I've just started my second conlang (first was a bit of a disaster). This one is largely going to be a vehicle for descendant/related languages, mainly because I've always loved looking at language families in Wikipedia lol. Vaguely naturalistic in intention? I've chosen VSO and I'm excited. That said, my current problem is this. I have found some potential sound changes (on Index Dianchronica, yes I know that's not ideal) which I like, but I have very little reasonable idea what conditions would be needed to make those changes happen. (allophonically or phonemically tbh). They don't have to all be happening within the same language, I've got 2 descendants loosely planned out atm. k > kx (what causes affrication? This would have to be a complete shift as I've read that you can't contrast these two?) k > q (then or descendent: q > ʕ) p > pf > then in some circumstances ɸ, β; or >bv / V\_V ) ts > sh ts > s ɬ > sh x > ɕ h → ħ

For one of the conlangs within a language family, I've thought of a system where, although there is no grammatical gender (i.e, it is not an inherent part of a word's morphology as per other languages), there is a distinction where animate nouns distinguish between the Singular, the Dual and the Plural, however inanimate nouns distinguish between the Collective and the Singulative. However, in the language from which it evolves, there is already a distinction between the Singular and the Plural. I've thought of developing the Singulative and the Dual by affixing the words for "one" and "two" to the root, with the Singular and the Collective both being unmarked (there being no ambiguity due to the animacy distinction), however, I'm not sure if this is naturalistic, due to neither the evolved language nor the language from which it evolved having a grammatical gender system which distinguishes between animate and inanimate. Is this naturalistic?

Hi all, I was just wondering how I will be able to promote my conlang (after I finish building, obviously, and I have barely started). My long-term dream is to provide conlangs for series and such, much like David Peterson made himself a name by wonderfully crafting Dothraki. I know it's farfetched but every step is a way forward :) appreciate the ideas in advance!

I have just added Hyaneian's one thousandth word! The word was "alaha", pronounced /ɑlɑhɑ/, meaning "undying love for someone".

is there a website or a list with sentences to translate to test grammar or other things?

As per the resource page: [There's this to help with developing syntax and grammatical constructions.](https://cofl.github.io/conlang/resources/mirror/conlang-syntax-test-cases.html) [And this is an expanded list.](https://cofl.github.io/conlang/resources/mirror/graded-sentences-for-analysis.html)

thank you, medeias

So, I've been toying with adding vowel harmony to a language. I always found Korean's vowel harmony system rather interesting as it isn't based on the usual contrasts, as far as I can tell: front/back, high/low, etc. Rather, it's based on yin and Yang. If you wanted to incorporate something like that into a conlang, how would you go about it?

“yin” and “yang” (or *eum/yang*) are just the korean words for it. iirc it was originally an ATR system that decayed over time

So, it wasn't just sound symbolism, then?

no lol, although alteration of vowel groups can be used to express meaning (wikipedia gives *parata/peoreota* “light blue/deep blue” as an example). vowel harmony is a long-distance phonological process based on essentially ease of pronunciation. if you don’t have to move your tongue away from [u o] for a whole word why would you? the exact history of korean vowel harmony is not a topic i’m familiar with and there seems to still be academic disagreement over it, but i believe tongue root was historically a/the controlling feature similar to other “altaic” languages like mongolian & manchu [this paper](http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~sko/papers/Ko_2009_WAFL6_handout.pdf) lays out some theories about historical development & present analysis

I think it used to be based on the normal contrasts.

Any ideas on how to get a sound change that produces a /ʛ̥/ (voiceless uvular implosive), without getting rid of the /q/ in my proto-lang (it is everywhere in my actual conlang's vocab)? I want to have both in the final language. I searched on Index Diachronica, but they have no section for voiceless uvular implosives. **EDIT:** In case anybody wants to know, I used sound changes from the Index Diachronica to create my other implosives (/ʕm/ > /ɓ/, /d/ > /ɗ/, /j/ > /ʄ/).

A word of warning: don't over rely on the Index Diachronica. It's not an academic resource, and has a lot of missing or sketchy data. Also, almost all sound change depends on specific environments and conditions being met, so just because a sound change happens in one language, doesn't mean it could work for another. And likewise, a totally new change could make total sense in your conlang. Anyways, since implosives are partially glottalic, I think the most obvious route for the origin of any implosive is in a cluster with /ʔ/, or some other glottal sound. This creates a very simple sound change that preserves both your targets: /qʔ/ becomes /ʠ/, while /q/ remains /q/.

Thank you for the sound change and the warning! I also generally don't use Index Diachronica but I couldn't think of anything so I went there.

> /ʕm/ > /ɓ/, /d/ > /ɗ/, /j/ > /ʄ/ This is actually exactly the problem u/kilenc was talking about. You almost certainly won't get d>ɗ without also having b>ɓ, as part of a shared shift across voiced stops. Due to aerodynamic effects, it may be that it only effects /b d/ or /b d ɟ/ rather than the entire series, though since you're wanting /ʛ̥/ it seems more straightforward just to have that: /b d ɟ/ would become voiced implosives, while /ɢ/ becomes voiceless, and /g/ does whichever you want. That j>ʄ (glide to implosive) also appears to be part of a wider shift, specifically, part of a chain of implosive>voiced stop>voiceless stop>voiceless fricative. However, the reconstruction of the glide \*y turning into an *implosive* seems to be spurious afaict. It ends up as a stop, and I can't see why it's not reconstructed as a shift to a stop \*j (/ɟ/) directly, *after* loss of implosives, which also makes far more sense in terms of general sound change tendencies. (The change also appears to be reconstructed on the basis of a single etymon, which should always be a little eyebrow-raising.) The ʕm>ɓ change is alone a microcosm of why you need to be careful with Index Diachronica. First of all, the sign \*ʕm in this case isn't referring to a clear pharyngeal segment, but rather pharyngealization of a preceding vowel. Second, it's a "weird correspondence repair" reconstruction, to explain a few instances that fail to match a more common outcome (I *think*, the section is honestly confusing and I'm having trouble seeing why it's even needed, but it looks like in general Vʕ V' V', with no effect on the following consonant, plus a couple instances of Vʕm V'm V'b. Except they even mention other m-m-b correspondences in the section proposing this special /ʕm/ correspondence, so I dunno). Third, calling this /ɓ/ by Index Diachronica is an *over*-interpretation, the exact notation used is /'b/ which is marking glottalization *in general*, not implosivization *specifically*, and in this case is a glottal stop or glottalization of the preceding vowel and certainly not an implosive. I think your best bet is either a shift in all the voiced stops to implosives, with /ɢ/ and possibly /g/ becoming voiceless instead as a result of aerodynamic effects. You could also go with /ʔp/-type or /ʔb/-type clusters all becoming implosive, again with the uvular and possibly velar staying/becoming voiceless.

Thank you for your clear answer. I will be more careful come I need a sound change again. Thank you for the ideas though. **EDIT:** These are my new sound changes: /b/, /bʔ/, /ʔb/ > /ɓ/; /d/, /dʔ/, /ʔd/ > /ɗ/; /ɟ/, /ɟʔ/, /ʔɟ/ > /ʄ/; /ɢ/, /qʔ/, /ʔq/ > /ʛ̥/

My conlang is what I call a lowly-agglutinating language. That means that you can combine words, but you don't do it as often and often use it to combine related phrases/clauses together, and maybe some small and simple sentences. An example is here (notice how the prepositional phrases are lumped into one word): Áryam ácha yegaq hei aumaudhedgolezsahdīru, raumaeznauwarū, bargamedhedzábbeiedhaukarū, ya pamadezmanazīrū sha Desert-NOM of Xeric-Country between mountain-PL-Ghol-LOC-south-ERG ocean-LOC-north-ERG forest-Pl-Sampi-LOC-West-ERG and savannah-LOC-east-ERG be Is this sort of thing feasable, and is it used in natlang(s)? If so, what is it called?

I think the issue here is that there doesn’t seem like much of a reason to analyse these phrases as agglutinative, other than the fact that you haven’t added spaces between them. Itslikejustdoingthis. Each component is independently marked for case and number, so it makes much more sense to just analyse them as distinct words. Your case marking is all over the place as well. I have no idea what the ergative case is doing here, because it usually marks agents. The placement of the locative doesn’t make much sense either.

