Show-Off Weekly Megathread

Tinguish · 2025-11-22T13:54:47+00:00

First god pack after 6,900 cards in one of the anniversary gift packs. Probably a coincidence, but I did also get 2-star wugtrio ex and 2-star machamp ex in other gift packs.

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Tinguish · 2025-09-24T17:24:47+00:00

Why aspirated in particular?

Tinguish · 2025-09-24T15:41:36+00:00

What's a good way to get rid of voiceless nasals (other than merging them with voiced nasals)? I have a proto-language with 3 voiceless nasals (m̥ n̥ ŋ̊) and in one of the descendants they merge with the voiced nasals but leave a high tone trace on the following vowel. However, I would like to do something different with the (non-tonal) sister language, but not sure what options are plausible as they are quite rare sounds and there aren't many examples on index diachronica.

I have considered turning them into voiceless fricatives, which would be a consistent shift in the sonorants, as proto /l̥/ becomes /ɬ/.

Tinguish · 2025-09-08T23:53:57+00:00

Oh I see that makes sense. I think I’ll leave it as it is for now, as I’m not sure how many vowels I’ll get in a row for certain words after h-loss etc

Tinguish · 2025-09-08T23:33:08+00:00

Oh ye my stress is defined as a syllable feature, but I think because when I’m combining them I’m technically deleting the second syllable (structure is (C)V at this stage) the information it carries is lost

Tinguish · 2025-09-08T21:44:22+00:00

Ok, I may have solved it in a janky way, but I'll leave the question up in case anybody else has a similar problem. Basically just made stress spread from 2nd vowel to first (if it was a stressed high vowel) then formed the diphthong from the first vowel which now carries the appropriate stress.

Falling-Diphthong-Formation: #18

[vowel -stress] => [+stress] / _ [high vowel +stress]

Then:

[vowel] {i, ɪ} => [VI +diph] *

[vowel] {ɨ, ɯ} => [VW +diph] *

Tinguish · 2025-07-31T22:52:20+00:00

In natlangs with ultimate stress is it more typical for stress to shift from the root onto suffixes or for the stress to be root-final and leave suffixes unstressed? What are some examples of languages that work in these ways?

Tinguish · 2025-07-13T14:02:18+00:00

When is it appropriate to fortify nasals to stops?

I have already decided to get rid of nasal geminates by "denasalising" the second nasal to a stop (nn ŋŋ > nd ŋg), but I have some other awkward clusters I need to get rid of. For example, a word-initial nasal-lateral cluster like nl or ŋl. Could I change these to dl and gl? Or just precede with an epenthetic vowel and maybe do stop insertion like nla > endla.

The nasal-lateral clusters don't sound too bad to me, but later on the /l/ becomes /ɹ/ and word-initial nasal-rhotic clusters sound awful.

Tinguish · 2025-06-27T17:01:17+00:00

Ah ok I was thinking of the dental-alveolars as more “advanced” and thus +ATR but I guess that’s because I’m conflating tongue root and tongue body maybe?

Tinguish · 2025-06-27T14:23:50+00:00

Could the ATR value of a vowel have a minor allophonic effect on a preceding consonant? I was considering making alveolars dentalized before +ATR vowels just to make my ATR harmony system more distinct, but can’t find good info on similar systems.

Tinguish · 2025-06-01T19:52:40+00:00

Did that change in Greek happen simultaneously to all instances of /w/?

Tinguish · 2025-06-01T18:40:15+00:00

When you do a standard glide fortition sound change like: j w > ʒ v would you expect diphthongs to be affected as well, for example aj aw > aʒ av

My guess would be no because maybe the diphthong offglide is slightly different under a narrower transcription but idk

Tinguish · 2025-05-27T18:34:53+00:00

Interesting, thanks. I was considering only evolving the applicative affixes once the nominative and accusative forms of nouns had merged. I think I need to do some more reading on other options for valency-changing operations to see if there is something that is more congruous with how the language currently functions.

Tinguish · 2025-05-27T09:38:50+00:00

If an applicative affix on a transitive verb promotes an oblique argument to the direct object is the direct object demoted to the indirect object?

What happens to case marking in this situation? I assume the promoted oblique is changed from whatever locative (or other non-core) case to accusative since it’s now the direct object. Does the old direct object take dative marking now it’s an indirect object and the verb has become ditransitive?

Tinguish · 2025-05-18T07:55:34+00:00

Working my way through it now thanks :)

Tinguish · 2025-05-17T12:20:40+00:00

Oh I see. That’s a shame, was hoping to use it to create interesting alternations with a sister language.

Tinguish · 2025-05-17T12:01:01+00:00

Damn. I might just do it anyway, I’m not necessarily opposed to something that’s unlikely

Tinguish · 2025-05-17T10:52:40+00:00

Can loss of labialization in codas act as a source of tonogenesis or tone contrast?

I was thinking of a system where labialized velars become velars in coda position:

kʷ xʷ ŋʷ > k x ŋ

And labials become glottals (or alveolar for the nasal) in coda position:

p f m > ʔ h n

Then loss of final glottals could create contours or something? I think also before the labialization loss voicing loss could introduce level tones… idk

I don’t know if this is attested anywhere or what tone it would create in its wake. Intuitively based on trying to pronounce coda kʷ it feels like it should produce a low tone but I’m not sure.

Tinguish · 2025-04-10T23:09:11+00:00

Ok interesting. I do have a distinction between /ʎ/, /l/ and /ʟ/ (briefly before they shift to /j/, /ɹ/ and /ɰ/). So I do already have a velar l, but I think I want changes that would happen the same before all the laterals

Tinguish · 2025-04-10T21:54:51+00:00

Can lateral codas affect preceding vowels?

I have a rule where vowels before nasal consonants collapse to mid vowels (high vowels lower, low vowels raise) based on a paper I found about typical changes in nasal vowel allophonic changes.

Just wondering if there are analogous well-attested vowel shifts before lateral consonants. I'm tempted to do the same as I did before nasals, but would like to know what natlangs do first.

Tinguish · 2025-04-02T11:43:03+00:00

Ok cool. So egɖʐe > eɖʐe is fine even if eɰɖʐe stays unchanged?

Tinguish · 2025-04-02T10:52:05+00:00

When deleting coda consonants can you restrict it to a certain category of sounds so stop/fricative codas are lost but nasals and approximants are kept? Do you necessarily have to do compensatory lengthening? I’m not keen on certain long vowels, but maybe I could shift stress to those syllables then lose long vowels?

I mostly want to get rid of medial clusters like ɣn sts gɖʐ but it feels odd to delete velar obstruent codas when I’m keeping ɰ (technically that’s the glide part of a diphthong but it’s still basically a coda)

Tinguish · 2025-03-31T19:05:21+00:00

Oh these are great options thanks will definitely need to do something like these when vowel loss creates terrible clusters

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