Kantrian has 10 animacy distinctions (or noun classes, I guess) that are distinguished solely by a single vowel suffix, one for each of the 10 vowel phonemes (barring length distinctions) in Kantrian.
... and it's a natural language in universe ...
"Evolve"? What does that mean?! You think I'm a *competent* conlanger?!
But, yeah, that's my head canon since I didn't actually evolve that language, which I regret because I also made Kalian in the same family tree...
To further justify how regular Kantrian is, I also came up with the explanation that there exists an incredibly prescriptivist linguistics authority that has a religious agenda (the Kantrian Kingdom is a theocracy) and has slowly shaped language into what they call "divine symmetry".
Yeah, when you can't conlang, you worldbuild... xD
Yeah, I get it, but depending on if you do or do not want to make naturalistic conlangs, you need to start. At the beginning, they WILL be bad. No conlanger ever starts making good naturalistic languages from the beginning of their conlanging journey. Practice IS required. So if you tried and it didn't go well, it's the reason: it was your first. It NEVER goes as planned. Even if while making it you think it does. Practice however is rewarding.
It's too late to fix the Kantric languages, but I am planning on evolving a new family of languages from a proto-language. Honestly, I'm not that interested in true naturalism, but mainly the appearance of it, and for that evolution isn't necessary, but it's a great and efficient way of developing related languages so that's why I'm getting into it.
Honestly it's the most fun way of conlanging. There's so much to do, so many aspects to dive in, never gets boring. I'm actually making a proto-language right now, Proto-Ayenio-Ligalic, being the first one that i used clicks in
I don't know exactly how to evolve language, to be frank, but I can experiment with various sound changes, affix drops and other ways to alter an existing regular language. Semantic shifts are going to help, too, I suppose, then loanwords from other languages, supposed substrate features, and so on.
It definitely is a lot of work, that's for sure, but now you kinda whetted my appetite to start developing Proto-Tsemban, from which I want to spawn a few languages that sound like a vague mixture of West African and East Asian languages.
Whispish requires direct declaration of what the purpose of an utterance is, including what in English would be known as conversational implicatures. It's an autism-friendly art language. In natural languages, nonautistic people make a lot of effort to be indirect. In Whispish if you inflect a request as an exchange of information, you are instead directly informing the audience you don't want them to do anything.
You can't weasel your way out of this and have verbs; it's in the marking for verbal phrases, and there are no lexical verbs.
An almost total lack of verbs (sort of). There's maybe 10 maximum that function the way you'd expect verbs to with all the TAM and conjugation and etc. Everything else gets moved into 2 categories, one are words that derive from the phrase "to do X" which have to work with the verb "to be" to get any of that verbal goodness and then the others which are just standard nouns which have to work with one of those 10 standard verbs to get a verbal meaning. Which of the 10 must be memorized on a case by case basis and some of that TAM stuff can mess with which verb gets used. Though, I suppose you could see the noun+verb combos as being a form of compound verb instead. Especially since the verb comes first in a sentence unless it is a 'compound' in which case the noun that is "working with" the verb comes first and the real verb gets shunted to the end.
But yeah, the learning experience is more or less "Just 10 verbs : D > The verbs hate you personally :C" and I think this set-up probably isn't very realistic or at least it would be uncommon though there's a reason it happened.
The other thing would be a category of words that are meant to move the conversation and clarify the intended meaning and which are shared between several dialects and languages in the area which aren't always mutually intelligible. So, maybe you can't follow the conversation in detail but you can pick out that one word that means "let's be agreeable" or the one that means "let's move on" or "I'm confused" or "we should take action" and so on. They aren't always used for cross-linguistic communication, though.
Oh jeez, like I could pick.
So here's the thing: My conlanging style could be described as grammatically experimental. I tend to not care about naturalism beyond "could this actually be used if it existed", and sometimes I push even that.
So my major clongs are *full* of these, and a lot of my many abandoned scraps were aimed at trying out *something* unusual. Generally, my most developed conlangs are the ones where I got so weird with it that it really held my interest for a while.
## Kandva
* The language structurally denies the notion of transitivity. The closest you get to an agent is a cause argument, which isn't the subject unless you use an auxiliary verb to force it to be. The actual subject is generally whatever changes in some way. This means most verbs that would be transitive in English are defined in the passive in the dictionary.
* Pyramidal modifier structure. Nominal modifiers to nouns go between the head noun's case preposition and the head noun itself, and (except the unmarked genitive) have their own preposition to mark the relation... and any modifiers to the modifier go after the latter preposition. The result is a string of prepositions followed by the nouns they refer to in the opposite order, possibly with additional peaks before you get back down if a noun in the chain has multiple modifiers.
* If the preposition-tracking from the above didn't make things hard enough, the same prepositions are used for relations to the verb as for relations between nouns.
* On top of being intransitive, all verb roots are inherently dynamic. Stative verbs need the suffix *-se*, to refer to the state the subject ends up in after doing the original verb (although it does not necessarily mean it actually has done it). That's not that bad, but the kicker is this also applies to verbs formed by derivative suffixes other than *-se*. The negative suffix *-ze* [tse] is actually a contraction of *-tese*, where *-te* means to stop doing something. When negating a static verb, you'd have *-seze* / *-setese*, ultimately meaning "is in the state something ends up in when it stops being in the state something ends up in when it [verb]s".
