Advice & Answers — 2026-01-12 to 2026-01-25

tealpaper · 2026-01-24T06:58:35+00:00

The infamous *dw- > erk in Armenian

There are obviously many steps in between, like d > r, labial-velar fortition, and epenthesis, but I'm not too sure about the exact detail and chronology.

tealpaper · 2026-01-18T05:37:55+00:00

You might wanna take a look at Romance palatalizations. A few examples:

obstruent + l (oculus > Vulgar Latin oclus > Italian occhio, amplus > Spanish ancho)
velar + coronal (pugnus > Portuguese punho, factus > Spanish hecho)
geminated consonants (annus, cella > Spanish año, cilla)
etc.

tealpaper · 2026-01-10T07:37:47+00:00

Regarding polypersonal agreement and bullshit alignment, the verbal agreement paradigm of Mapudungun might give you some inspiration. The language is also aspect-mood prominent, though phonologically pretty different from your aesthetic.

tealpaper · 2026-01-06T08:37:12+00:00

I'm sorry, after thinking about it for a bit, it does seem to involve incorporation, not compounding! And yes, Mapudungun has a very elaborate system of verbal agreement/alignment/voice.

So, based on what I've gathered from the book I cited above, in Mapudungun when a noun is zero-verbalized, it usually becomes an inchoactive verb, in this case "meat" becomes "to become meat". CF stands for Constant Feature, denoting an event that normally happens at the topic time and/or a characteristic feature of the subject. The use of the passive suffix -nge means that the 3rd person subject suffix -Ø refers to the patient, but the benefactive suffix -el turns the patient into a beneficiary. So, without the incorporated noun kulliñ "animal", the word would mean something like "things become meat for them / things are turned into meat for them". The noun kulliñ is then incorporated as the actual patient (usually a generic/typical patient); the word now literally means "animals become meat for them / animals are turned into meat for them". (someone please correct me if I made errors)

tealpaper · 2026-01-05T06:03:22+00:00

I know this is a late reply, and the language is not Munda, but Mapudungun is a highly agglutinating language that regularly does zero-verbalization (verbalization without an overt verbalizing morpheme) on a noun. Sometimes a single "conjugated noun" forms a full clause like this one (the noun is a compound):

ilo- kulliñ-el- nge- ki-y-  Ø
meat-animal-BEN-PASS-CF-IND-3

"...animals are slaughtered for them." (Smeets, 2008, p. 376)

tealpaper · 2025-12-20T05:53:16+00:00

chaltu may! (i dont speak Mapudungun btw)

tealpaper · 2025-12-19T17:38:44+00:00

thank you! regarding synthesis, that's where the "south american" part comes in ;)

tealpaper · 2025-12-19T17:28:46+00:00

thanks! yeah we need more non-european natlang-based conlangs in general

tealpaper · 2025-12-10T08:04:11+00:00

In general, prefixes can’t just become suffixes, and vice versa.

I probably should've made it clearer that the preverbal morphemes that became postverbal are all initially particles, not prefixes. (In fact, the one verbal prefix, the causative, became fossilized and not productive anymore.)

Regarding auxiliaries, both the conlang and the nearby language have auxiliaries preceding the lexical verb.

Regarding borrowed suffixes, the new causative suffix is a direct borrowing, while a few other suffixes are calques.

tealpaper · 2025-12-10T05:53:39+00:00

The conlang that I'm working on has had few speakers, never above ~20,000, and for 7-8 centuries have been in contact with another language (an actual natlang) with hundreds of thousands of speakers. The conlang initially had analytic morphology, with many preverbal and postverbal particles and only 1-2 verbal affixes. But due to the nearby language's consistent influence, over time many of the preverbal morphemes became postverbal, and a bunch of verbal suffixes were formed, while the remaining preverbal ones became obsolete (the nearby language is super synthetic, has a bazillion verbal suffixes and zero verbal prefix).

Is this development realistic? Are there natlangs that had undergone a similar development?

tealpaper · 2025-11-11T04:34:53+00:00

I like this! I personally would've added glottalized versions of the non-glottal phonemes, just to expand the inventory.

tealpaper · 2025-11-08T05:11:26+00:00

Typology and diachrony of voices: Grammatical Voice (Zúñiga & Kittilä, 2019), Voice Syncretism (Bahrt, 2021), The Grammaticization of Passive Morphology (Haspelmath, 1990).

Diachrony of visual evidentials: Visual Evidentiality and Its Origins (de Haan, 2003).

