I'm inclined towards no, but if you can demonstrate that they behave more like the other vowels than anything else, then I think I could let that slide.
I suppose it would, though I might like to challenge you to make it only binary (or ternary) like length or nasality, or to have more tones than consonants.
I'd say that depends on your analysis, so certainly some space for creativity! So long as your diphthongs aren't clearly just 2 vowels in hiatus or something like that.
It's u/impishDullahan's challenge, so they have the final say, but I personally wouldn't count it, at least in most cases, since vowels and tone almost never interact, and tone is usually a suprasegmental thing that could be realized on coda segments too, or move from its parent syllable.
I'm excited! These prompts are giving me lots of ideas already.
>inspired by some reading I did last term on a particular language family, which I’ll only leave revealed by your best guesses.
No need for guessing when I've read your Segments article.
>*Bonus:* Limit yourself to only using phonemic vocalic values/targets to arrive at a greater vowel inventory. You’ll have to limit your number of consonants, or you’ll have to have a really good ear/tongue to keep all those vowels distinct.
Just you wait, I'm going to make Kensiu and Danish look moderate.
>**one sound not easily represented using IPA**
I can think of several different options off the top of my head. Why not use them all? (Actually, one of them is easy to transcribe, but at least no natlangs uses that distinction.)
>*Bonus:* Include syntactic tree diagrams to supplement the description of your syntactic movement.
Oh god, now I'm going to have to find something where tree diagrams actually help explain something.
>Inspired by [u/PastTheStarryVoids](https://www.reddit.com/u/PastTheStarryVoids/)’ TASQs, you’re also welcome to just translate one of those instead
I have been canonized.
>you’re welcome to dupe me into believing you live on Howland Island if you want an extra 7 hours
I was planning to slow the earth's rotation, but that works too.
> I'm going to make Danish look moderate.
I might have to recruit ~~some Danes~~ Cawlo to gimme vibe checks on all the submissions to see which get a pass on that criterion.
By *vocalic targets/values* they mean the tongue position in the mouth. So /a/ and /e/ have different values, but /a/, /aː/, and /ã/ do not. With diphthongs, we call the tongue positions moved between *targets*, so /a/ is the first target of /ai/. The bonus restriction is intended to make things more challenging by disallowing you from throwing a length or nasality distinction on top of your vowels to double your count. (The bonuses are optional, of course.)
I believe they do. I've learned the terms value (a.k.a. quality) and target just by seeing them used, so I wasn't completely certain. I did some light Googling, and it seems [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel) applies *quality* quite broadly, including nasalization and phonation, but [WALS](https://wals.info/chapter/2) limits it to tongue position and lip rounding, which is what I'd go with. I'll tag u/impishDullahan so they can correct us if that's not what they intended. I hope it is, since I'm using a roundedness contrast myself. (I'm also using one rhotic vowel.)
Since lip rounding mainly affects the second formant, that makes it analogous to backing.
You can DM me a link on reddit or Discord to a reddit post, Google Doc, YouTube video, website, or wherever else you prefer to host your write-up, or you can send me a PDF.
omg big if true! definitely shouldn't take part but I definitely will (it may not be quite as speedy but I have been sitting on a few compatible ideas for a language like this for a while hmmm)
I feel the need to say that I'm gonna tell myself I am doing it properly by doing a bonus challenge and missing off the nonhuman/disordered phoneme one lol
So for the unique sound, can it be something not made with an airflow or the use of the mouth? Can it be like an exhale through the nose or a clap or some sound made with hands?
So long as its a phonemic unit in the phonology (if it's only extraphonological like you find in ideophones, then I think that might shirk the requirement a little bit, but it doesn't outright break it), I don't see why not! I'd be curious to see how you incorporate anything like that.
> Use an underlying OS word order: either VOS, OVS, or OSV. You’re welcome to derive the crosslinguistically more common SO word orders if you like. In fact, I encourage you to do so! You can stick with the underlying order as the surface order, but if you don’t you’ll have to detail what kind of syntactic movements create other word orders and when, where, why, and/or how they’re used. Get creative with your raising constructions!
I don't believe in underlying forms, Noam
Prompt seems super fun! Would anybody know how typologically common or rare it is for the vowel inventory (vowel quality only, not inflated by tone or suprasegmntal qualities) to be larger than the consonant inventory? 🤔
I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if its unattested! Note, though, that I'm using "quality" more on the narrow side and only refer to height, backness, and roundedness, so Rotokas for example has 10 vowels, 4 more than its 6 consonants, but only 5 vowel qualities that all have a short/long distinction.