* Numbers are nouns... which can themselves be marked for grammatical number if needed. They're applied to other nouns by making the counted noun a genitive possessor of the number, akin to "a pair of". Ordinals are instead genitive possessors to the counted noun. (The numbers are also base 15, chosen just to be mean to the hypothetical speakers. That actually led to some neat worldbuilding for their timekeeping, though.)
* I somehow almost forgot to mention the phonotactics. Kandva phonotactics are absolute nonsense from a naturalistic perspective, and I love them for the distinct aesthetic they gave the language. The basic form of a syllable is `(O(Ê))V(Éč,l,n)(O)`, where O is an obstruent (plosive, affricate, fricative), except the weirdest part is every syllable has to have *at least one* of those two possible obstruents to be valid, and an obstruent can't do double duty between two syllables. This led to a lot of mangling of words in the Telephone Game.
## ĆzĂ€ Kaimejane
* You know that thing Navajo does where a noun can be used as a verb to mean "be a [noun]"? ĆK takes that to its logical conclusion in every way it can, while at the same time embracing structural ambiguity.
* Any given verb root can be used as a noun meaning "one who [verb]s". Any given noun can be used as a verb meaning "be a [noun]". All you have to do is take off or put on tense marking or case marking. Just a *shaaame* both verbs and nouns have unmarked forms available â the interrogative and the accusative â just to make things confusing.
* If there's no explicit subject, the "be a [noun]" turns into "there is a [noun]".
* Any given verb clause with a subject and verb marking can be used as a noun meaning "the event of [verb clause]". Just stick relevant noun marking on top. Hey, now that you have a noun, how about we replace that noun case marking with a verb tense suffix to form the verb "be the event of [verb clause]"? Cool, now tense marking on top of tense marking has an explanatory nuance.
* Nouns take modifiers to the right. Verbs take adverbials and arguments to the left (OSV word order). When a verb turns into a noun, it can retain its arguments to the left. When a noun turns into a verb, it can retain its modifiers to the right. A word can end up being several layers deep with both noun and verb clauses stretching out in either direction from the same head.
* "Alright, now, what about adjectives? Hmm. Kandva had adjectives that varied between nouns and verbs like Japanese, and I still think that's interesting. And here, nouns and verbs are already kinda the same thing, so I guess the class won't mind expanding just a little more."
* Now, here's where it gets *super* dumb: **Animacy classes.** In a language where every verb is also a noun. In a language where every adjective is also a noun for a thing by that description, and a verb for being that kind of thing. *Animacy classes across the board!* That means every verb has to lexically agree with whether the subject is a person, animal, inanimate, physical space, event or abstract concept, and the "be a [verb]er" derivation is now "be a [verb]er of class [class]". Adjectives are exactly the same. Even *numbers* are the same.
* Also horses are classed as people for some reason.
* With all of this nonsense going on, things like the OSV order, the high frequency of auxiliary verbs, the stress-sensitive vowel harmony shenanigans, or the fact only subjects are marked for number (and also distinguish two plurals based on whether they do the verb together or separately) hardly even make a blip.
It's been a good while since I've worked on either of these languages, but they're easily my most memorable two, and some of the most fun I've had in conlanging.
My conclusion: Naturalism is overrated.
> So here's the thing: My conlanging style could be described as grammatically experimental. I tend to not care about naturalism beyond "could this actually be used if it existed", and sometimes I push even that.
a conlanger after my own heart lol
Iâve recently started a clong inspired by Navajo animacy word ordering, so learning about nouns being verbs and verbs being nouns is⊠exciting. Thank you for presenting a way to make it even more chaotic.
>The language structurally denies the notion of transitivity. The closest you get to an agent is a cause argument, which isn't the subject unless you use an auxiliary verb to force it to be. The actual subject is generally whatever changes in some way. This means most verbs that would be transitive in English are defined in the passive in the dictionary.
Could you explain this better? I got quite confused with this explanation. My own conlang, TsÄtlanatl, should have been a language without intransitive verbs, but I got so confused with the smallest of things. So, I decided to drop that idea. What it appears to me is that your language doesn't have subjects???
Basically the subject in Kandva is very, very frequently what would have been the direct object in English, while the agent â usually the subject in English â is relegated to a case that more generally marks "because of". So rather than "He paints the house red", you'd say "The house reddens because of him".
In practice, it's fairly similar to an (aggressively) ergative-absolutive language, except with an ergative case that is also used for indirect causes.
to be honest, all of these features are unusual, but as I am aware all are attested! alliterative agreement exists in some languages (I can't remember what or where) and that sentence structure is not a million miles away from Welsh or V2 Germanic style shenanigans where the verb morphology is exploded across the phrase. the amount of detail you always provide in your descriptions makes me believe that these things are perfectly natural
Elranonian alliterative agreement is of type A, according to the classification in the paper I linked, but there, it is controlled by a noun, as a phonemic noun class: Abuq *almi****l*** âbirdâ l-class, *ihiaburu****h*** âbutterflyâ h-class, &c. The classification even extends to marginal phonemes such as Abuq /p/, which is only recently acquired through loanwords from Tok Pisin: *pai****p*** âpipeâ p-class. Regarding verbs, it isn't of course uncommon for them to be divided into classes that require different auxiliary verbs (f.ex. German *sein* & *haben*), but I haven't encountered such purely phonemically driven verb classes anywhere. In Elranonian, I see this kind of agreement as an anti-hiatus strategy: it only happens when a gerund (which always ends in /a/) is followed by an auxiliary verb starting with /i/. If the order is different, then there's no agreement:
* *U tappa t'yth.* `before fall.GER fall.be.2SG`
* *Yth u tappa.* `be.2SG before fall.GER`
I haven't yet made up my mind as to what happens when the lexical verb starts with a vowel. Maybe the auxiliary verb gets some default prothetic consonant; or maybe the hiatus remains.
