes when something is moving away from something. Ablative, in this sense, coming from "auferro, ablatus," meaning "to carry away."

Understandable. I had an idea that I wanted Alfeme to sound... well, flowy when I started, but I think I drifted far off from those goals.

Slight update, in my attempts to speak short sentences in it, I've noticed that the verbal pause (like "uhh" in american english, "err" in british english, "ohh" in I think either japanese or finnish, etc.) quite naturally seems to work out to be "ahh." Not sure if this will continue as the vocabulary expands or how it will change when I attempt to introduce different accents, but it seems likely it'll endure in some form.

Has anyone else noticed if the verbal pause in their conlang works out as something different than expected?

Sina sona ala sona e toki pona?

I've been meaning to learn.

Fun fact: I am actually friends with the creator of Toki Pona on Discord! I can prove it if you want.

Ni pona, jan sina li pali e ni nasin seme?

So, I have one main project that I have been working on. It's a personal Conlang, meant to be my ideal language.

One thing I am unsure about is prosody. Currently, my conlang has weight sensitive stress, but I also really like register tone and pitch accent.

Before I make the mistake of assuming and making something for it, I must ask, does cryptography and secret codes fall under the category of conlangs or are they their own thing?

Like, suppose you have a code you made where each combination of two colors equals a letter. So red-red = A, red-orange = B, and so on. The kind of thing a character in prison might use to communicate with other prisoners. Would that be considered a conlang?

I usually make conlangs with sound rules almost perfect. An only sound for each letter, including vowels, and usually I put only 5 vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ (and also the semi-vowels /j/ and /w/), the vowels in the Spanish that I speak (because I have difficulties with English vowels. Spanish has only 5 vowels, unlike the more than 15 in English).

Has anyone here tried their hand at a fusional language? I like those the best, but most of my conlangs are agglutinative just because I find them easier to make.

I also don't know too many examples of fusional languages outside of Indo-European and Semitic languages.

One of my first conlangs was technically fusional because I based the grammar and morphology on Spanish (as that was the only foreign language I knew a single thing about at the time), but haven't really messed around with them since.

Edited by Count_Spatula on Aug 22nd 2023 at 2:37:51 PM