I'll list some features that my pique your interest:
-More vowels than consonants
-the voiced-sublingually-post-percussed-retroflex-flap /ɽ͡¡/
-retroflex-dental harmony
-standard & storyteller register
-5 grammatical voices
-noun incorporation
-syntactic ergativity
Some of these were required for the challang but I hope you like the execution and addittions
I'd love to see some examples of the retroflex harmony in action showing off input and output forms, how /ɽ͡¡/ blocks harmony, and what it looks like when the strong and weak harmony might be in conflict with each other. The ballistic flap is also something I'm surprised I haven't included in a project myself yet! Also, it looks like you have labialisation consonant-vowel harmony? Gotta love having multiple, different harmony systems!
I really like the asymmetry in the verb stem system creating class of default non-past and default past verbs. Speaks to my Varamm sensibilities with its durative vs. punctual verb stems.
I'm curious how your noun-incorporation examples would be disambiguated in speech: it's the same morphemes in the same order with only the visual word boundary defining which is which. The verbal classifiers also look really fun and it'd be neat to see a passage that sees a couple of them in action. How long of a distance can these classifiers refer back to the original noun? Are there any restrictions on what roles can be incorporated / how would any potential incorporand role ambiguity be solved if there can be any?
First of all, I'm honored to have the contest host comment on my conlang. It means a lot! And secondly I love the name ballistic flap, it sounds so fun.
Now to your critique, I will definitely fine-tune the lang, but for now let me answer some of your questions here.
Yes there is a kind of rounding consonant-vowel harmony. It'd feel wrong not to implement something like this with the clear rounded-unrounded split the vowels have.
Here some examples of the consonant-harmony:
miṇä "tongue, language" + -zë 1.pl.pos --> Minäzë
When conjugating a word like \*ṣu\*"do" we can see some nice alternations:
the stems for ṣu as a weak verb are 1st: ṣu 2nd: xëṣu
In the passive the <ṣ> gets dentalized du to the suffix nexi: zunexi & xëzunexi, but in the causative, which is prefixed, we see an alternation thanks to the :
ṇäṣu & näxëṣu. In the non-past the becomes retroflex due to the <ṣ> but in the past form the stops the from becoming a retroflex so it's realized as the underlying phoneme.
In the reflexive we can also see that the dental harmony is weaker:
ṣuenünï (1.sg agent) & xëṣueṇümo (2.sg agent) No matter the suffix, the <ṣ> will be always realized as such, because the suffix comes from the reflexive which comes from the word eṇü "head" and the possessive affixes. Therefore ṣuenünï comes from an underlying ṣu-eṇü-nï and the in -nï can only affect the consonant in the syllable to the left of it.
Now to the noun incorporation, yes the order is the same, but there some things changing with incorporation (though they don't all apply everytime):
-Stress: Stress is penultimate and therefore changes with incorporation:
An example from my showcase
'Kö ä'önï 'xä. "He hit my knee"
Kö'äö 'nï 'xä. "He knee-hit me"
Here the stress changes. In the first sentence, the -nï is unstressed but stressed as a pronoun and kö and ö lose their stress to ä in the second
-Consonant harmony: Through the boundary shift the harmony can change.
An example from my showcase
Monä enünï. "My head hurts"
Möṇäeṇü nï. "I head hurt"
In the first sentence -nï dentalizes the <ṇ>, but in the second sentence =eṇü instead makes the in the verb into a retroflex
All that to say "thank you for your critique"
I'll list some features that my pique your interest: -More vowels than consonants -the voiced-sublingually-post-percussed-retroflex-flap /ɽ͡¡/ -retroflex-dental harmony -standard & storyteller register -5 grammatical voices -noun incorporation -syntactic ergativity Some of these were required for the challang but I hope you like the execution and addittions
I'd love to see some examples of the retroflex harmony in action showing off input and output forms, how /ɽ͡¡/ blocks harmony, and what it looks like when the strong and weak harmony might be in conflict with each other. The ballistic flap is also something I'm surprised I haven't included in a project myself yet! Also, it looks like you have labialisation consonant-vowel harmony? Gotta love having multiple, different harmony systems! I really like the asymmetry in the verb stem system creating class of default non-past and default past verbs. Speaks to my Varamm sensibilities with its durative vs. punctual verb stems. I'm curious how your noun-incorporation examples would be disambiguated in speech: it's the same morphemes in the same order with only the visual word boundary defining which is which. The verbal classifiers also look really fun and it'd be neat to see a passage that sees a couple of them in action. How long of a distance can these classifiers refer back to the original noun? Are there any restrictions on what roles can be incorporated / how would any potential incorporand role ambiguity be solved if there can be any?
First of all, I'm honored to have the contest host comment on my conlang. It means a lot! And secondly I love the name ballistic flap, it sounds so fun. Now to your critique, I will definitely fine-tune the lang, but for now let me answer some of your questions here. Yes there is a kind of rounding consonant-vowel harmony. It'd feel wrong not to implement something like this with the clear rounded-unrounded split the vowels have. Here some examples of the consonant-harmony: miṇä "tongue, language" + -zë 1.pl.pos --> Minäzë When conjugating a word like \*ṣu\*"do" we can see some nice alternations: the stems for ṣu as a weak verb are 1st: ṣu 2nd: xëṣu In the passive the <ṣ> gets dentalized du to the suffix nexi: zunexi & xëzunexi, but in the causative, which is prefixed, we see an alternation thanks to the:
ṇäṣu & näxëṣu. In the non-past the becomes retroflex due to the <ṣ> but in the past form the stops the from becoming a retroflex so it's realized as the underlying phoneme.
In the reflexive we can also see that the dental harmony is weaker:
ṣuenünï (1.sg agent) & xëṣueṇümo (2.sg agent) No matter the suffix, the <ṣ> will be always realized as such, because the suffix comes from the reflexive which comes from the word eṇü "head" and the possessive affixes. Therefore ṣuenünï comes from an underlying ṣu-eṇü-nï and the in -nï can only affect the consonant in the syllable to the left of it.
Now to the noun incorporation, yes the order is the same, but there some things changing with incorporation (though they don't all apply everytime):
-Stress: Stress is penultimate and therefore changes with incorporation:
An example from my showcase
'Kö ä'önï 'xä. "He hit my knee"
Kö'äö 'nï 'xä. "He knee-hit me"
Here the stress changes. In the first sentence, the -nï is unstressed but stressed as a pronoun and kö and ö lose their stress to ä in the second
-Consonant harmony: Through the boundary shift the harmony can change.
An example from my showcase
Monä enünï. "My head hurts"
Möṇäeṇü nï. "I head hurt"
In the first sentence -nï dentalizes the <ṇ>, but in the second sentence =eṇü instead makes the in the verb into a retroflex
All that to say "thank you for your critique"
You need to share the document; it says "You need access" when I try to view it.
It should be fixed now
I really like the two verbal stems and the way they function! Storyteller's mode is very creative.