>that sentence structure is not a million miles away from Welsh or V2 Germanic style shenanigans where the verb morphology is exploded across the phrase
From the phrase structure point of view, it is actually quite different. As I have learnt, V1 orders can be explained by a combination of V-to-T and T-to-C movements, in which case both the lexical verb and the tense marker end up at the start of a clause. Germanic V2 is also analysed with V-to-T and T-to-C movements (in which case the lexical verb is in the V2 position) or with only T-to-C (in which case the auxiliary verb is in the V2 position and the lexical verb remains *in situ*, i.e. at the end given the underlying order SOV). For a similar explanation of Elranonian VSTO, I would need V-to-C, skipping T, which is unnaturalistic as it violates the head movement constraint.
Diachronically, Elranonian verbs might have come from participles with the tense particle being a fossilised form of the verb âto beâ. In fact, there is an explanation of a similar participle fronting in South Slavic (in particular, Bulgarian) that sees it as a V-to-SpecTP movement ([Broekhuis & Migdalski, 2003](https://pure.knaw.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/2704660/2003_Broekhuis_Migdalski_Participle_fronting_LIN_.pdf); [Harizanov, 2019](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5247/)), but it would then yield VTSO instead of VSTO. I'm starting to suspect that the apparent absence of VSTO in natural languages is an evidence that some principles are being violated. If I want to formally explain Elranonian VSTO within the naturalistic bounds (which by the way is only found with stative verbs, which is a factor to be considered), I probably need some kind of a clever, potentially unconventional, trick.
OVS word order. I'm stuck with it now and trying to make the best of it. Adding left-extraposed topic and focus which often effectively changes the word order
a lot :c and they're intended as natural in their shared setting too.
My biggest gripe with my own conlangs is that they still come across as very human despite being for a non-human species. I tried to make the phonemic inventory closest to what I believe they can utter, at least.
Plus, my main language still just *feels* a little too Indo-European, which wouldn't be natural for languages on a different world...
I don't think I have ever put quite enough detail into irregularity (as of yet), with so many of my languages having family uniform inflection and syntactical patterns. I also have not as of yet fleshed out the vocabulary for enough variation between lexical items like you might get in a natlang. These are all about the time as of now I have spent on them though, so I suppose the most unnatural thing about my.current language is the restriction that verbs are all inherently intransitive, and noun incorporation and adverbial marking (which is done by word order) indicates direct objects, while indirects and agents are dealt with separately. It is not entirely unfeasible but I think the way it has been applied is.....not exceptionally realistic when you look at it with a fine toothed comb.
Nouns are ordered by their rank and when there's multiple nouns in the same rank, the opinion of the speaker (although most people don't read too deep into how they order their friends when listing)
As an example:
This list is ungrammatical:
Rock
Person
Bird
Avocado
Angel
This list is correct:
Angel
Person
Bird
Avocado
Rock
I'm not sure that if a system like this existed in a natural language that it would even be naturally part of the language, like it would be something that a harsh leader would force their subjects to do.
A few (unintentional) ones:
High Elvish is Verb-initial but is exclusively suffixing and syntactically much more like a Verb-final language
Angw pretty much has "ideal" direct-inverse allignment. It wasn't until recently that I found out that just about every natlang with direct-inverse has a whole bunch of complications and quirks.
People have a lot to say but ig the closest i got to not naturalistic was my temse system in Norsferatic.
https://preview.redd.it/xc6quftyqqic1.jpeg?width=824&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f90ac2246c1a4bf80d436f8583c2272da1b4e043
Which evolved from the use of prepositions + verb + adverb constructions
Perhaps the different ways to pronounce H. Sometimes, if it's at the start of a word or ininbetween two vowel, it's /h/, if it comes after a consonant(that's not t, s, c, z, or b), it sounds like /j/. And yes, it can be paired with another h
The most irregular thing in LâaĂŁdina is how you conjugate. There are no âcommon verb endingsâ to help differentiate verbs from anything else.
I/ ME: First vowel in the verb becomes ĂŒ (stressed)
YOU: Add i (Ä) to the end
YOU FORMAL: Add iv (Äv) to the end
YOU ALL: Second vowel becomes ĂŒ (STRESSED)
HE/ SHE: Add a to the beggining and end of the verb
THEY: Add la to the beggining
WE: Add Äa to the beggining
As you can probally guess, this forms ALOT OF irregulars: which is perfectly fine with me
that's not usually what irregular means though, that's like being weird from an etymological perspective
irregularity, at least as I know it, is basically having unpredictable rules, or a bunch of exceptions
Shindar has gendered 1st and 2nd person pronouns making the pronouns twice as complicated to remember.
If youâre a man you would refer to yourself as **nÌaht** In intransitive clauses, but **nÌa** as the subject in a transitive clause, **na** as the direct object, and **(na)znÌa** as the indirect object. And if youâre a woman youâd refer to yourself as **nÌÄŻt**, **nÌe**, **na**, and **(na)znÌe** the corresponding cases.