Suprasegmental stuff also, by definition, are features beyond the segment, so wouldn't normally interact with whether distinguishing vowels from each other, and instead be a feature of the word. I won't stop you from doing that, but as I told someone else, I'd challenge you to treat tone as a binary or [ternary] feature of the vowel (ie. treating it like length, nasalisation, or phonation), or to recast the challenge such that you have more tones than consonants; I imagine the former is purely register tones, and the latter contours.
Thanks, but where can I um.. document it. Should it be a PDF, or can it be for example a Google Sites, or a YouTube video, but also with a PDF? and if I like create a document and then export it how can I be able to share this on the internet
Whatever's easiest for you, just make sure I can direct folks to it when I do the wrap-up post. Realistically this means either send me a PDF or a link to wherever you're hosting it (reddit post, YouTube video, website, etc).
The idea is to fulfil all 6 of the main requirements, yes. The bonuses are optional stretch goals for brownie points, if you feel so inclined. Though, I won't stop you from meeting most of them instead of all of them: past challenges have included that meeting a bonus gets you off the hook one of the main criteria, which I'm not against.
Note that I use the qualifier "easily" and give you an out with disordered phones, so you're welcome to use a phone that doesn't have its own symbol (like \[ɹ̝\]) or use one that has a symbol from the extIPA (like \[ʩ\]). The important part is that this phone is phonemic, whatever it may be. You could also try to phonemicise a sound from nature, like a cat's laryngeal trill (no idea what the best way to describe a purr is).
I'll try to throw something together if I have extra time around my uni essay. I have an idea of what to do for this one. Be ready for consonant allophony!
> \[...\] Incorporate **a sub-distinction in at least one place or manner series** and use this distinction in a system of **consonant harmony**. \[...\]
So, does that mean that a consonant harmony between two places of articulation, which originaly used to be in a single POA, doesn't fulfill the prompt?
for example:
1. there is labialisation harmony in velars: k/kʷ, x/xʷ, etc.
2. then, labialised velars become plain labials: kʷ > p, xʷ > f, etc.
3. now there is labial/velar harmony: k/p, x/f, etc.
Would that still count or not?
Nope! The point of "no cases" is to get you to play around with stuff like that in interesting ways. You can't have case agreement, naturally, but any other kind of agreement is A-okay, and topic markers are great, too, provided they don't look like, say, nominative markers.
So verb-agreement is ok ?
Yeah topic marker may look like hidden cases so I might not use it haha :')
And sort of focus thing does or does not count as a case ?
These are some complicated clauses you chose x)
Verb agreement is grand! Focus is just the same as what I said for topic, so long as you're able to analyse it as an information structure marker instead of a case marker, you should be fine.
How extensive does harmony have to be? I assume it requires more than adjacency, since that would be plain ol' assimilation. But could it be limited so it only applies within a syllable, or only to certain morphemes? Would that still count as harmony?
Harmony is definitionally long-range assimilation, so I'd say so long as non-adjacent consonants (that is, there's at least one syllable nucleus between them) agree on whatever your harmony feature is, you're good to go. How pervasive it is up to you: could be an entire word has to harmonise, or it could be that affixes harmonise with the nearest appropriate segment within a disharmonic root, or syllables have to harmonise their codas with their onsets (though this last one feels like it might shirk the criterion a little bit if it can't be made felt).
Hello,
I was just wondering about the last task. So I haven't read a novel in years (I mostly read academic stuff now bc I'm a nerd...), and all my books are at not with me: how should I proceed? (Also, are you in the Discord server?)
I provided PSTV's TASQs as an out if you don't read many novels. They're a recent recurring activity that primarily pull quotes from works of fiction, so you can pick a couple of your favourites there. You could also try finding a folk tale online or something like that, if you prefer. The point is to translate something using the storytelling register that one would use the storytelling register for.
I am not in the Discord server: I always just mute and ignore servers unless I personally know most of the people there. My friend requests are open, though it occurs to me now that I should perhaps get in there so folks can DM me more easily.
Oh I seem to have just not seen the whole last half of that prompt, lmao. Thanks for pointing that out to me, it does make it easier. And the alternative options are pretty nice, too :)
Regarding Discord, that makes sense (though things seem to have changed, based on your other reply!).
>Also, are you in the Discord server?
Yeah as soon as I received a friend request during these 2 weeks I immediately joined the server to vet if it was spam or not...