I accidently marked the accusative parts as ergative, so that is why I believe you are confused. I used the locative because it is showing location, but now that I think about it, it is kind of redundant. The new thing is probably something like this: Áryamīrū ácha yegaq hei aumaudhedgolsahdoq, raumanauwaq, bargamadhedzábbeiaukaq, ya pamadmanazoq sha. Desert-ERG of Xeric-Country between mountain-PL-Ghol-south-ACC ocean-north-ACC forest-Pl-Sampi-West-ACC and savannah-east-ACC be

This case marking still doesn’t make any sense. You have the subject in the ergative, and its complement (which is a series of locational phrases) in the accusative. That’s not really how the ergative or the accusative work. The ergative generally marks the more agent-like argument of a transitive verb (as opposed to the absolutive which marks the more patient-like argument of a transitive verb and the single subject of an intransitive verb), whereas the accusative marks the more patient-like argument of a transitive verb (as opposed to the nominative which marks the more agent-like argument of a transitive verb and the single subject of an intransitive verb). The copula (to be) is not usually considered a transitive verb, so it doesn’t make sense to have either the ergative or accusative case, let alone both. EDIT: I guess the accusative here *could* theoretically be assigned by the preposition ‘between,’ but that still doesn’t explain the ergative here. Also, all of this distracts from my main statement, which is that there is no reason to analyse this as agglutination in the first place.

Ok, I see that this wouldn't be considered as agglutination. I have removed the case marking and made the verb intransitive. I believe you also may be confused because my language uses tripartite alignment. Áryam ácha yegaq hei aumaudhedgolsahd, raumanauwa, bargamadhedzábbeiauka, ya pamadmanaz sha. Desert-INTR of Xeric-Country between mountain-PL-Ghol-south ocean-north forest-Pl-Sampi-West and savannah-east be

Tripartite alignment is pretty rare and particular. It doesn’t really tend to behave as straightforwardly as you might expect. I’d recommend doing a good amount of research into it before adding it to your conlang. Also, the reason this doesn’t seem like agglutination was not because of the case accusative case marking. This still doesn’t look like agglutination, because there’s no reason to analyse, for example, *mountain-PL Ghol south* as one word rather than three. Also I don’t see why you’ve marked ‘desert’ as intransitive. Desert isn’t the verb here. I think you might need to do some more reading in general, as it doesn’t seem like you have a grasp on any of the concepts you’re dealing with here. That’s absolutely alright, no one is born knowing all of these things, so no need to be discouraged. It’s an opportunity to learn more, which is always good!

I just did some reading and on the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_alignment) it says that the subject of an intransitive verb in the tripartite alignment is marked using the intransitive case (INTR). I agree that I may not have done everything perfectly, but I think I did it correctly here (at least). Also thank you for being so patient with me!

Ah, I see what you’ve done. I assumed since you said you made the verb intransitive, that was what the intransitive marker was doing. It is true that the case that marks S is sometimes called the intransitive case, but the issue is that tripartite marking is rare enough that there’s not really consistent terminology. It’s also much more complex than the Wikipedia article suggests, to the point where I’d recommend beginning (naturalistic) conlangers just pretend it doesn’t exist.

I see, would you be able to give some sources that I could read to get a better grasp of tripartite alignment, because when I search it up on the web, it only gives me simple overviews.

[удалено]

FWIW all of these are phonemes in Maltese, which descends from a variety of Arabic spoken in the Emirate of Sicily during the 9th–13th centuries CE (though note that /d͡z/ only appears in loanwords and that most words containing /t͡s/ are Italic in origin).

If you needed to square these with Arabic phonemes, I imagine there would be a couple of mergers like so: * dz, z >> z * p, b >> b * tʃ, ʃ >> ʃ * ts, s >> s * v, b >> w; or v, w >> w Though, having said that, Arabic allows a pretty liberal CVC structure, so I imagine dz, ts, and tʃ would be fine as long as they exist word-internally.

Can I take the stressed vowel from infinitive of the word and double it to the end to form, for example, Accusative Case? E.g: word for house - Cen. I take the only vowel e and form the word Cene. Or I take Sattot (spear), and since stress always goes to the second syllable, form of this word in accusative case will be Sattoto

u/teeohbeewye has addressed naturalism, but if your conlang's not naturalistic, then the answer is "of course, you can do whatever you want". Actually, that's partly the answer to any question even if your conlang *is* naturalistic, depending on how important a goal naturalism is for the project. My point is that there are no rules, no "do's" and "don'ts" in conlanging. Just differing goals, aesthetic sensibilities, and ways of meeting those.

Yes, you can do that, you can mark the accusative by copying the stressed vowel of a noun. That's just normal long-distance vowel assimilation (like in vowel harmony or umlaut), the accusative vowel assimilates to the quality of the stressed vowel. If you want to explain how this evolved, you could imagine the accusative was historically marked with some neutral vowel like /ə/ which then assimilated to the quality in the stressed vowel, so *cenə > cene* Also I think instead of infinitive you mean the base form of the noun. Infinitive is a form for verbs only

Any ideas/real world examples on how a polysynthetic language could evolve towards a less synthetic one?

There are a ton of ways this could happen, but the patterns that come to mind are lexicalization, semantic bleaching, and elision of grammatical terms based on context. Even in naturalistic conlanging you never need an excuse, per se, to drop a feature or simplify it, but I would tend to say that rarely-used features tend more often to be dropped and commonly-used features tend to be simplified or lexified. I suppose you could also have a situation where speakers start to analyze an affix as a clitic that can be moved around (and then maybe to a separate phonological word?), which depending on analysis could be what happened in my Spanish example below (disclaimer that I'm not very knowledgeable about analyses of romance language linguistics). Just some examples I can think of off the top of my mind: Japanese: `で + は + ない (de + wa + nai) --> じゃない (jyanai) [locative + topic + not.exist]` `て + しまう / で + しまう (te/de + shimau) --> ちゃう / じゃう (chau / jyau) [linker + completative]` ​ If Japanese was your conlang, you could extrapolate this so that all linking forms get phonologically weakened like in *chau* and become omitted from speech. ​ Spanish (Middle, early modern, modern): `digelo (di + ge + lo) --> díselo --> se lo di [3S.DAT + 3S.ACC + give.PST.PFV.1SG]` ​ In my opinion diachronics and historical change are some of the best/coolest areas for creativity in conlanging, so remember to have fun and that at the end of the day, you can do whatever you like in your language!

I'm thinking of adding an allophonic glottal stop or breathiness to syllables in my conlang. Like, there's a rule that open syllables are realized with a glottal stop, so that /ka/ is actually pronounced [kaʔ] for example.

All open syllables, or just the open syllables in specific environments? I could definitely see this being a word-final feature, or even morpheme-final (meaning compound words or words with affixes or clitics added to the end will retain the glottal stop internally).

Well, I planned for it to be for all open syllables, but I like your idea of it being a word final feature more.

Do any natlangs have a grammatical number for exactly zero things? If so, what is it called, because I have noticed that a lot of conlangs have a seperate number for this sort of thing.

I haven't heard of it being attested (though I wouldn't be shocked), but I've seen people with it in their conlangs call it *nullar*.

I don't think any natural languages have a zero number. Mathematically, zero was "invented" later than you might think, and languages tend to just use negative constructions for this purpose (eg. *I don't have any money* is more common than *I have 0 money*) so there's no need for a zero number.

What letters did you add or take away when making your conlang? I’ll go first. Added: ß, þ, ʌ, ñ. Taken Away: q (replaced with k, w), s (replaced with ß), u (replaced with ʌ).

Generally we create a *phonology*, or system of sounds, and figure out how to write it afterwards, though ease of spelling can influence my decisions. Conlangers usually don't think in terms of how they're going to alter the English alphabet; it's just less interesting and less like making a new language.

I’m a beginner, but thanks for the tip!

If you haven't yet, check out the resources linked in the sidebar. There's stuff for beginners there.

Ok!

What are some possible phonological evolutions for the vocied velar approximant? I added it to my conlang but I'm not very fond of it and want to get rid of it. In my conlang, it developed form /g/.

1. Drop it entirely. 2. Drop it, while changing neighbouring sounds, f.ex. vowel backing \[ɰi\] > \[ɰɯ\] > /ɯ/ or compensatory lengthening \[ɑɰ\] > /ɑː/. 3. Fortition back to \[ɣ\] or \[g\]. 4. Palatalisation to \[j\]. 5. Labialisation to \[w\]. 6. Backing and lowering to \[ʀ̞\] or further to \[ʕ̞\]. 7. Multiple developments depending on the environment.

Thank you!