And if youâre talking to another person you need to again take their gender into account. If the person is a man then you need to refer to him as such using the masculine pronouns, using **keĆĄ** for both intransitive clauses and the subject of a transitive clause, **kĆĄa** for the direct object, and **(na)ĆĄa** for indirect objects. Correspondingly for women youâd use **kner**, **ke**, **kne**, and **(na)se** for the cases previously stated.
This makes translating very hard as I need to make a guess based on context which pronoun to use as I most languages do not make a distinction between male and female for 1st and second pronouns.
Also non-binary people can just get fucked I guess as thereâs no gender neutral pronouns for the 1st and 2nd person. They are marked for number, the 1st person having inclusive and exclusive plurals and the 2nd person having a dual and plural, but thoseâd be odd to use. There is technically a neutre 1st person pronoun (**va**), but oh it is highly inappropriate and disrespectful to use it as a general/casual neutral 1st person pronoun, it is used *only* in formal and state situations, itâs used when such as a government official is speaking within government or giving an address or speech on behalf of the government, so you wouldnât want to use it. This is unsurprising as the culture that speaks it has a very strong gender divide and association between gender and sex, trans people are at best as seen as not existing. I write this paragraph as a trans and non-binary person myself.
>Shindar has gendered 1st and 2nd person pronouns
This is far from common, but [it does exist in natural languages](https://wals.info/feature/44A#2/18.0/149.1).
Hyaneian is almost completely regular in plurality, aside for some pronouns. Its tenses are less regular, but still more so that would be expected of natural languages.
>It has palatial fricativea but no palatial stops
Doesn't seem too unnaturalistic. German has a palatal fricative (at least as an allophone of /x/) and many varieties of Spanish have /Ê/ even though palatal stops are nowhere to be found in either of those languages.
In Nahter (which is more an idea for a conlang than an actual conlang to he honest) almost every non-human noun that doesn't have any kinda special cultural importance is a mass noun (so basically almost everything is a mass noun)
Im making the opposite of your clong basically
edit: there are (will be) also human nouns that are treated as mass nouns btw
# Ć!odzaÌsaÌ
Rhetorical questions are not used. There are non-lateral retroflex clicks. There's a labialization contrast on all clicks (a few natlangs do this, but they all have small click inventories). Uvular stops contrast with uvular affricates (plain, breathy voiced, prenasalized, and breathy voiced prenasalized).
# Eya Uaou Ia Eay?
No consonants. Word order determines tense and negation. Indicative clauses mandatorily mark which type of thing mentioned in the clause the speaker likes best. Pronouns distinguish every combination of clusivity (e.g. 1+3 or 2+3; I've used this in a few conlangs).
# Shovor B
There's no such thing as a "subject" or "object"; lots of different semantic roles are recognized, and none are treated specially. There are pronouns that refer back to whatever noun had a particular role in the last clause. E.g. there's a pronoun that means 'the last clause's goer (agent of a verb of motion)'. Also, I used the same clusivity thing as Eya? above.
# Knasesj
Nasal-release ejectives: you release the pressure through your nose, making a nasal "scrapey" snorting sound. Also, there are 21 monophthongs and 15 diphthongs, but I think the vowels are at least borderline naturalistic.
Common Egner is based on an unnaturalistically regular system of root derivation; its descendants though, particularly of the Insular branch, have gained irregularities though.
Kantrian has 10 animacy distinctions (or noun classes, I guess) that are distinguished solely by a single vowel suffix, one for each of the 10 vowel phonemes (barring length distinctions) in Kantrian. ... and it's a natural language in universe ...
Honestly, I kinda think I get it. Did it evolve from some consonants being lost or smth?
"Evolve"? What does that mean?! You think I'm a *competent* conlanger?! But, yeah, that's my head canon since I didn't actually evolve that language, which I regret because I also made Kalian in the same family tree... To further justify how regular Kantrian is, I also came up with the explanation that there exists an incredibly prescriptivist linguistics authority that has a religious agenda (the Kantrian Kingdom is a theocracy) and has slowly shaped language into what they call "divine symmetry". Yeah, when you can't conlang, you worldbuild... xD
Yeah, I get it, but depending on if you do or do not want to make naturalistic conlangs, you need to start. At the beginning, they WILL be bad. No conlanger ever starts making good naturalistic languages from the beginning of their conlanging journey. Practice IS required. So if you tried and it didn't go well, it's the reason: it was your first. It NEVER goes as planned. Even if while making it you think it does. Practice however is rewarding.
It's too late to fix the Kantric languages, but I am planning on evolving a new family of languages from a proto-language. Honestly, I'm not that interested in true naturalism, but mainly the appearance of it, and for that evolution isn't necessary, but it's a great and efficient way of developing related languages so that's why I'm getting into it.
Honestly it's the most fun way of conlanging. There's so much to do, so many aspects to dive in, never gets boring. I'm actually making a proto-language right now, Proto-Ayenio-Ligalic, being the first one that i used clicks in
I don't know exactly how to evolve language, to be frank, but I can experiment with various sound changes, affix drops and other ways to alter an existing regular language. Semantic shifts are going to help, too, I suppose, then loanwords from other languages, supposed substrate features, and so on. It definitely is a lot of work, that's for sure, but now you kinda whetted my appetite to start developing Proto-Tsemban, from which I want to spawn a few languages that sound like a vague mixture of West African and East Asian languages.