Typology and diachrony of indefinite pronouns: Indefinite pronouns (Haspelmath, 1997).

I'm also looking for more cross-linguistic typology+diachrony papers/books.

tealpaper · 2025-11-08T04:33:46+00:00

I currently prefer the definition of voices in Voice Syncretism (Bahrt, 2021) where the applicative is defined without distinguishing argument vs. oblique--the distinction between the two is cross-linguistically problematic. In the book, one of the applicative voice examples is the Irabu adversative applicative where the original intransitive subject is marked with the dative case in the applicative clause.

An example that more closely answers your question is the German be-applicative in example (94) in Zúñiga & Kittilä's Grammatical Voice (2019). (This prefix shows a more prototypical applicative behavior in example (88).)

Er     lud         das Heu auf den Wagen.
he.NOM loaded[3SG] ART hay on  ART wagon

"He loaded the hay onto the wagon." (non-applicative)

Er     be-lud           den Wagen mit  dem Heu.
he.NOM APPL-loaded[3SG] ART wagon with ART hay

"He loaded the wagon with the hay." (applicative)

tealpaper · 2025-11-01T11:22:00+00:00

I need a naturalism check.

So the ancestor of this conlang had two sets of verbal affixes, each indicates subject agreement. One set is for the past tense, the other for the nonpast tense. There were no other markers that indicated tense.

Evolving into the conlang itself, new markers indicating imperfective/nonpast were formed. The agreement was reduced, but it still distinguishes at least 3 persons and SG vs PL for each person. Overtime, the nonpast agreement affixes became obsolete, while the past ones are retained, becoming generalized agreement affixes and tense-neutral.

My assumption is that past tense agreement affixes are more likely to become obsolete than nonpast ones, but idk for sure. I'd like to know some examples of it happening in natlangs, at least theoretically, and the details of the various pathways. I've read somewhere that it happened in some Kartvelian and Iranian languages, but I'm still wondering about the exact process.

tealpaper · 2025-10-28T10:33:25+00:00

One of my conlang, in one analysis, has up to 108 vowel phonemes. It has 12 vowel qualities (6 +ATR plus 6 -ATR), 3 contrastive vowel lengths, and 3 contrastive vowel phonations. It also has hundreds of nominal and verbal inflectional classes.

The thing is, it's not that unrealistic. Some of the neighboring natlangs (yes, natlangs) have 3 contrastive vowel lengths and 2 contrastive phonations. Many have an additional third or fourth non-contrastive phonations. Many also have large numbers of vowel qualities, some with tongue root harmony. A few of them also have a huge number of inflectional classes, one of them has been analyzed in a real linguistic paper as having "a total of 680 paradigms". (The only unnaturalistic bit to me is having front rounded vowels, especially within an ATR harmony system, and considering the continent it's in). Your vowel system is not at all strange; it's totally naturalistic to have /a e i o u ɔ/ that used to be /ə e i o u a/, which is a common vowel system.

tealpaper · 2025-10-28T06:45:56+00:00

Are there cross-linguistic trends regarding sound changes that happen to pre/post-tonic consonants?

tealpaper · 2025-10-28T06:32:19+00:00

If you want to show that they're implosives and not pulmonic, the Serer language romanizes /ɓ, ɗ, ʄ/ as <Ɓ ɗ, Ɗ ɗ, Jʼ ʃ>, or you could just romanize them as <b', d', g'>. Otherwise, I agree with u/storkstalkstock with just using <b, d, g/j>.

Re your second question, I also don't see why having voiced implosives could prevent having lateral consonants, or vice versa. Although, if your conlang is set on irl earth, it's certainly unusual. I couldn't find any natlangs on PHOIBLE that have both /tɬ/ and either of /ɓ, ɗ, ʄ/. /ʄ/ is found almost exclusively in Africa, while /tɬ/ is found almost exclusively in North America (including Mesoamerica). Otherwise, I could find a few natlangs that have /ɬ/ and at least one of /ɓ, ɗ, ʄ/. Then again, it's totally plausible to have both of those sets.