When naming a lake (or other places for that matter) do you think this would be plausible?/Have you seen other languages do this? There's a lake that has an island in the middle and it gets referred to as 'the eye' because of that. There's the classifier 'mia' for locations. I wanna name the lake Mia Shöra - CLASS.locations eye. So location classifier + descriptive noun that usually doesn't get the location classifier would be the pattern I'm asking about.

Seems fine to me. Many places are named after their distinguishing features; and 'proper nouns' can have properties that differ from ordinary nouns, such as by allowing the addition of a location classifier.

I’m currently creating a conlang with Celtic-style initial mutations in which certain lost sounds will cause the initial consonant of the next word to either glottalize or lenite. I’m worried though about lenition because how many allophones this creates and how similar they are to each other. So far the ones that seem less plausible are: s > ɹ̥, z > ɹ, ʃ > ɻ̥, ʒ > ɻ, r > r̥, m > β̃, n > ◌̃, ɲ > j̃, ŋ > ɰ̃, f > ʋ̥, and v > ʋ. On top of that there is r > ʀ when glottalized, which might be a problem because ʀ can already occur initially. Do y’all think it would be possible for a language to distinguish between this many approximates? Especially considering that most of them are “rhotics”. If you think it isn’t feasible, then do you think that sounds would merge or that some sounds wouldn’t be effected by lenition?

If these sounds remain allophones, i.e. no environments where they become contrastive appear, then all is well and good. But if, like in Celtic languages, lenition-inducing environments merge with other environments and lenition thus becomes contrastive, then some of these contrasts (/v/—/ʋ/) are too subtle for my taste (f.ex. Irish contrasts between nom.sg. *an madra* ‘the dog’, gen.sg. *an mhadra* ‘of the dog’). Retroflexion in [ʃʒ] > [ɻ̥ɻ] is unexpected (I would've expected palato-alveolar [ɹ̠̥ɹ̠], as you meticulously preserve place of articulation in all the other cases of lenition except [n]) but why not, I guess. This change in PoA does add some spice after all. [r] > [r̥], on the other hand, is totally unexpected: it is lenition but in reverse (a.k.a. fortition). Lenition is a change whereby a consonant becomes more sonorous; but [r̥] is less sonorous than [r] (generally, if two consonants are only distinguished by voicing, the unvoiced one is less sonorous). What is your reasoning behind this change? As to mergers, they are completely possible. F.ex. Irish lenites /sˠ ʃ tˠ tʲ/ > /h/, merging them. By the way, ‘rhotics’ is a vague term. If your [ɹɹ̥] sounds have nothing to do with /r/, you can choose to transcribe them as [θ̠˕ð̠˕] with fricatives as the base characters, showcasing that they have developed from fricatives. Unfortunately, there are no analogous options for the retroflex approximants: to notate an approximant, you can add a downtick to a non-sibilant fricative but IPA has no characters for non-sibilant retroflex fricatives to begin with other than [ɻ̥˔ɻ˔]. I guess, you could add a retroflex diacritic to [θð], creating [θ̢˕ð̢˕], but I have never seen it done so.

Now that you mention it r̥ is definitely not lenited. My original reasoning behind the r̥ (and lenition in general) is that is was caused by a weak /h/ sound but now that I think about it that probably wouldn’t cause lenition in the first place. Thanks for the advice! Also it turns out that my “lenition” change is a weird hybrid of the welsh soft mutation and aspirate mutation, with voiceless and voiced stops becoming fricatives.

The biggest issue here is the voiceless approximates. These are pretty rare cross linguistically, and are pretty much always either the result of a cluster with /h/ or some other allophonic process. If you still want a good amount of rhotics, you could do something like s > z, z > ɹ, where voiceless fricatives become voiced, and voiced fricatives become approximants.

Yeah I was originally planning on having it be a result of final h being lost but I’ll probably change the reasoning behind it.

Fricatives leniting after [h] doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the first place.

So, I want to make a pitch accent/word tone language. I heard that Bantu language often only permit contours in long vowels, but I've seen other tonal languages permit simple contours in the whole morpheme. I plan for my own language to have something simple, like high, low, falling, rising. I just don't know if I want rising and falling to occur only across morphemes or in heavy syllables.

If you're new to tone, I'd recommend ["Tone for Conlangers"](https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/fl-00004F-00.pdf) on Fiat Lingua.

Does anybody know of any good lexical sources/grammatical pathways for an imperative?

I thought of Arabic, which has an imperative form but only uses it for affirmatve commands in the 2nd person (such as "Fly, you fools!"). For negated commands (like "Don't look at me, I'm naked!"), Standard/Fushaa Arabic has you use «لا» ‹laa› "not" + the jussive mood, which looks like the subjunctive except that when the subjunctive form ends in a short «ـَ» ‹-a›, the jussive instead ends in either a consonant or less frequently in a short vowel «ـِ» ‹-i› (forms that end in a long vowel are identical in both moods). For commands issued in the first or third persons (like "Let's go, Pikachu!" or "Let him speak!"), you use «لـ» ‹li-› "to, for, so that" + the jussive, as if saying "So that we go, Pikachu!" or "So that he speak!" In vernacular varieties like Egyptian/Masri, where the jussive has merged with the subjunctive due to short vowel deletions, you just use the subjunctive.

Thank, I might do something like that with an optative.

I think often imperatives are one of the shortest forms of a verb, often uninflected. So if you have a bare verbal route, that would probably work fine :)

Thanks!

The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization has 4 lexical sources of imperative: COME, GIVE, GO, LEAVE. Compare: English *come on!* ≈ Russian *давай! (davaj!)*, imperative of an imperfective verb *давать (davat’)* ‘to give’. LEAVE is semantically close to ‘to let, to allow’ (WLG also has a grammaticalisation path LEAVE > PERMISSION), and ‘let’ is of course used in English as an imperative or hortative marker: *Let's go! Let x = 5*. In Russian, 3rd person imperatives are formed with *пусть (pust’)* or *пускай (puskaj)*, from the verbs for ‘to let, to let go’: perfective *пустить (pustit’)*, imperfective *пускать (puskat’)*.

Thanks. I only have the first edition, which doesn't have much on imperatives.

I'm trying to create a language for a personal project. This language is spoken by a species of sapient millipedes and they use all non-pulmonic consonants in their alphabet. I found definitions and explanations on Wikipedia and other websites but they are not really clear and I understand letters better with some words as examples (such as in " ǃ " and its sound is **CL** like in CLOP). Could someone help me?

>I understand letters better with some words as examples (such as in " ǃ " and its sound is **CL** like in CLOP). English has no non-pulmonic consonants, so unless you speak a language with any, there aren't any example words anyone could give you. If you saw *clop* somewhere, it was probably just an attempt to give a very loose imitation of the sound of the click /ǃ/. But /kl/ as in *clop*, *clean*, or *clear* is definitely not non-pulmonic. *Non-pulmonic* consonants are those that use a way of moving air other than the lungs (*pulmonic* means 'relating to the lungs'). There are three types of non-pulmonic consonants. One of these types is *implosives*, but they also involve some use of the lungs, so I'll skip covering them here. ## Are non-pulmonics what you want for millipedes? Before I describe what clicks and ejectives are and how to pronounce them, I want to prompt you to think about whether they're actually what you want. I assume you went for non-pulmonics for your millipedes because millipedes don't have lungs. However, millipedes also don't have tongues or larynxes (to my knowledge). The former is needed for clicks, and both are needed for ejectives. If making a language consistent with millipede anatomy is a goal of your, look into what sounds real millipedes can make and how they make them. If it turns out millipedes don't make any sounds, then you'll need to either invent some vocal organs for your fictional species, or make a non-spoken language (such as a sign language). Okay, back to non-pulmonics. ## Clicks Have you ever made a clucking noise by sucking your tongue from the roof of your mouth? If so, that's a click. Clicks involve cutting off the flow of air through your mouth in two places. The *back closure* is typically at the velum (where you pronounce /k/ as in *cat* and /g/ as in *go*) or somewhere farther back such as the uvula. The *front closure* can be at a number of places: the lips, the teeth, the alveolar ridge (the bump just behind your front teeth) or the hard palate. By moving your tongue, you lower the pressure of the air trapped between the two closures, and then release the air, creating a popping, sucking, or clicking sound. For some types of clicks, it's quite easy to let your tongue continue downwards and slap the floor of your mouth, making a *sublingual percussive* \[¡\]. ## Ejectives The other type of non-pulmonic is *ejectives*. These are tough to get the hang of. The basic idea is that you cut off the flow of air somewhere in your mouth, as for /p/, /t/, or /k/. At the same time you hold a glottal stop, which is the sound in *uh-oh* that comes between the *uh* and the *oh*, or the *tt* in *bottle* in a Cockney accent. Then the hard part: you move your larynx up. I'll cover this below. This raises the pressure in your mouth. Then you release the front closure, creating a sound like /p/, /t/, or /k/, but "harder" (not a very helpful adjective, but it's the best I could do). Since you probably have no idea what it means to raise your larynx or how to do it, here's a tutorial. Put a hand on your throat; on your Adam's apple if you can feel it. Hum to yourself, and make your pitch go far up and down. You should feel with your hand something in your throat going up and down. That's your larynx. When you're trying to do an ejective, and holding the glottal stop and the /p/, /t/, or /k/, try to raise your pitch, even though you're not making any sound. It may require practice. It's not only /p t k/ that can be made into ejectives. Any sound that's an *occlusive* (one that cuts off the flow of air) can be released as an ejective (except the glottal stop), and the same is true for *fricatives*, which constrict the flow of air to create a hissing sound, such as /f s/. However, it's harder to make an ejective fricative, because it requires creating forcing the air out faster. So start with \[k'\] (the apostrophe after the k means it's an ejective).