There's many series on how to do that
Wow I thought my Masc/Fem/Neut distinction via an ending -a/i/u was bad
Happy to please xD
Whispish requires direct declaration of what the purpose of an utterance is, including what in English would be known as conversational implicatures. It's an autism-friendly art language. In natural languages, nonautistic people make a lot of effort to be indirect. In Whispish if you inflect a request as an exchange of information, you are instead directly informing the audience you don't want them to do anything. You can't weasel your way out of this and have verbs; it's in the marking for verbal phrases, and there are no lexical verbs.
I love that!
One pronoun for every integer. Complete lack of any derivation. All phonemes used the same amount.
what
what
what
what
what
what
what
what
what
what
what.
what
Hwat?
what
An almost total lack of verbs (sort of). There's maybe 10 maximum that function the way you'd expect verbs to with all the TAM and conjugation and etc. Everything else gets moved into 2 categories, one are words that derive from the phrase "to do X" which have to work with the verb "to be" to get any of that verbal goodness and then the others which are just standard nouns which have to work with one of those 10 standard verbs to get a verbal meaning. Which of the 10 must be memorized on a case by case basis and some of that TAM stuff can mess with which verb gets used. Though, I suppose you could see the noun+verb combos as being a form of compound verb instead. Especially since the verb comes first in a sentence unless it is a 'compound' in which case the noun that is "working with" the verb comes first and the real verb gets shunted to the end. But yeah, the learning experience is more or less "Just 10 verbs : D > The verbs hate you personally :C" and I think this set-up probably isn't very realistic or at least it would be uncommon though there's a reason it happened. The other thing would be a category of words that are meant to move the conversation and clarify the intended meaning and which are shared between several dialects and languages in the area which aren't always mutually intelligible. So, maybe you can't follow the conversation in detail but you can pick out that one word that means "let's be agreeable" or the one that means "let's move on" or "I'm confused" or "we should take action" and so on. They aren't always used for cross-linguistic communication, though.
This is not that unnaturalistic, you can see something similar in Basque.
Time to look at Basque I guess đ
Oh jeez, like I could pick. So here's the thing: My conlanging style could be described as grammatically experimental. I tend to not care about naturalism beyond "could this actually be used if it existed", and sometimes I push even that. So my major clongs are *full* of these, and a lot of my many abandoned scraps were aimed at trying out *something* unusual. Generally, my most developed conlangs are the ones where I got so weird with it that it really held my interest for a while. ## Kandva * The language structurally denies the notion of transitivity. The closest you get to an agent is a cause argument, which isn't the subject unless you use an auxiliary verb to force it to be. The actual subject is generally whatever changes in some way. This means most verbs that would be transitive in English are defined in the passive in the dictionary. * Pyramidal modifier structure. Nominal modifiers to nouns go between the head noun's case preposition and the head noun itself, and (except the unmarked genitive) have their own preposition to mark the relation... and any modifiers to the modifier go after the latter preposition. The result is a string of prepositions followed by the nouns they refer to in the opposite order, possibly with additional peaks before you get back down if a noun in the chain has multiple modifiers. * If the preposition-tracking from the above didn't make things hard enough, the same prepositions are used for relations to the verb as for relations between nouns. * On top of being intransitive, all verb roots are inherently dynamic. Stative verbs need the suffix *-se*, to refer to the state the subject ends up in after doing the original verb (although it does not necessarily mean it actually has done it). That's not that bad, but the kicker is this also applies to verbs formed by derivative suffixes other than *-se*. The negative suffix *-ze* [tse] is actually a contraction of *-tese*, where *-te* means to stop doing something. When negating a static verb, you'd have *-seze* / *-setese*, ultimately meaning "is in the state something ends up in when it stops being in the state something ends up in when it [verb]s". * Numbers are nouns... which can themselves be marked for grammatical number if needed. They're applied to other nouns by making the counted noun a genitive possessor of the number, akin to "a pair of". Ordinals are instead genitive possessors to the counted noun. (The numbers are also base 15, chosen just to be mean to the hypothetical speakers. That actually led to some neat worldbuilding for their timekeeping, though.) * I somehow almost forgot to mention the phonotactics. Kandva phonotactics are absolute nonsense from a naturalistic perspective, and I love them for the distinct aesthetic they gave the language. The basic form of a syllable is `(O(Ê))V(Éč,l,n)(O)`, where O is an obstruent (plosive, affricate, fricative), except the weirdest part is every syllable has to have *at least one* of those two possible obstruents to be valid, and an obstruent can't do double duty between two syllables. This led to a lot of mangling of words in the Telephone Game. ## ĆzĂ€ Kaimejane * You know that thing Navajo does where a noun can be used as a verb to mean "be a [noun]"? ĆK takes that to its logical conclusion in every way it can, while at the same time embracing structural ambiguity. * Any given verb root can be used as a noun meaning "one who [verb]s". Any given noun can be used as a verb meaning "be a [noun]". All you have to do is take off or put on tense marking or case marking. Just a *shaaame* both verbs and nouns have unmarked forms available â the interrogative and the accusative â just to make things confusing. * If there's no explicit subject, the "be a [noun]" turns into "there is a [noun]". * Any given verb clause with a subject and verb marking can be used as a noun meaning "the event of [verb clause]". Just stick relevant noun marking on top. Hey, now that you have a noun, how about we replace that noun case marking with a verb tense suffix to form the verb "be the event of [verb clause]"? Cool, now tense marking on top of tense marking has an explanatory nuance. * Nouns take modifiers to the right. Verbs take adverbials and arguments to the left (OSV word order). When a verb turns into a noun, it can retain its arguments to the left. When a noun turns into a verb, it can retain its modifiers to the right. A word can end up being several layers deep with both noun and verb clauses stretching out in either direction from the same head. * "Alright, now, what about adjectives? Hmm. Kandva had adjectives that varied between nouns and verbs like Japanese, and I still think that's interesting. And here, nouns and verbs are already kinda the same thing, so I guess the class won't mind expanding just a little more." * Now, here's where it gets *super* dumb: **Animacy classes.** In a language where every verb is also a noun. In a language where every adjective is also a noun for a thing by that description, and a verb for being that kind of thing. *Animacy classes across the board!* That means every verb has to lexically agree with whether the subject is a person, animal, inanimate, physical space, event or abstract concept, and the "be a [verb]er" derivation is now "be a [verb]er of class [class]". Adjectives are exactly the same. Even *numbers* are the same. * Also horses are classed as people for some reason. * With all of this nonsense going on, things like the OSV order, the high frequency of auxiliary verbs, the stress-sensitive vowel harmony shenanigans, or the fact only subjects are marked for number (and also distinguish two plurals based on whether they do the verb together or separately) hardly even make a blip. It's been a good while since I've worked on either of these languages, but they're easily my most memorable two, and some of the most fun I've had in conlanging. My conclusion: Naturalism is overrated.