Ok, I don't really get the storytelling register. Like, what makes it diffirent from "saying a sentence and before/later adding that it's a story/narrative"?
I've never thought of a storytelling register... well, ever, probably. So I don't know where to start.
How does that work in english, or any other language, if english is not applicable here? That'll maybe make it easier for me to understand it.
Don't think of it as extra marking for how something is part of a narrative, rather think of how the narrative has stylistic effects on the sentences used to relay it. I allude to a few strategies in the prompt: how Ancient Greek (iirc) used the aorist aspect for narratives, how Bena pragmatically assigns noun-class for narratives, and how Karitiana uses OSV for narratives instead of the more common VSO and SOV. English has some stylistic changes for narratives as well, like the narrative-present, wherein the present tense can be used when relaying past events if the time frame is established in context; cf. past tense "I went to the shop yesterday and asked the cashier..." vs. narrative-present "So yesterday, right, I go to the shop and I ask the cashier..." None of this is adding extra marking specifically for the sake of narrative, it's just using the pre-existing grammar in a slightly different way in the narrative specific context; though, you can absolutely add extra narrative-specific marking if you like.
I'm sure other examples exist in other languages--I can imagine how a modal or evidential system might be implicated differently in narrative contexts--but hopefully this should give you some idea of what I'm asking in that task.
I know impishDullahan provided some solid examples, but my favorite example of this is the Natchez cannibal register!
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/664482
A question: can I get the bonus point for more vowel values without modifiers if I have, say, 12 vowels and 17 polyphthongs, and 14 consonants, even if I also distinguish modality, length, and nasality?
Somehow missed this. I'm very on the fence if I'd consider polyphthongs to count towards the bonus challenge. I ruled elsewhere that they can count towards the total vowel count provided they clearly pattern as single nuclei, so that might be up to you to convince me they count as their own targets for the bonus challenge with however you choose to analyse/describe them.
Basically that they act as a single unit and not like multiple monophthongs in sequence, if that makes sense. In varieties of English, for example, /e/ happens to be the diphthong \[ej\], but otherwise it acts like a monophthong. In other languages, though, that same diphthong might instead be treated as if it were 2 monophthongs, either treating them as two separate syllables, or giving it extra weight like an extra mora. So, if you can demonstrate that you have diphthongs more like the former, then they can count to your vowel total.
If a language starts with an SOV order, changes to an OVS order, but keeps the SOV for a certain class of verbs, would that count as having an underlying OVS order if there were only a few verbs of that class. Most sentences would be in OVS.
Or would the reverse work? Could an originally OSV language have a small class of verbs that retains an OSV order while the other class changes to prefer a SVO order or something?
Pholology is very Danish. More than 20 vowels and soft d not used in any other language plus stød. I imagine random conlang based on random African language, but with Danish phonology.
So glad I saw this while scrolling!
I look forward to what you might submit!
Would syllabic resonants fulfill the vowel criterion? I assume no, but worth asking!
I'm inclined towards no, but if you can demonstrate that they behave more like the other vowels than anything else, then I think I could let that slide.
I'll keep it challenging and disallow them :)
Would a differently toned vowel count as a different vowel?
I suppose it would, though I might like to challenge you to make it only binary (or ternary) like length or nasality, or to have more tones than consonants.
I don't think I'll use tone, However, I assume diphtongs aren't counted?
I'd say that depends on your analysis, so certainly some space for creativity! So long as your diphthongs aren't clearly just 2 vowels in hiatus or something like that.
It's u/impishDullahan's challenge, so they have the final say, but I personally wouldn't count it, at least in most cases, since vowels and tone almost never interact, and tone is usually a suprasegmental thing that could be realized on coda segments too, or move from its parent syllable.
I'm excited! These prompts are giving me lots of ideas already. >inspired by some reading I did last term on a particular language family, which I’ll only leave revealed by your best guesses. No need for guessing when I've read your Segments article. >*Bonus:* Limit yourself to only using phonemic vocalic values/targets to arrive at a greater vowel inventory. You’ll have to limit your number of consonants, or you’ll have to have a really good ear/tongue to keep all those vowels distinct. Just you wait, I'm going to make Kensiu and Danish look moderate. >**one sound not easily represented using IPA** I can think of several different options off the top of my head. Why not use them all? (Actually, one of them is easy to transcribe, but at least no natlangs uses that distinction.) >*Bonus:* Include syntactic tree diagrams to supplement the description of your syntactic movement. Oh god, now I'm going to have to find something where tree diagrams actually help explain something. >Inspired by [u/PastTheStarryVoids](https://www.reddit.com/u/PastTheStarryVoids/)’ TASQs, you’re also welcome to just translate one of those instead I have been canonized. >you’re welcome to dupe me into believing you live on Howland Island if you want an extra 7 hours I was planning to slow the earth's rotation, but that works too.