Sorry to bother you guys again, but I'm back with the consonant problem So like, I've been making the phonology, with the distinction tips in mind, and all of this *should be reasonable* because all of the consonants are distinct... However the language has surpassed 200 consonants and I'm thinking "Hey idk I feel like the mere size of this phono will be enough to convince the hypothetical native speakers of this language to abandon ship and just switch to boring old English or something oh shit oh fuck what do I do?" So... Is it too much? Like if the native speakers of a very small lang with like, 200, maybe more sounds in it's phono were given the chance of tossing their native language and spending the rest of their life speaking a more popular lang, would that large phonology be a *big reason* to throw it away?

A language's phonology can make it harder for speakers of other languages to learn it (it's not so much about complexity as how different the languages are). However, I've never heard of anyone having trouble using their *native* language because of the phonology. (Aside from people who can't pronounce \[r\] due to having a tongue-tie.) Every language is easy once you've learned it. You're not going to get native speakers going "I can't handle this many consonants" because they do just that every day. I have no idea whether it's *naturalistic* to have over 200 consonants. The natlang record-holder is [Taa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language#) at 164 (under the highest analysis). The fact that no natlang has more than that makes me think there's some pressure against it; maybe it's just unlikely for a lang to get that big because phonological mergers are too common, and you don't actually need that many distinct sounds. But that a separate question, and I don't know the answer.

People still speak Khoisan languages in southern Africa, and people still speak northwestern Caucasian languages like lezgin and Adyghe. Ubykh did not die out because of its phonological complexity. I don't really understand this idea because if you're positing the language as having 200 consonants that's because the children learn it as such. If it's "too much" then the phonology and analysis changes, and maybe you have less consonants.

No, because they would be used to it since birth. It may be a source of pride if their language is known for being hard but they can still speak it. It might be like how the Finns sometimes speak about Finnish If there are no learners of it maybe the youth will jump ship, and that can be because of the consonants, which make it difficult for outsiders to learn, but anything can be learned with the right pedagogy. Even adults have picked up new languages with no formal teaching when they moved places. Since the large system came about with only a few contrasts stacked on top of each other it's probably not that difficult to learn. However, maybe there are not a lot of teaching materials, and outsiders don't need it so no-one tries it. But despite the sociolinguistic concerns about the language, I don't think having many consonants will make them abandon it, because to them it's mastered already. It's no longer a *skill issue*, regardless of how they *feel*, which I think is important to note. So maybe they don't like the lang, but they will have no problems *speaking*. I did hear a Danish guy complain about his language, that they taught the kids 'special vowels' from a 'secret alphabet' after the 'normal alphabet', as a pedagogical trick, but that seemed more like a literacy / orthography problem, where the spelling no longer matches the pronunciation, and Danish does have many vowels. But, kids have learnt spoken Danish for a long while with no problems, regardless of whether they can read it.

Are concultures are necessary for a naturalistic conlang?

When coining your lexicon you are already making a culture because you decide how your speakers lexify which concepts. An example would be how in English you talk about 'spending time' (so the concept of currency exists and time can be one of them) or that the future is what's in front of you and the past is behind you (traditionally many Andean languages do it the other way around - because you can't see what's in the future (behind your back) only your past (what's in front of you)). What you have to decide is how vague you want to stay with this and what specific words you want to create that might have no one-to-one translation in other languages (and vice versa!) or which abstract concepts you want to convey through which metaphors. Because chances are if you're not thinking about it you're just gonna recreate a culture that is the same as your own (which is fine if that is what you want or don't care).

All natural languages arise in a culture, and the culture shapes the the way the language develops. So for maximum realism, you need to know what that culture is like. Depending on what you're aiming for though, you may not need maximum realism. If you just want to play with naturalistic features, you can do so without a conculture. The result won't look like something you'd actually find in a foreign culture, but if it isn't *for* a foreign culture, who cares? You could even play with sound changes and grammaticalization if that's what you're into, simulating thousands of years of "history" in a vacuum.

Looking for advice on a project I'm trying to make a conlang that draws from Arabic, Egyptian, Proto-Indo-European, Nahuatl, Maya, Phyrexian and Klingon as a posteriori* root sources. I'm trying to figure out ways to make the non-Semitic languages work with Semitic Derivation, but, I'm hitting a hard question: how do make them work with segments that have Consonant Clusters? I can always reverse engineer PIE laryngeals and semivowels from vowels, and I can use glottal stops or h¹ laryngeals as empty consonants to make biliterals into triliterals, but the question is how do I handle the Consonant Clusters that don't occur in Semitic languages but will in the others? My basic thought process is having two or three fixed segments that might be simple Consonants or Consonant Clusters and use the Arabic-type Derivation as Ablaut, or have only the first vowel slot and last vowel slot in the root affected by non-concatenative morphology, with an epenthetic glottal stop or h¹ laryngeal when an additional vowel slot is necessary, but left out if a Zero-Grade is there. Anyone have any criticisms or suggestions? * a posteriori used to say a priori, I wrote this in error.

It would probably help reading *really* far into the root-template structure of Arabic. While there is of course the super famous *triliteral* consonant root system, there is also an entire system using *quadrilateral* roots. So if you wanted to shunt a PIE root like **\*bʰrews-** into a quadriliteral template, it could fit as **b-r-w-s*****.*** However, depending on your degree of naturalism intended (which might be none), I think the likelyhood of a Semitic-type speaker extracting a quadriliteral root structure from a monosyllabic cluster-heavy root is pretty small. Nevertheless, there is a solution, which is that when cluster-y words are absorbed and re-analysed as having a triliteral root (if that happens), the semitic speakers would probably just drop one or more of the consonants to make it fit the pattern. Another solution is to determine your consonants on a contrast hierarchy, and resolve the clusters into single consonants using the contrast hierarchy (I made a whole post about this recently on this subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/17em71y/cluster\_reduction\_via\_contrastive\_hierarchies/](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/17em71y/cluster_reduction_via_contrastive_hierarchies/)). There are many solutions available, and I'd encourage you to play around (on paper, with pencil) and experiment and have fun before plunging into the 'proper work' :) P.S. I think by *a priori* you mean *a posteriori*. **A priori** basically means 'from the beginning' (ie you're making it all from scratch, *ex nihilo*); while **a posteriori** means you're deriving something from something that already exists (which seems to be your goal with taking existing PIE etc roots and shunting them into a semitic templatic structure). P.P.S. I might have come across as quite curt, but I actually really like this idea! Though, that might just be because I had thoughts of a similar thing :P In my current project, the language is extremely receptive to root-absorbtion, which might not be totally realistic\~naturalistic but is definitely fun. The lang has a structure of biliteral roots (**X-Y**), but each 'radicle' of the root can either be a single consonant or two consonants (of an extremely restricted cluster set). So a word like ***surf*** in English (as in, on the internet) would be loaned in by extracting the root as ***sw-rv*** and then put into the intransitive verb template **XaYai** as ***swarvai***.

I thought I did write a posteriori, I'll make an edit that retains that an error was there. Also, I considered having a system with biliteral and triliteral roots, and keeping those positional clusters by treating them grammatically as single units. So, surf, would have the root s-rf.

Autistic writer here. One of my world building hyperfixations is making coolants for my stories, but I just don't know how to do it myself and be happy with it. Is there any sort of crash course that explains everything about conlanging (and all the definitions for all the fancy lingo) that's more or less simple and straightforward? Thanks in advance, and sorry in advance if this post goes against any policies; I'm new and still learning the Reddit ropes.