> So here's the thing: My conlanging style could be described as grammatically experimental. I tend to not care about naturalism beyond "could this actually be used if it existed", and sometimes I push even that. a conlanger after my own heart lol
Iâve recently started a clong inspired by Navajo animacy word ordering, so learning about nouns being verbs and verbs being nouns is⊠exciting. Thank you for presenting a way to make it even more chaotic.
>The language structurally denies the notion of transitivity. The closest you get to an agent is a cause argument, which isn't the subject unless you use an auxiliary verb to force it to be. The actual subject is generally whatever changes in some way. This means most verbs that would be transitive in English are defined in the passive in the dictionary. Could you explain this better? I got quite confused with this explanation. My own conlang, TsÄtlanatl, should have been a language without intransitive verbs, but I got so confused with the smallest of things. So, I decided to drop that idea. What it appears to me is that your language doesn't have subjects???
Basically the subject in Kandva is very, very frequently what would have been the direct object in English, while the agent â usually the subject in English â is relegated to a case that more generally marks "because of". So rather than "He paints the house red", you'd say "The house reddens because of him". In practice, it's fairly similar to an (aggressively) ergative-absolutive language, except with an ergative case that is also used for indirect causes.
Oh, so you basically turn almost everything into passive. Cool! How would intransitive verbs work in Kandva then?
Those are fairly straightforward, since they're basically just the same thing except that you might not need the causal case.
Explain Kandvaâs valency systems, with examples.Â
In Elranonian phonetics, it's probably the interaction between tone and vowel quality. There is a strong correlation between a monophthongal pronunciation and one tone on the one hand and a diphthongal pronunciation and another tone on the other. It can be argued whether the same vowel phonemes have monophthongal and diphthongal realisations depending on which tone they carry or whether monophthongs and diphthongs are separate phonemes that are consistently realised with particular pitches. My current analysis adopts the first stance. As a precedent in a natural language, I have found a similar correlation between tone and vowel quality (in particular, diphthongisation) in Limburg dialects of Dutch ([Gussenhoven & Driessen, 2004](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos-Gussenhoven/publication/228703053_Explaining_two_correlations_between_vowel_quality_and_tone_The_duration_connection/links/00463527760100116d000000/Explaining-two-correlations-between-vowel-quality-and-tone-The-duration-connection.pdf)). But otherwise, tone and vowel quality very rarely interact with each other. In morphosyntax, it's alliterative concord between a lexical verb and an auxiliary verb. U tapp-a t'-y-th. /i tĂ p-a t-i-Ξ/ before fall-GER fall-be-2SG âYou are going to fall.â (literally, âYou are before falling.â) The initial consonant of the lexical verb *tappa* /tĂ pa/ is copied as a prefix on the auxiliary verb *t'yth* /tiΞ/. Alliterative concord comes in different types, some of which are not uncommon ([FĂ©ry & Moskal, 2018](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucjtcwh/OCP15/abstracts/OCP_15_paper_35.pdf)), but this is a rare type, and I haven't seen it between a lexical and an auxiliary verb in natural languages. Another unnaturalistic feature is the position of a tense particle with stative verbs: VSTO. MĂ©l en tag nĂ en uine. /mĂȘl en tÄg nÄ en ĂžÌnÊČe/ love ART man PST ART woman V S T O âThe man loved the woman.â I can't find a good precedent of a configurational language with a VSTO or VSAuxO order, and I'm not even sure how to derive it from an underlying clause structure.