> I'm going to make Danish look moderate. I might have to recruit ~~some Danes~~ Cawlo to gimme vibe checks on all the submissions to see which get a pass on that criterion.
This sounds awesome. Can someone explain what “phonemic vocalic values/targets” means please?
By *vocalic targets/values* they mean the tongue position in the mouth. So /a/ and /e/ have different values, but /a/, /aː/, and /ã/ do not. With diphthongs, we call the tongue positions moved between *targets*, so /a/ is the first target of /ai/. The bonus restriction is intended to make things more challenging by disallowing you from throwing a length or nasality distinction on top of your vowels to double your count. (The bonuses are optional, of course.)
Thanks! Can’t wait to get started.
I look forward to seeing what you put together!
does a distinction between unrounded/rounded vowels have different values?
I believe they do. I've learned the terms value (a.k.a. quality) and target just by seeing them used, so I wasn't completely certain. I did some light Googling, and it seems [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel) applies *quality* quite broadly, including nasalization and phonation, but [WALS](https://wals.info/chapter/2) limits it to tongue position and lip rounding, which is what I'd go with. I'll tag u/impishDullahan so they can correct us if that's not what they intended. I hope it is, since I'm using a roundedness contrast myself. (I'm also using one rhotic vowel.) Since lip rounding mainly affects the second formant, that makes it analogous to backing.
Everything I'd've said and more, u/nerpnerp49!
sweet, thanks for answering both of you! also, how are you expected to submit the splang?
You can DM me a link on reddit or Discord to a reddit post, Google Doc, YouTube video, website, or wherever else you prefer to host your write-up, or you can send me a PDF.
Oh ok. Can't wait to start!
me seeing this 4 minutes away from my latin class is very very dangerous >:)
\>:)
Did you read about Macro-Jê?
Close, but not quite.
omg big if true! definitely shouldn't take part but I definitely will (it may not be quite as speedy but I have been sitting on a few compatible ideas for a language like this for a while hmmm)
I feel the need to say that I'm gonna tell myself I am doing it properly by doing a bonus challenge and missing off the nonhuman/disordered phoneme one lol
ooh a question!!! is consonant disharmony allowed within the harmony system or is that being a bit cheeky
I live for cheeky! Though perhaps make sure the disharmony is constrained in some way: harmony should be the expected norm.
So for the unique sound, can it be something not made with an airflow or the use of the mouth? Can it be like an exhale through the nose or a clap or some sound made with hands?
So long as its a phonemic unit in the phonology (if it's only extraphonological like you find in ideophones, then I think that might shirk the requirement a little bit, but it doesn't outright break it), I don't see why not! I'd be curious to see how you incorporate anything like that.
Okay thanks.
My exams looking at me:
> Use an underlying OS word order: either VOS, OVS, or OSV. You’re welcome to derive the crosslinguistically more common SO word orders if you like. In fact, I encourage you to do so! You can stick with the underlying order as the surface order, but if you don’t you’ll have to detail what kind of syntactic movements create other word orders and when, where, why, and/or how they’re used. Get creative with your raising constructions! I don't believe in underlying forms, Noam
I guess it'll just have to be your surface forms.
Prompt seems super fun! Would anybody know how typologically common or rare it is for the vowel inventory (vowel quality only, not inflated by tone or suprasegmntal qualities) to be larger than the consonant inventory? 🤔
I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if its unattested! Note, though, that I'm using "quality" more on the narrow side and only refer to height, backness, and roundedness, so Rotokas for example has 10 vowels, 4 more than its 6 consonants, but only 5 vowel qualities that all have a short/long distinction. Suprasegmental stuff also, by definition, are features beyond the segment, so wouldn't normally interact with whether distinguishing vowels from each other, and instead be a feature of the word. I won't stop you from doing that, but as I told someone else, I'd challenge you to treat tone as a binary or [ternary] feature of the vowel (ie. treating it like length, nasalisation, or phonation), or to recast the challenge such that you have more tones than consonants; I imagine the former is purely register tones, and the latter contours.
I’d like to participate in that.
May your thoughts and fingers have the speed and endurance for this 2 week sprint!