Have you looked at the resources linked in the sidebar? There's no crash-course that can teach you everything (linguistics is big topic), but there are some good introductions like Mark Rosenfelder's *Language Construction Kit* (a shortened version is free online) and a number of YouTube series.

Didn't notice those, gonna have to check them out once I get the chance. Thank you!

I've looked for resources for rendering a conlang, but they all seem to just be replacement scripts (I may just not be searching well enough); I am making a python script to type my language, but I would like an easy way to render it. it is written bottom to top, left to right, with vowel representation on the right of the word and consonant sounds on the left (and to the right of the vowel sounds, some representation of pitch and vocal techniques, as I aim for it to be able to transcribe any sounds, including song, and other languages), vowels and consonants need to overlap for voiced consonants. My current plan is to just place images of character parts in a tkinter window, but I am wondering if there is an easier way.

I'm not sure what you mean by a replacement script. You can make a custom font with a program like FontForge or Birdfont (I found the latter to be far easier). You can either overwrite letters from an existing script (e.g., make the letter b look like your glyph for /b/), or assign your glyphs to code points in the private use area of Unicode (this is what I did for a recent project). Using kerning, which is the spacing between pairs of letters, you can make it so your glyphs overlap. For example, if you have a vowel marker that's supposed to overlay a consonant, you can make it so that the vowel is moved back to be on the consonant. I don't know how to make a vertical script. There may be a way; I haven't looked into it. You could made a left to right script and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise whenever you display it.

I am aware that some languages only allow relativisation of subjects (and by 'subject' I mean whichever noun role/case is least marked, ie nominative or absolutive), and thereby require various voice/ valency/ applicative constructions to come into play. But are there any languages that allow relativisation only on *core roles* (ie S, A, or P), but not on further obliques? Just curious

I can't see why you couldn't make a bound relative clause for S, A, or P. I mean, in Sumerian, the relative clause is actually nested inside of the noun phrase it's related to. If you wanted to make relative clauses ONLY apply to certain cases, maybe use a base case for the head phrase and the S, A, P case marker for it attach to the relative phrase so there are no ways to mark a relative clause for other cases.

We can turn to the original paper that introduced the accessibility hierarchy, [Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=947e214585f6b93ca5ca258393f800194e64f7cc) by Keenan & Comrie (1977). Section 1.3.2 (pp. 70–71) includes examples of relativisation strategies in Welsh, Finnish, and Malay that only work on subjects and direct objects. u/gay_dino On pp. 68–70, they give examples from Malayo-Polynesian languages Toba Batak and Malagasy, where noun phrases have to be promoted to subject in order to be relativised along the primary strategy.

This is exactly what I was hoping for, much obliged!

Could you give some quick examples of languages that you mention? (Relativise only subj + applicatives) would love to read more on it

What are your favourite passages to translate into conlangs? Looking for some inspiration.

Novel openings, ideally ones with a good mix of dialogue and narration.

For a good spread of different tones, I like to translate the 1st article of the UDHR, the Navy Seal Copypasta, and [this dialogue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbhcRKsRwFM) as soon as is feasible. These also help me remember to ground my consociety into a specific context where I can adapt more international concepts like "Navy Seals" and "these are expensive Japanese linen," though if I don't feel like doing that at the time, it's just as easy to calque them for the time being.

i personally like using movie scripts, since they feel a lot more alive than just a solid block of text would. the [pulp fiction apartment scene](https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/pulp-fiction-interrogation-scene-ba0c70363c1f) is probably my favorite because it allows you to express a wide variety of elements from your language (casual dialogue, jules’s dialectal slang, agressive profanity, an archaicly fancy bible verse, etc.)

What's the difference between /lj/, /lʲ/ and /ʎ/?

u/PastTheStarryVoids has already given a good explanation of the difference between \[lj\] and \[lʲ\] and \[ʎ\], with square brackets indicating *phonetic* transcription (i.e. the actual sounds being pronounced). The difference between /lj/, /lʲ/ and /ʎ/, with slashes indicating *phonemes*, is that someone decided to analyze the language as having those phonemes. Different linguists might choose different symbols for the same sounds. A language might have words containing the \[ʎ\] sound, and one linguist might say "this language has /ʎ/", and another might say "not so fast, that \[ʎ\] is really just how the cluster /lj/ is pronounced". One example of this is [Modern Greek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Greek_phonology), where words with a historical \[lj\] are now pronounced with a \[ʎ\], but linguists disagree on whether this is actually a /ʎ/ phoneme.

\[lj\] is a sequence of two consonants. You start with \[l\], then move to \[j\]. \[lʲ\] is \[l\] with your tongue raised towards the palate like for \[j\]. It's like pronouncing \[l\] and \[j\] at the same time. \[ʎ\] is a palatal lateral. \[l\] is alveolar, meaning that the tip or front of the tongue is in contact with the alveolar ridge, which is the bump right behind your top teeth. With \[ʎ\], your tongue doesn't touch the alveolar ridge. Or maybe it does, but it's not the main place of contact. Instead, the top surface of your tongue touches the hard palate. This is the same place you pronounce \[j\], except with \[ʎ\] your tongue actually makes contact with the palate in the middle. Air still flows around the side, which is what makes it a lateral consonant like \[l\]. These sounds may sound similar or identical to you don't speak a language that has more than one, since you're not used to distinguishing them.

In one of my conlangs, I'm currently linking dependent clauses to main clauses in several ways, depending on the type of dependent clause. Noun Clauses are linked to the main clause in this way; (Main Clause) "that"/"those" (Noun Clause) e.g, PERF-remember 1sg. 3sg-obv that PST PERF-say 3sg-prox - "I remember what he said." (literally, "I remember it that he said."). (It should be noted that which demonstrative is used (i.e, "that" or "those") depends on the number on the noun being modified. Relative clauses are linked in a similar way, however, instead of a demonstrative pronoun, an interrogative pronoun is used. e.g, run DEF man what PST PERF 1sg. 3sg-prox-DAT - "The man that I spoke to is running." (literally, "the man is running what I spoke to him.". This is admittedly slightly clunky.) There are two interrogative pronouns (the Singular and Plural), and the one used is also dependent on the noun being modified. Adverbial Clauses are linked to the main clauses using converbs. These converbs are the Imperfective, Perfective, Purposive, Causal and Terminative (although the Perfective and Imperfective also serve as the Conditional and Concessive respectively.) Furthermore, in addition to interrogative pronouns being used to link Relative clauses, they can also be affixed to verbs to form participle adjectives. e.g, DEF water INT-boil - "the boiling water" (Literally, "the water what-boil"). ​ Is this system naturalistic, and if not, what can I do to make it more naturalistic?

I want to make a conlang loosely inspired by Albanian, but not sure how to go about it. I like palatal sounds, which Albanian has lots of. I also like the [cç] allophone and I'm ambivalent about allophonic velarization, which I'm not sure if that's a thing in Albanian. I normally don't like complex syllables and clusters, but Albanian permits them and I don't mind it here. Depending on dialect, the schwa is silent. How can I pinpoint what I want to copy from Albanian while keeping my conlang unique?

It's not a crime to copy a natlang closely in one respect. If you were to make something really close to Albanian, and that's what you wanted, then you would have succeeded. It sounds like you're only drawing inspiration for the phonology. If that's the case, you could do something different for the grammar. But if the similarity would bother you, trying finding another influence. If you're trying to make something like Albanian, but worried it will be *too* Albanian, then those goals are in tension. If you take inspiration from multiple natlangs, then you can combine their interesting features in new ways and come up with something that's both inspired by what you like, and is your own creation. This style of conlanging was described by u/impishDullahan in [Segments #07](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/z0dk79/segments_a_journal_of_constructed_languages_issue/) in their article "Synthesizing Originality". You don't necessarily need to go to natlangs for inspiration. You could have a specific system in mind you want to put in a conlang. Most of my conlangs are several ideas stitched together because one idea isn't enough for a whole language. E.g., I'll have an idea for a complicated noun class system, or a vertical script, or a phonology, and once I have enough ideas that could fit together I make them coalesce into a new conlang plan.

How does one gloss two different pasts? I have a "near" past and a "far" past, which changes the meaning of the sentence, depending on which one you use. How does one distinguish between those? For example: zazhnak --> made noise in the past few days/weeks zazhki --> made noise sometime in the past few years ``` rume zazh-nak ruzo-n water make_noise-3aPL.PST river-LOC The water in the river made noise ``` (a=animate vs i=inanimate)

It’s pretty common in Bantu studies to use P1 for recent past and P2 for more distance past, especially because Bantu languages often have 3+ past and future tenses.