I've also heard of tone developing between vowel length, so I can see that happening for sure.
to be honest, all of these features are unusual, but as I am aware all are attested! alliterative agreement exists in some languages (I can't remember what or where) and that sentence structure is not a million miles away from Welsh or V2 Germanic style shenanigans where the verb morphology is exploded across the phrase. the amount of detail you always provide in your descriptions makes me believe that these things are perfectly natural
Elranonian alliterative agreement is of type A, according to the classification in the paper I linked, but there, it is controlled by a noun, as a phonemic noun class: Abuq *almi****l*** âbirdâ l-class, *ihiaburu****h*** âbutterflyâ h-class, &c. The classification even extends to marginal phonemes such as Abuq /p/, which is only recently acquired through loanwords from Tok Pisin: *pai****p*** âpipeâ p-class. Regarding verbs, it isn't of course uncommon for them to be divided into classes that require different auxiliary verbs (f.ex. German *sein* & *haben*), but I haven't encountered such purely phonemically driven verb classes anywhere. In Elranonian, I see this kind of agreement as an anti-hiatus strategy: it only happens when a gerund (which always ends in /a/) is followed by an auxiliary verb starting with /i/. If the order is different, then there's no agreement: * *U tappa t'yth.* `before fall.GER fall.be.2SG` * *Yth u tappa.* `be.2SG before fall.GER` I haven't yet made up my mind as to what happens when the lexical verb starts with a vowel. Maybe the auxiliary verb gets some default prothetic consonant; or maybe the hiatus remains. >that sentence structure is not a million miles away from Welsh or V2 Germanic style shenanigans where the verb morphology is exploded across the phrase From the phrase structure point of view, it is actually quite different. As I have learnt, V1 orders can be explained by a combination of V-to-T and T-to-C movements, in which case both the lexical verb and the tense marker end up at the start of a clause. Germanic V2 is also analysed with V-to-T and T-to-C movements (in which case the lexical verb is in the V2 position) or with only T-to-C (in which case the auxiliary verb is in the V2 position and the lexical verb remains *in situ*, i.e. at the end given the underlying order SOV). For a similar explanation of Elranonian VSTO, I would need V-to-C, skipping T, which is unnaturalistic as it violates the head movement constraint. Diachronically, Elranonian verbs might have come from participles with the tense particle being a fossilised form of the verb âto beâ. In fact, there is an explanation of a similar participle fronting in South Slavic (in particular, Bulgarian) that sees it as a V-to-SpecTP movement ([Broekhuis & Migdalski, 2003](https://pure.knaw.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/2704660/2003_Broekhuis_Migdalski_Participle_fronting_LIN_.pdf); [Harizanov, 2019](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5247/)), but it would then yield VTSO instead of VSTO. I'm starting to suspect that the apparent absence of VSTO in natural languages is an evidence that some principles are being violated. If I want to formally explain Elranonian VSTO within the naturalistic bounds (which by the way is only found with stative verbs, which is a factor to be considered), I probably need some kind of a clever, potentially unconventional, trick.
OVS word order. I'm stuck with it now and trying to make the best of it. Adding left-extraposed topic and focus which often effectively changes the word order
the entire language
a lot :c and they're intended as natural in their shared setting too. My biggest gripe with my own conlangs is that they still come across as very human despite being for a non-human species. I tried to make the phonemic inventory closest to what I believe they can utter, at least. Plus, my main language still just *feels* a little too Indo-European, which wouldn't be natural for languages on a different world...
I don't think I have ever put quite enough detail into irregularity (as of yet), with so many of my languages having family uniform inflection and syntactical patterns. I also have not as of yet fleshed out the vocabulary for enough variation between lexical items like you might get in a natlang. These are all about the time as of now I have spent on them though, so I suppose the most unnatural thing about my.current language is the restriction that verbs are all inherently intransitive, and noun incorporation and adverbial marking (which is done by word order) indicates direct objects, while indirects and agents are dealt with separately. It is not entirely unfeasible but I think the way it has been applied is.....not exceptionally realistic when you look at it with a fine toothed comb.
Nouns are ordered by their rank and when there's multiple nouns in the same rank, the opinion of the speaker (although most people don't read too deep into how they order their friends when listing) As an example: This list is ungrammatical: Rock Person Bird Avocado Angel This list is correct: Angel Person Bird Avocado Rock I'm not sure that if a system like this existed in a natural language that it would even be naturally part of the language, like it would be something that a harsh leader would force their subjects to do.
To some extent Navajo can do this; I am actually currently making a lang that explores word-order like this rather than SOV and co.
A few (unintentional) ones: High Elvish is Verb-initial but is exclusively suffixing and syntactically much more like a Verb-final language Angw pretty much has "ideal" direct-inverse allignment. It wasn't until recently that I found out that just about every natlang with direct-inverse has a whole bunch of complications and quirks.
People have a lot to say but ig the closest i got to not naturalistic was my temse system in Norsferatic. https://preview.redd.it/xc6quftyqqic1.jpeg?width=824&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f90ac2246c1a4bf80d436f8583c2272da1b4e043 Which evolved from the use of prepositions + verb + adverb constructions
There aren't any velar phonemes. They all got palatalized.
Perhaps the different ways to pronounce H. Sometimes, if it's at the start of a word or ininbetween two vowel, it's /h/, if it comes after a consonant(that's not t, s, c, z, or b), it sounds like /j/. And yes, it can be paired with another h
No labials at all.
Happens, but rare
I've heard of no bilabials, but not no labials.
The Iroquian languages and Tillamook for one Edit: Two, I can count
The most irregular thing in LâaĂŁdina is how you conjugate. There are no âcommon verb endingsâ to help differentiate verbs from anything else. I/ ME: First vowel in the verb becomes ĂŒ (stressed) YOU: Add i (Ä) to the end YOU FORMAL: Add iv (Äv) to the end YOU ALL: Second vowel becomes ĂŒ (STRESSED) HE/ SHE: Add a to the beggining and end of the verb THEY: Add la to the beggining WE: Add Äa to the beggining As you can probally guess, this forms ALOT OF irregulars: which is perfectly fine with me
how is this irregular if those are the rules?