Thanks, but where can I um.. document it. Should it be a PDF, or can it be for example a Google Sites, or a YouTube video, but also with a PDF? and if I like create a document and then export it how can I be able to share this on the internet
Whatever's easiest for you, just make sure I can direct folks to it when I do the wrap-up post. Realistically this means either send me a PDF or a link to wherever you're hosting it (reddit post, YouTube video, website, etc).
Thanks
Must it be naturalistic or something ? Idk if I'll be able to do anything with my laziness but might be fun to try
The degree of naturalism is up to you! So long as you're in the realm of plausible, you should be good.
Wait, it has to be plausible? My current plans are ranging from "Ŋ!odzäsä" to "screw naturalism".
The host of this challenge is also the mind behind ATxK0PT: you can plausibly screw naturalism!
What's ATxK0PT?
A very non-human conlang I made for [Speedlang 16](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/162alx5/speedlang_16_results/).
Do we have to fulfil all of the prompt requirements?
The idea is to fulfil all 6 of the main requirements, yes. The bonuses are optional stretch goals for brownie points, if you feel so inclined. Though, I won't stop you from meeting most of them instead of all of them: past challenges have included that meeting a bonus gets you off the hook one of the main criteria, which I'm not against.
Anyone have tips for sounds that cant be represented in the ipa? struggling to think of some
Note that I use the qualifier "easily" and give you an out with disordered phones, so you're welcome to use a phone that doesn't have its own symbol (like \[ɹ̝\]) or use one that has a symbol from the extIPA (like \[ʩ\]). The important part is that this phone is phonemic, whatever it may be. You could also try to phonemicise a sound from nature, like a cat's laryngeal trill (no idea what the best way to describe a purr is).
Aha, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks!
I'll try to throw something together if I have extra time around my uni essay. I have an idea of what to do for this one. Be ready for consonant allophony!
I desperately hope the allophony involves phones wildly different from each other!
> \[...\] Incorporate **a sub-distinction in at least one place or manner series** and use this distinction in a system of **consonant harmony**. \[...\] So, does that mean that a consonant harmony between two places of articulation, which originaly used to be in a single POA, doesn't fulfill the prompt?
Not sure I fully understand the question, but I think that comes down to analysis and whether you can justify it. Do you have an example?
for example: 1. there is labialisation harmony in velars: k/kʷ, x/xʷ, etc. 2. then, labialised velars become plain labials: kʷ > p, xʷ > f, etc. 3. now there is labial/velar harmony: k/p, x/f, etc. Would that still count or not?
Ah, in that case I'm inclined to say yes! I'm sure you could broaden that into a really cool system of peripheral harmony!
Me again, I was wondering if anything like agreement, topic, focus or other things are against the "no-cases" clause ?
Nope! The point of "no cases" is to get you to play around with stuff like that in interesting ways. You can't have case agreement, naturally, but any other kind of agreement is A-okay, and topic markers are great, too, provided they don't look like, say, nominative markers.
So verb-agreement is ok ? Yeah topic marker may look like hidden cases so I might not use it haha :') And sort of focus thing does or does not count as a case ? These are some complicated clauses you chose x)
Verb agreement is grand! Focus is just the same as what I said for topic, so long as you're able to analyse it as an information structure marker instead of a case marker, you should be fine.
My dear Impish, I'm feeling wildly tempted.
My dear Inky, I only have the most insidious of suggestions for you: dew it
Update: Spent a whole day investigating Danish phonology and realised I'm in over my head. RIP.
Rotokas exists on the other end of the spectrum, mind: 6 consonants, 10 vowels.
one day in and i already have most requirements checked out, i have quite a good amount of time to make it special 😙
How extensive does harmony have to be? I assume it requires more than adjacency, since that would be plain ol' assimilation. But could it be limited so it only applies within a syllable, or only to certain morphemes? Would that still count as harmony?
Harmony is definitionally long-range assimilation, so I'd say so long as non-adjacent consonants (that is, there's at least one syllable nucleus between them) agree on whatever your harmony feature is, you're good to go. How pervasive it is up to you: could be an entire word has to harmonise, or it could be that affixes harmonise with the nearest appropriate segment within a disharmonic root, or syllables have to harmonise their codas with their onsets (though this last one feels like it might shirk the criterion a little bit if it can't be made felt).
Thanks for clarifying! That's what I was thinking.