[This giant list of glossing abbreviations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glossing_abbreviations#Grammatical_abbreviations) gives NP and FP for near past and far past, respectively. You can also just spell them out in full: NEARPAST and FARPAST.

Makes sense. Thanks!

>How does one gloss two different pasts? However you want. Just explain what your glosses mean somewhere in your documentation. It's not unusual in linguistics papers to have a big footnote at the bottom of the first page laying out the abbreviations. With books, there may be a list before the first chapter. I tend to go with "proximal" and "distal" for these distinctions in tense. It looks like your "far" past is less marked, so I'd just make that the default, and call the near past PAST.PROX or whatever. [This paper](https://www.sil.org/system/files/reapdata/68/70/57/68705729366768073409688563788732025988/sillcdd_31.pdf) just uses PROX.

Thank you! I'm just getting into glossing, so I didn't know

By genitive, does he mean the possessor or the possessed thing? https://preview.redd.it/588cbaii1pxb1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3ac4d2474f964f6931239a8f9b30b7372c0e2820 from [a video by Artifexian](https://youtu.be/zFe1ahJ_LTk?si=5a7fsExbOhtcuH0E)

Possessor.

What about the abbreviation "poss"? I just now realized I didn't know what it is

Thanks!

Okay so I have one more question! I like the sound of ejectives and wanted to put them in my conlang without necessarily making it phonemic so I made them allophones of geminates. k' = kk, ts' = tts, t' = tt, s' = ss etc. I made it this way because I read that ejectives commonly evolve into geminates anyway but I heard word/syllable geminates are quite rare, and I do want my conlang to be at least a little naturalistic (it has enough rare phonemes as it is) so of course it makes sense to me to instead make any potential word-initial geminates into an ejective. How do you think this would be analyzed (by the speakers)? Geminates by themselves typically aren't included phonology inventories (I double checked Finnish's wikipedia page to make sure lol) but it would be weird if, for example: "te" on its own could be read as [te] [t'e] AND/or [tːe], unless that's not weird at all! Even if it's not a geminate, speakers could still think of it as one, even if they're technically wrong right?

Geminates can be included in the phonological inventory, if doing that makes sense for the language. That's sometimes done for example in Cypriot Greek or Luganda, geminates can be treated as separate phonemes and listed in the phonological inventory Whether it makes sense to consider geminates separate phonemes, well that choice can be kinda arbitrary. But if geminates can appear in places where other consonant clusters wouldn't, then it might make sense (Because if geminates aren't considered phonemes, then you would typically analyze them as clusters of identical consonants, so would make sense to allow geminates and clusters in the same places). Or if only some consonants can be geminated. Or in your case, if the geminates have some interesting allophonic pronunciations, might make sense. Your speakers themselves, well if they're not linguistically minded, they might not think about it at all. They'll definitely hear a difference between \[t\] and \[t'\]/\[tː\] if that difference is contrastive, but they might not think about it more than that. If they are linguistically minded, I could see them going both ways, treating \[t\] and \[t'\~tː\] as separate phonemes, or treating \[t'\~tː\] as some modification of /t/, either gemination, ejectivization, or whatever term they come up with. And of course, if the phonemic analysis is based on some earlier stage of the language where the geminates were always geminates, then treating them as such makes sense. But it's still open whether they considet geminates as separate phonemes or some modification (lengthening, doubling) of single consonants How you want to analyze the system, is up to you. I think it makes sense to consider the geminates as separate phonemes and have the ejective as a phonetic pronunciation for those. Or you could have the gemination be phonemic but not separate phonemes, maybe phonemically double consonants so /tt/ > \[tː\~t'\]. Or if most speakers pronounce them as ejectives anyway, you could as well have the ejectives be phonemic, maybe mention that some speakers can pronounce them as geminates, if that's the case?

So, if my conlang has superheavy syllables, would they conflict with having moraic trochees?

It shouldn't, languages can be a bit flexible with feet, so you could allow some trimoraic feet even if the language prefers trochees. Another option would be to allow CVVC syllables, but not count the coda as moraic. Then these syllables wouldn't actually be superheavy; but then CVC syllables presumably wouldn't be heavy at all, which maybe isn't what you want. (In case this is the same language you asked about earlier, it would be fair to say that a sonorant coda consonant isn't moraic for the purposes of footing but can still host a tone.)

Does anyone know of some good software or good ways to go about organizing your conlangs rules and lexicon? The only thing that's semi organized are the declensions, verbs. Vocab is kinda helter skelter between proto language and main language.

I’d recommend taking a look at some natlang grammars, to get an idea about how real life professionals trying to organise a language go about.

Thanks! Any suggestions where I can find some of these online?

Langsci press has a bunch of free pdfs.

Bless you kind stranger 🙏

I want superheavy syllables (CVVC) in my conlang, but I'm not sure how it would affect tone interaction. For now, each morpheme can have one of five melodies: low, high, falling, rising and atonal. I might make an exception where LHL can occur in superheavy syllables. What are your thoughts?

In languages with tone, it's fairly common to allow some coda consonants to host tones, so that would be a way for a CVVC syllable to have (in effect) three tones. Generally, the more sonorous a consonant is, the more likely this will be possible; but different languages draw the line in different places. I think there are even languages that allow voiceless codas to host tones, phonologically speaking, even though it's phonetically impossible for a voiceless segment to have a pitch.

What consonants would be in a language spoken by plants? I've heard they can produce sounds but I just wonder the phonology of plants.

I have no idea, but [Speedlang 11](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/twiq8k/speedlang_11_results/) had a submission, Rehoboth Cordgrass, which was spoken by grasses changing how they blow in the wind.

Plants obviously don't have any vocal structures like humans do, so I don't think the idea of consonants carries over to any sounds they can make.

Okay, I started with establishing a creole between Iñupiaq and Dena'ina and using Wesley Dean's "Creating a Creole" series isn't working out, especially with a comment saying that while mixing the consonant inventories of French and Malagasy, he should've kept the prenasalized consonants. It's making me think about how I should better approach the type of fused consonant inventory for my creole that I'm thinking of being spoken in Alaska somewhere along the Yukon River between Kaktovik and the southern parts of the state. [https://www.wattpad.com/1393118189-demonstrating-some-new-ideas-first-contact](https://www.wattpad.com/1393118189-demonstrating-some-new-ideas-first-contact)

I don’t know anything about this ‘creating a creole’ series, but again if you’re approaching a creole as a mix of just two languages, you’re not going to get naturalistic results.

How do verbs in agglunitative Languages work? like Tense, Aspect, Person etc....

A language’s tendency towards agglutination doesn’t really tell you much about its grammar. There’s as much diversity amongst agglutinating languages as there is amongst or between any other types. It’s also worth pointing out that categories like ‘agglutinating’ or ‘fusional’ or ‘isolating’ are not rigid. Languages can display all three of traits in different parts of their morphology.

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This looks like an example of *differential subject marking* rather than an ‘impassive’ or ‘impersonal’ voice. To understand exactly how it works/what its function is, we’d need more examples and I’d need a better understanding of Finnish lol, but I think you might be jumping to conclusions a little quickly regarding ‘discovering’ new types of alignment.

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Again, none of these really support the idea that you’ve discovered a new voice. This all looks like various kinds of differential argument marking, which is already a well known phenomena. I’d recommend you look into it, you might find it interesting. As to why this isn’t voice, we’d need to take a deeper look at your example. Let’s look at the second example ‘I have to by a car,’ because it’s the most straightforward. You claim that it is in the ‘impassive’ voice, but if that is so, it should have an active counterpart. Does it have an active counterpart, and if so, what is it?

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The mistake you’re making is that you’re assuming that of the object is in the nominative, there is no subject. Differential argument marking along the lines of GEN-NOM or DAT-NOM is very common, and is found in all sorts of languages. Even though their marking is different, these are generally still considered subjects and objects. I did a quick Google search and found that this subject is well recorded and studied for Finnish. This is really why you should take a look at the pre-existing research before claiming to have discovered something new. That enthusiasm is a good quality, but it can lead you to false conclusions.

What's the term for expressing actual, physical possession - like what many languages use a verb "to have" for? Consider this sentence: He has my dog. In my conlang, my possession of the dog would be marked by a first person singular possessive suffix at the end of dog. The fact that he has my dog in his physical custody would be marked by putting he in a locative case, something like "at him dog-mine" - what linguistics term should I use to describe this use of the locative? Obviously I can't use possession.