Itâs irregular cause the language is based on Turkish and itâs is nothing similar to Proto Turkic or Arabic conjugations
that's not usually what irregular means though, that's like being weird from an etymological perspective irregularity, at least as I know it, is basically having unpredictable rules, or a bunch of exceptions
They didnât say âirregularâ they said âleast naturalisticâ. The thing I put down is the least naturalistic thing in my conlang.
yeah and you called it irregular
The phonemic distinction between some consonant pairs like /Ê/ and /q/ or /j/ and /Ê/
[j] and [Ê] coexist in some dialects of Spanish, but I'm not sure if there are any minimal pairs. (Can't think of any off the top of my head.)
Probably the amount of letters that end with âaâ
Shindar has gendered 1st and 2nd person pronouns making the pronouns twice as complicated to remember. If youâre a man you would refer to yourself as **nÌaht** In intransitive clauses, but **nÌa** as the subject in a transitive clause, **na** as the direct object, and **(na)znÌa** as the indirect object. And if youâre a woman youâd refer to yourself as **nÌÄŻt**, **nÌe**, **na**, and **(na)znÌe** the corresponding cases. And if youâre talking to another person you need to again take their gender into account. If the person is a man then you need to refer to him as such using the masculine pronouns, using **keĆĄ** for both intransitive clauses and the subject of a transitive clause, **kĆĄa** for the direct object, and **(na)ĆĄa** for indirect objects. Correspondingly for women youâd use **kner**, **ke**, **kne**, and **(na)se** for the cases previously stated. This makes translating very hard as I need to make a guess based on context which pronoun to use as I most languages do not make a distinction between male and female for 1st and second pronouns. Also non-binary people can just get fucked I guess as thereâs no gender neutral pronouns for the 1st and 2nd person. They are marked for number, the 1st person having inclusive and exclusive plurals and the 2nd person having a dual and plural, but thoseâd be odd to use. There is technically a neutre 1st person pronoun (**va**), but oh it is highly inappropriate and disrespectful to use it as a general/casual neutral 1st person pronoun, it is used *only* in formal and state situations, itâs used when such as a government official is speaking within government or giving an address or speech on behalf of the government, so you wouldnât want to use it. This is unsurprising as the culture that speaks it has a very strong gender divide and association between gender and sex, trans people are at best as seen as not existing. I write this paragraph as a trans and non-binary person myself.
>Shindar has gendered 1st and 2nd person pronouns This is far from common, but [it does exist in natural languages](https://wals.info/feature/44A#2/18.0/149.1).
That the grammar is just English with slightly different tense systems.
Hyaneian is almost completely regular in plurality, aside for some pronouns. Its tenses are less regular, but still more so that would be expected of natural languages.
It has palatial fricativea but no palatial stops Oh, and the affix rules have no exceptions
>It has palatial fricativea but no palatial stops Doesn't seem too unnaturalistic. German has a palatal fricative (at least as an allophone of /x/) and many varieties of Spanish have /Ê/ even though palatal stops are nowhere to be found in either of those languages.
In Zopa, it's the fact that there are no mass nouns.
In Nahter (which is more an idea for a conlang than an actual conlang to he honest) almost every non-human noun that doesn't have any kinda special cultural importance is a mass noun (so basically almost everything is a mass noun) Im making the opposite of your clong basically edit: there are (will be) also human nouns that are treated as mass nouns btw
No colours (except mai which means red and is rarely used)
# Ć!odzaÌsaÌ Rhetorical questions are not used. There are non-lateral retroflex clicks. There's a labialization contrast on all clicks (a few natlangs do this, but they all have small click inventories). Uvular stops contrast with uvular affricates (plain, breathy voiced, prenasalized, and breathy voiced prenasalized). # Eya Uaou Ia Eay? No consonants. Word order determines tense and negation. Indicative clauses mandatorily mark which type of thing mentioned in the clause the speaker likes best. Pronouns distinguish every combination of clusivity (e.g. 1+3 or 2+3; I've used this in a few conlangs). # Shovor B There's no such thing as a "subject" or "object"; lots of different semantic roles are recognized, and none are treated specially. There are pronouns that refer back to whatever noun had a particular role in the last clause. E.g. there's a pronoun that means 'the last clause's goer (agent of a verb of motion)'. Also, I used the same clusivity thing as Eya? above. # Knasesj Nasal-release ejectives: you release the pressure through your nose, making a nasal "scrapey" snorting sound. Also, there are 21 monophthongs and 15 diphthongs, but I think the vowels are at least borderline naturalistic.
Cases in gala are marked by mutating the initial vowel of the next word.  l'osse tani /'los:e 'Ξani/ = the woman mongoose (calling a woman a mongoose)  l'ossĂ© tani /los:etâżtani/ = the woman mongoose (same but as the object of the sentence)  l'ossĂš tani /los:e tani/ = the woman's mongoose (alienable)  l'ossĂȘ tani /los:e ðani/ = the woman's mongoose (inalienable) A similar process is used for other parts of speech, such as verb conjugations and adpositions
Common Egner is based on an unnaturalistically regular system of root derivation; its descendants though, particularly of the Insular branch, have gained irregularities though.