(Note: Hey, it turns out you can use markdown to format posts on Dreamwidth by simply making the very first line "!markdown". Now we'll find out how that shows up when crossposting...)

Languary 2016

Languary Day One

What's Languary?

Here's the post that started it all, Languary create the core of a conlang in January
And the Languary Guidelines

For day one I took the time to really consider what I wanted to do for Languary. I could do something completely new. I could look at doing a triconsonental root language. I could revisit the Gray Lizardman Language I started working on a few years ago. Looking at the last I decided I wasn't really in the mood to revisit GLL, but... But what about that poor kid Osita who was having to learn GLL? What was his language like? Well, we know his name was Osita and... (that o.O; those two posts are in desperate need of revising? Wait, that's not what the question was)

Well, that's not much. On the other hand that means things are rather wide open. GLL is an agglutinating language so I'll avoid that for Osita's. How about a language that's more on the isolating/analytical end of things (low morpheme count per word & little to no inflection of words)? Hmm, sounds like how you usually hear Chinese described so I'll probably want to look through some Chinese grammars and grammars for other analytic languages. Definitely other languages, I don't want to simply make a relexification of Standard Chinese. Osita's name has only V and CV syllables, which is two of the three syllable types allowed in my brief notes for GLL, so let's allow OL (Osita's Language, so I don't have to type all that every time) to have more complex syllables, his name is one word so no reason to make it the end all and be all of what's allowed. Plus I'm not sure I want to deal with tones so allowing more complex syllables is a way to allow a greater number of distinctive syllables with whatever vowels and consonents are selected. GLL has no labial, labial-dental, or dental consonents (really past me?), in fact it's pretty limited so let's give OL more consonents. GLL has four vowels while the name Osita suggests OL has at least three... Stick to just those or give OL more vowels as well?

Okay, summing up:

OL, the yet to be properly names Osita's Language
grammar should tend towards isolating/analytic
Let's have more allowed syllables than just V, CV
More consonents than the two in Osita's name or the eight currently known to be in GLL
Vowels... so far we have /o/, /i/, /ʌ/ (o like go, i like me, ʌ like plus) let's have one or two more
- o /o/ close-mid back rounded vowel
- i /i/ close front unrounded vowel
- a /ʌ/ open-mid back unrounded vowel

Extra geekiness note: I'm preparing my Languary documentation in Markdown and storing the files using Git. One nice thing about Markdown? In your tumblr settings you can say you want to be able to enter posts in markdown and poof you can use markdown to format your posts. For non-markdown formatting aware places it's straightforward to get an html version (making it easy to write html being the very reason markdown was created). As for Git? I can easily work from multiple computers, have access to prior revisions, and see how things changed over time.

Languary Day Two

Let's start with the vowels as we have slightly more of those (three) than consonents (two). So far an a chart would look like:

Vowel Chart

            Front           Central         Back
High        i

Close-Mid                                      o

Open-Mid                                    ʌ

Open

Huh, that seems rather unbalanced. Let's add some new vowels...

Vowel Chart

            Front           Central         Back
High        i                                  u

Close-Mid   e                                  o

Open-Mid                                    ʌ

Open        a

Now we've got three front, three back and four unrounded to two rounded with both rounded vowels in the upper back of the chart.

Now let's look at the consonents. So far we have:

Consonent Chart

                bilabial    labiodental    dental    alveolar    alv-pal    velar    glottal
stops                                                t
fricatives                                           s
affricates
approximants
nasals

Two consonents is not nearly enough. GLL doesn't have anything on the left side so let's fill that in some over their for OL...

Consonent Chart

                bilabial    labiodental    dental    alveolar    alv-pal    velar    glottal
stops           p                                    t
fricatives                  f                        s
affricates
approximants    w
nasals

Those are all unvoiced consonents (the vocal cords aren't vibrating). We could pair up each with it's voiced counterpart but let's first add some voiced consonents that aren't the compliments of these...

Consonent Chart

                bilabial    labiodental    dental    alveolar    alv-pal    velar    glottal
stops           p                                    t
fricatives                  f                        s               zh
affricates
approximants    w                                        l           y
nasals                                                                          ñ

(the letters/symbols inside the slashes are the IPA symbols for the sounds) zh /ʒ/ the s in middle of vision ñ /ŋ/ the ng in sing (ñ or n with a tilda, if it's good enough for writing Spanish it's good enough for OL, and it's easy to type) y /j/ the y in you (IPA uses a symbol that's basically the letter j (think of the name Jung), I'll just stick with y)

Hmm, nothing in the affricative row. The English affricatives ch in leach and j in jump would show up in the alveolar-palatal column, but for OL let's just drop that row. With a few more phonemes...

Consonent Chart

                bilabial    labiodental    dental    alveolar    alv-pal    velar    glottal
stops           p                                    t
fricatives                  f                        s               zh     x
approximants    w                                        l           y
nasals          m                                                               ñ

x /x/ like the ch in the German Buch or the ch in the Yiddish chutzpah (not the /ks/ of box) For an example of what this sounds like have a YouTube recording of Buch

That gives us 11 consonents so far, plus six vowels. Which gives 72 possible V and CV syllables... Tomorrow let's take a closer look at syllables.

Languary Day Three

Syllables!

As mentioned on the previous two days we have two known syllable types so far: just a vowel, or consonant vowel. Having only a single name existing to this point for OL is both limiting and freeing. There's nothing to contradict whatever I set down (so long as it allows Osita's name) but nothing to guide.

But first, adding in a few new consonants: The velar stop /k/, and the glottal fricative /h/. This brings us up to 13 consonants

Initial Proposed Syllable Pattern

(C1)(C2)V(C3)

C1: The full set of OL consonants C2: Stops and only stops (p, t, k) may be joined by a subset of fricatives and approximants may be followed by: s, w, l, y C3: l, m, ñ, w, y V: Any of the six vowels short or long (long being length not a sound change)

That allows 1872 possible syllables if my math is right. I am pondering the addition of some dipthongs which would bump that up a bit more.

Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds

Looking back at Day two and the consonant chart, there are no consonants that are distinguished by voicing, which I'm thinking of making use of. I'm considering some sort of sound change rule by which all or some of the consonants may undergo voicing or de-voicing.

Languary Day Four

Let's Look at Grammar!

Today was a busy day, but I'm still able to get some ponderings in. Let's make some decisions about OL:

As previously decided OL will be towards the isolating end of things
The word order is VSO (Verb, Subject, Object)
Head-first phrases (phrases go: head, then modifiers)
There are some markings on nouns:
- The "O" at the beginning of Osita's name? On names it marks a person as being essentially an apprentice adult male. Not yet considered an adult but no longer a child.
- Will have to explore other diminuatives/augmentatives/honorifics
Nouns are not inflected for case or plurality
Questions & Negation: Haven't decided yet
Subclauses: Also on the to be decided list

And that's it for day four as I really ought to be sleeping soon.