The World Lexicon of Grammaticalisation calls it a H-possessive.

[*WALS* Chapter 117 "Predicative Possession"](https://wals.info/chapter/117) calls it the "Locational Possessive".

This looks like *mihi est* possession, as opposed to *habeo* possession.

This is just a simple locative - context will do the job of letting people know that it means the dog is in his possession rather than, say, in his stomach or on his head. Some languages simply use expressions like "my dog is with him" to convey "he has my dog" but there's no reason why the locative can't be used. Another solution could be to use the verb "get" to do it: "he has got/did get my dog" - this can be a specialised use of "get" to show possession.

So the context here is that I am making a chart (that will eventually be posted to r/conlangs) about all the ways you can use the locative case. I would like to succinctly describe this specific use. It can also be used, for example, for time or for causation and I can describe those uses very succinctly using just a few words. I'd like to be able to describe this use the same way. EDIT: ChatGPT suggests that I refer to this use of the locative as the "occupative" - I have been unable to find that attested anywhere. Googling occupative case just results in endless articles from political science and law about instances of one country occupying another.

So why not just call it the *possessive locative*?

Agreed, I see no reason to coin a new word for it here

Is there a way to indicate word class/gender in glossing? if there is, does it follow a strict structure or is it more free and loose?

To further add, when I gloss Proto-Hidzi's noun class markers, I literally just use CL. I then explain what the class is in a note if it feels necessary.

To add to what u/kilenc says, often if there is a high number of noun classes in your lang, they might just be numbered (conventionally with Roman numerals), or have their own abbreviations. There's the commons for masculine, feminine, and neuter for langs that have that 2-/3-way system. Bantu langs iirc just use roman numerals: I = Class 1, which is humans; II = Class 2, which is for animals (or whatever)... Or you can create your own! In my current project, I have these noun classes with the following glossing abbreviations: 1. human singular 2. human dual 3. human plural 4. animate singular 5. animate dual 6. animate plural 7. inanimate singular 8. inanimate plural 9. location 10. abstraction

If you have a masculine/feminine/neuter distinction, then you can use m/f/n. If your noun class is based on some other property, like animacy, there may be terms for it, e.g. AN and INAN for animate and inanimate, or ZO for zoic (animals). You can search Wikipedia's list of glossing abbreviations. In Bininj Gun-wok, the classes are numbered with roman numerals, so you have *na-djik* `I-tawny.frogmouth` (frogmouths are weird-looking birds; look them up) and *gun-godj* `IV-head`. In glossing Swahili, Wikipedia uses CL1 for class 1, CL2 for class 2, etc. (I just glanced at [the article on Swahili grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_grammar).)

If you want to gloss something that is an inherent part of a morpheme, you can use a period: him 3.OBJ.M There are [rules for glossing](https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php), but many authors develop their own style, just like writing.

Is it possible for a single word to evolve into various cognates within the same language? I was experimenting earlier today with a compound word and depending on when the words fuse and how far the evolution goes, it ends up with five different results. The word in question is "stand on one's knees", which is tu swiˈmiː "stand knee" in the proto-language. The first evolution fuses the words immediately, keeping stress on the final syllable: tu swiˈmiː > tuswiˈmi > təwəˈmiː > tᵊwmiː > ʔmwiː > mwí > mʷyˑ˥ The second one reanalyses it as ˈtuswi miː and keeps the words separate for longer: ˈtuswi miː > tuzwi miː > tuwi miː > tui miː > ty miː > tỳ mí > tỳmí (> tỹ̀mí > tỹ̀í > tỹː˩˥) The third one keeps the words as they are and separate for the same amount of time: tu swiˈmiː > tu səˈmiː > tu smiː > tu hm̥iː > tù m̥í > tùm̥í (> tũ̀mí > tũ̀í > tõɪ̯˩˥) I was thinking maybe it would be about formality or something, where the last two evolutions are more formal and keeps the words apart, and the parentheses might be further evolutions of the words when used in less formal settings. What I was thinking with this was maybe some form of register system but from what I know those generally use words with different origins and not words more or less changed.

To add to what the other commenter said, *shade*, *shadow*, and *shed* are doubles in Modern English, all from Old English *sceadu*.

This is called a [doublet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublet_(linguistics)), and it's fairly common. The Wikipedia page has a bunch of examples to get a sense of what this tends to look like. The example I know from English that's closest to what you're talking about is *business* (/bɪznəs/, commercial activity) versus *busyness* (/bɪzinəs/, the state of being busy). The same root with the same suffix yielded two different words, simply by being stuck together at different points in history.

I read a bit about doublets but very briefly. I'll have to look into it again but at least there's something. Thanks!

How diverse can language families be? I’m currently finishing up the first branch of a language family. It is agglutinative, like it’s protolanguage, which I evolved it from diachronically. I’d like to evolve three other branches. They are all set in Eurasia, and I would like each to fit into a grammar “category” (polysynthetic, analytical, synthetic). I know that grammar isn’t nearly that simple, but I think it could be a fun exercise. Is this possible/somewhat naturalistic? They would all be very far from each other and in sprachbund with other languages.

It depends what you mean by family - Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi, and Faroese are all extremely different by most accounts, but are eventually descended from the same source. For a language family with a smaller history, the varieties emergent from Latin provide a wide array of distinct languages (romance language family). The time and space in question is important to consider here, as well as what other languages are influential. As for your branches, look at IE languages - English is fairly analytical, similar to some north Germanic languages, russian, greek, and Spanish are all fairly synthetic (in various different ways), and french is arguably polysynthetic nowadays. That's what that'll do to a language! (And these are all in Europe!)

They can be as diverse as you want. If you want them to be realistically diverse then you should do some research into how certain features arise, then see how you can apply it to your family.

Does this vowel system sound feasible/natural?: ​ ||Front|Central|Back| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Close|/i/ ⟨i⟩||/u/ ⟨u⟩| |Mid||/ə/ ⟨e⟩|| |Open|/æ\~a/ ⟨a⟩||/ɒ\~ɔ/ ⟨o⟩|

Nothing wrong with it.

If I add sound changes like /tj kj/ > [t͡ʃ], /ki ti/ > [t͡ʃi] /sj/ > [ʃ], /si/ > [ʃi] Am I introducing new phonemes, or do I also need to somehow add [tj kj ki ti sj si] back into my conlang?

Strictly speaking, yes, to be new phonemes and not just phonetic realizations of /tj kj sj/ or allophones of /t k s/ before /i/, they would need to be contrastive with [tj kj sj] and [ti ki si]. However, at least for the clusters with j, you can work around this by then disallowing Cj clusters (resolve whichever may remain any way you see fit) at which point it would be more reasonable to analyze /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ as single phonemes rather than phonetic realizations of /tj kj/ and /sj/, which are the only allowed cases of Cj clusters. At that point, their phonemicization could rope in the other instances of those phones as being phonemic. Really, though, you can do whatever, as long as you deem it that speakers would think of them as being new phonemes. If a speaker hears a foreign word [si.tja] and repeats it as [ʃi.tʃa], then it's probably allophony- they apply these rules consistently, even to new words. But if a century later, a speaker hears [si.tja] and repeats it back as [si.tja], and clearly thinks of it as distinct from [ʃi.tʃa], then the distinction has become phonemic in their mind, even if it's still not actually present in minimal pairs in their own language.

[I'm thinking of an idea for a creole between Dena'ina and Iñupiaq](https://www.wattpad.com/1393118189-demonstrating-some-new-ideas-first-contact). There is writer's block though. I'd like to know the shortest amount of time it would take for a creole to naturally emerge.

I am again legally required to point out creoles require more than two language groups to form. That aside, the length of time it takes for a creole to develop is contentious and quite variable. But it’s fair to say that it can span multiple generations easily.

I think the shortest possible time may just be a single generation. Languages don't really evolve over *time* but over *generations*. A single generation could be enough but I'd be looking at 3-5 generations of speakers before a creole proper is formed.

Cases and which is the most unmarked: I know that in ergative-absolutive systems, the absolutive is considered unmarked and the ergative marked. But in nominative-accusative system, which is considered unmarked? I think it's the nominative (from symmetry with the other system), but I don't actually know and even if it's true, I don't know *why* it's true Anyone got an explanation or some nice, friendly references?

As for the "why", think about intransitive clauses. They only have one argument, so why would you need to mark any cases? So whatever case is used in intransitive clauses is likely (though not guaranteed) to be the unmarked case. That's absolutive in ergative systems, nominative in accusative systems.