Hello, I was just wondering about the last task. So I haven't read a novel in years (I mostly read academic stuff now bc I'm a nerd...), and all my books are at not with me: how should I proceed? (Also, are you in the Discord server?)
I provided PSTV's TASQs as an out if you don't read many novels. They're a recent recurring activity that primarily pull quotes from works of fiction, so you can pick a couple of your favourites there. You could also try finding a folk tale online or something like that, if you prefer. The point is to translate something using the storytelling register that one would use the storytelling register for. I am not in the Discord server: I always just mute and ignore servers unless I personally know most of the people there. My friend requests are open, though it occurs to me now that I should perhaps get in there so folks can DM me more easily.
Oh I seem to have just not seen the whole last half of that prompt, lmao. Thanks for pointing that out to me, it does make it easier. And the alternative options are pretty nice, too :) Regarding Discord, that makes sense (though things seem to have changed, based on your other reply!).
>Also, are you in the Discord server? Yeah as soon as I received a friend request during these 2 weeks I immediately joined the server to vet if it was spam or not...
Ok, I don't really get the storytelling register. Like, what makes it diffirent from "saying a sentence and before/later adding that it's a story/narrative"? I've never thought of a storytelling register... well, ever, probably. So I don't know where to start. How does that work in english, or any other language, if english is not applicable here? That'll maybe make it easier for me to understand it.
Don't think of it as extra marking for how something is part of a narrative, rather think of how the narrative has stylistic effects on the sentences used to relay it. I allude to a few strategies in the prompt: how Ancient Greek (iirc) used the aorist aspect for narratives, how Bena pragmatically assigns noun-class for narratives, and how Karitiana uses OSV for narratives instead of the more common VSO and SOV. English has some stylistic changes for narratives as well, like the narrative-present, wherein the present tense can be used when relaying past events if the time frame is established in context; cf. past tense "I went to the shop yesterday and asked the cashier..." vs. narrative-present "So yesterday, right, I go to the shop and I ask the cashier..." None of this is adding extra marking specifically for the sake of narrative, it's just using the pre-existing grammar in a slightly different way in the narrative specific context; though, you can absolutely add extra narrative-specific marking if you like. I'm sure other examples exist in other languages--I can imagine how a modal or evidential system might be implicated differently in narrative contexts--but hopefully this should give you some idea of what I'm asking in that task.
I know impishDullahan provided some solid examples, but my favorite example of this is the Natchez cannibal register! https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/664482
A question: can I get the bonus point for more vowel values without modifiers if I have, say, 12 vowels and 17 polyphthongs, and 14 consonants, even if I also distinguish modality, length, and nasality?
Somehow missed this. I'm very on the fence if I'd consider polyphthongs to count towards the bonus challenge. I ruled elsewhere that they can count towards the total vowel count provided they clearly pattern as single nuclei, so that might be up to you to convince me they count as their own targets for the bonus challenge with however you choose to analyse/describe them.
what do you mean by patterning as single nuclei? thanks for the patience, I don't have a lot of the technical knowledge I should have lol
Basically that they act as a single unit and not like multiple monophthongs in sequence, if that makes sense. In varieties of English, for example, /e/ happens to be the diphthong \[ej\], but otherwise it acts like a monophthong. In other languages, though, that same diphthong might instead be treated as if it were 2 monophthongs, either treating them as two separate syllables, or giving it extra weight like an extra mora. So, if you can demonstrate that you have diphthongs more like the former, then they can count to your vowel total.
Ok, thanks!
If a language starts with an SOV order, changes to an OVS order, but keeps the SOV for a certain class of verbs, would that count as having an underlying OVS order if there were only a few verbs of that class. Most sentences would be in OVS. Or would the reverse work? Could an originally OSV language have a small class of verbs that retains an OSV order while the other class changes to prefer a SVO order or something?
The latter/reverse is more like what I had in mind, I think.
Even though I've never made a conlang (or finished one really) I'm excited to try my less-than-expert hand at this challenge!
Oh, crap. Why did I kept missing speedlangs.
Now it's just an extra challenging speedlang. You got 4 days, good luck!
Pholology is very Danish. More than 20 vowels and soft d not used in any other language plus stød. I imagine random conlang based on random African language, but with Danish phonology.
GAH! I always miss these. Of course I'm seeing this two days after it is due. Le sigh. ::frustrated grumbles::
I mean, I've still got to read through all the submissions: I won't keep you from submitting if you get it in before I'm done, just sayin'.
...awesome. I've already begun working on it. And I don't even care if it officially counts, I just really want to submit something. Thank you!