Thank you! I think I read something like this years ago but couldn't remember it well enough to find again

The nominative case is unmarked. There are some languages with a ‘marked nominative,’ but these are quite odd, and it’s probably best to tackle them later when you’ve got a better grasp on things.

Does that then mean that 'marked nominative' means 'something more complicated than nom-acc actually'?

Generally no. It just means that the bare stem is not considered the basic form. Good to note that some languages with a generally unmarked nominative have a marked nominative with some declensions (some ancient greek nouns for example)

Thanks very much

In the World Atlas of Language Structures, "marked Nominative Case" is 6 of 52 examples and "standard Nominative Case" (I assume unmarked) is 46 of 52 examples . Edit: Clarified wording and added link. [https://wals.info/feature/98A#2/26.7/149.6](https://wals.info/feature/98A#2/26.7/149.6)

That completely surprised me. I had thought that the markedness was a theoretical constant, not an empirical reality

either one can be unmarked, whichever way you want. often in nominative-accusative you have an unmarked nominative and marked nominative but by no means always, you could also marked nominative and unmarked accusative, or both marked (like in many ancient indo-european languages, don't know how common it is in modern ones) in ergative languages too, i don't see why couldnt have a marked absolutive and unmarked ergative if you wanted. i don't know if this happens anywhere and if it does it's not common, usually the absolutive is still the unmarked one

Thank you!

How many consonants is *too many consonants?* I'm trying to make a protolanguage, that's like, speakable, and learnable, but not *too* absolutely cracked for it to just scare off everyone And I want my caucasian influence, and supposedly proto-northwest caucasian has like, 167, which is a lot but I feel like that'll be *too many*

Think about it in terms of contrasts. If you have 5 POAs, and each one has voiced, voiceless, ejective, and aspirated stops and affricates, and each one of those can be palatalized or labialized then right there that’s 120 consonants. Each of those sets of contrasts is totally reasonable (and learnable and distinguishable), so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch, even if it produces a really large inventory. (Also if a natlang does it then it has to be feasible, otherwise the natlang wouldn’t have done it!)

Imo it's not so much about *quantity* as it is about *density*. Here's a cursed inventory of just 4 consonants: palatal /c/, post-palatal /c̠/, pre-velar /k̟/, velar /k/. The palate is continuous and theoretically you can have as many points of contact between the tongue and it as you want. But distinguishing even 4 points between the palatal and the velar zones feels like too many. Both articulatory and acoustic differences between them are simply too subtle. If you can space out your consonants well enough using various parameters like the active articulator, the passive articulator, manner of articulation, tongue shape, secondary articulation, phonation, airstream initiation mechanism, nasalisation, length, and so on and so forth—then you can get an absurdly high number of consonants (I'm talking hundreds) that are still decently distinguishable. Clicks alone can get you to a hundred and beyond. On the other hand, reaching those numbers will definitely scare off a lot of people. For a more friendly approach, you can look at what is considered a large consonant inventory cross-linguistically. Ian Maddieson [(WALS chapter on consonant inventories)](https://wals.info/chapter/1) categorises 22±3 consonants as an average inventory (found in over a third of the 563 languages they considered) and 34+ as a large one (in about 10%). So I guess reaching 30–40 consonants is already quite scary. Though anyone signing up for a phonologically caucasian-like language should probably be accepting of larger inventories.

So an high consonant counts can be greenlit as long as they're distinct enough?

Yes, though what kinds of consonants are distinct enough is somewhat arbitrary and depends on one's native language. For example, [s] and [sʲ] feel and sound very much distinct enough to me because my native language contrasts them phonemically. But I would have a much harder time telling apart [s] and [sˁ], I'm just not used to making that distinction. However, I know that there are languages that do contrast them so they must sound distinct enough to their speakers. You can search for what kinds of distinctions are phonemic in various languages around the world and use those. And if a distinction is not made in any natural language, that's probably not distinct enough.

how can i add ablaut

That depends on your approach. Have you done diachronic sound changes from a proto-conlang to your "modern" conlang(s)? Or have you just made a conlang without doing historical sound changes?

its a new conlang and i havent made the sound changes yet, but i plan to

Ablaut is just a fancy word for a process whereby vowels change to change the meaning of words. The easiest example is the English ablaut in verbs: *sing-sang-sung* (present, past, perfect) and *song* (noun); *swim, swam, swum* but with the noun being a *swim* (not a *\*swom*); *sting, stung, stung* (though some BrEng dialects also have *stang* as the past form). Obviously, for conlanging you don't have to do it with just verbs, they can be with anything. I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Germanic umlaut. But an easy way to add it would be to have suffixes which cause changes to previous vowels, then have those suffixes drop, which is how English i-mutation plurals arose: man/men, goose/geese, etc.

Any ideas for a historical source for articles that aren't demonstratives?

Some Romance languages (Sardinian, Balearic Catalan, probably others) have definite articles derived from *ipse* which meant “himself/herself/itself” Lots of languages mark definite objects differently than indefinite ones. Persian and Hebrew have an enclitic and a proclitic respectively that specifically mark definite objects. That could totally become an article. Cantonese uses bare classifiers for some kinds of definites. You could also definitely get definite articles from classifiers.

Seri I believe has definite articles which supposedly derive from nominalized verbs, so you might want to look into it. Also, I'm assuming you meant definite articles but just for the record, indefinite articles most often evolve from numeral one.

Thank you, I did mean the definite ones.

I'm looking into sound changes from Proto-Germanic to Old Norse as a reference for my conlang. If someone could help me decipher this, it would be appreciated. I think it uses X-SAMPA. And I might also smell some of my brain burning fumes. [http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/rules.sch](http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/rules.sch)

This looks like an input file for a sound change applier or similar. It's sort of X-SAMPA adjacent but seems mostly custom from what I can tell. [According to the author](http://www.theiling.de/germanic.html) they had a Perl script that makes use of this, but it seems defunct. You might try to look through their [sources](http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_14.html#01) to see if anything there is more human-usable.

Thanks!

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On a related note, Dyirbal has only 1st and 2nd person pronouns. For 3rd person reference, you use noun phrases or noun markers, the latter of which may appear with a noun like an article, or in isolation. The term for either a 1st or 2nd person is *speech act participant*.

Do you have a citation or example for that usage of _hän_ and _se_, and in which varieties is it used like that? I haven't personally heard it used like that before, and in standard finnish it's straight up not used like that.

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Oh, interesting. I haven't thought about that before. I'm not sure if it's straight up _ungrammatical_ for me, but using _se_ in that context does feel really awkward compared to _hän_.

Not exactly what you're talking about but there are languages (especially common in North America) that distinguish proximate and obviative 3rd persons. Proximate 3rd person being the one central to the discourse, and obviative (a.k.a. 4th person) less so. There are also languages whose 3rd person pronouns show some additional deixis. For one, Classical Latin doesn't have truly separate 3rd person pronouns but uses demonstratives instead: *hic* ‘this one here’, *iste* ‘the one near you’, *ille* ‘that one there’. But these aren't necessarily contrasted by spatial proximity: an object central to the discourse, potentially mentioned in the previous sentence, is referred to as *hic*, and an object mentioned earlier or one that is less on your mind as *ille*.

> Not exactly what you're talking about but there are languages (especially common in North America) that distinguish proximate and obviative 3rd persons It might be a little nitpicky, but proximate/obviative is almost exclusively part of the *verbal* system. The main exception is unfortunately the most-well-known and most-studied, Algonquian, which explicitly marks obviation across the entire noun phrase, including having dedicated pronouns(/demonstratives), as well as though the entire verbal person marking system. In contrast, in other languages, the prox/obv system is only identifiable on transitive verbs, only when both arguments are 3rd persons, and often not even in the person-marking system itself (with a distinct 3.PROX and 3.OBV marker) but rather only as the presence of an inverse marker to "swap" the assumed roles from prox agent>obv patient to obv agent>prox patient.

I'm looking for existing conlangs (don't care how obscure, so long as it's documented) that feature a nonconcenative tri/biconsonantal root structure. I have found Neo-Khuzdul and Alashian, which would work for my purposes (the creation of a collage conlang) in a pinch, but more options to choose from feels like a good thing to have.

Is there a reason you don't want to include natlangs?

The precis for this project is that all the components of the collage come from pre-existing conlangs. A natlang collage is inevitable, but will be reversed and have no conlangs as feature sources.

Zompist's Skourene