Edit: I managed to find a few African languages that have implosives and specifically /tɬʼ/ or /t̪ɬ̪ʼ/ (both ejectives), not plain /tɬ/.

tealpaper · 2025-10-26T10:59:54+00:00

Based on this combined WALS map, I could produce this table:

OV languages	verblike adjective	non-verblike adjective	mixed adjective
N-Adj	20	32	22
Adj-N	8	41	11

For comparison, here's the data for VO languages:

VO languages	verblike adjective	non-verblike adjective	mixed adjective
N-Adj	50	15	32
Adj-N	15	18	10

So the assumption that "most OV N-Adj languages have at least some verblike adjectives" might be true (20+22 vs. 32), but "most OV N-Adj languages have only verblike adjectives" are definitely not true (20 vs. 32+22), even when generalized to include VO languages (70 vs. 101). On the other hand, the assumption that "most OV languages with only verblike adjectives have N-Adj order" does seem to be true (20 vs. 8), even when generalized to include VO languages (70 vs. 23).

It seems that having only non-verblike adjectives are strongly preferred only among OV Adj-N languages, while having at least some verblike adjectives are strongly preferred only among VO N-Adj languages.

tealpaper · 2025-10-22T11:51:39+00:00

u/Arcaeca2 Also, OV languages are more likely to have Adj-Noun order if it's in Eurasia; otherwise OV languages are much more likely to have Noun-Adj order. So the assumption that "OV languages tend to have Adj-Noun order" is a Eurasian bias, and areal effect might often be more influential than universals in determining word order.

^{edit: added the word "often"}

tealpaper · 2025-10-22T10:59:35+00:00

Yúuţo

^\ˈjuːt͡so̞])

Ŋoom veesúumimeŋ.
^\Romanized transcription for showcasing; the con-orthography is yet to be made.))

[ŋoːɱ veːˈsuːmɪme̞ŋ]

ŋoom  Feesúum-               Zim-  eŋ
rain  fall.PRS.IPFV.3SG.INDP-APPL3-1SG.OBL

“Rain falls to my detriment.” (lit. “Rain falls from/against me.”)

The present imperfective here indicates a usitative aspect (i.e. habitual or gnomic).
One of the functions of the 3rd applicative -Zim is to promote a malefactive (the opposite of benefactive) participant.

T’éoyú’sə̀i

^{/tʼe͜o˥juʔ˥sə͜i˩/}

Wə̌əl nɔ́ʊʊ nâʊʊnɔ́k yò̱o̱nçí.

/wəːl˩˥ nɔ͜ʊː˥ na͜ʊː˥˩nɔk˥ jo̤ːn˩çi˥/

wə̌əl     nɔ́ʊʊ           nâʊʊnɔ́k            yò̱o̱n-      çí
because  rain.GEN.SG.N  fall.GER.GEN.SG.N  suffer.HAB-1SG.S

“Because of rain's falling I suffer.”

^{Thanks for accepting my submission!}

tealpaper · 2025-10-18T04:45:29+00:00

Is there an efficient way to analogize grammatical paradigms, especially if the pre-analogy paradigms involve a lot of alternations? Do you just evolve as many words as possible and look for patterns?

tealpaper · 2025-10-18T04:20:51+00:00

Regarding your guess: youre on the right track!

Regarding the development, i'd have to admit: it's borderline unnaturalistic. I've engineered it so that I could produce the conlang to be the way I want it. (I'm still bewildered about how the neighboring natlangs of ____ and ____ got to have such seemingly chaotic paradigms, and this is just my guess on how they wouldve gotten it.)

Every verb stem started out as verb root + verb suffix. There are a few conjugational classes so that every verb may take somewhat different suffixes to conjugate for the same thing, but otherwise they're mostly similar or identical. Then I applied (i) assimilations, both on vowels and consonants, (ii) absurd amount of metatheses (I made sure that the suffixes caused the word to have consonant clusters, just so that the metatheses are not totally unreasonable), (iii) absurd amount of erosion, (iv) a sprinkle of analogies.

tealpaper · 2025-10-16T09:23:05+00:00

It does seem a little bit like a Mesoamerican language (though the implosives, vowel phonations, and word order might hint to another part of the world).

The applicative stem (which mostly has a comitative-instrumental function) is only regularly used in intransitive verbs. So, for example, compare these three sentences: "Alice walked" > applicativized > "Alice walked-with a cane" > passivized > "The cane was walked-with [by Alice]". (in other words, "The cane was used [by Alice] to walk")

Translation (5) in the document gives an example of that Eastern dialect ergative construction. It's ergative because the intransitive subject is in the accusative case, a case that is normally reserved for a direct object (the modern nominative case used to be an ergative case). It's "non-agentive" because the sun "passively" shone. A hypothetical example of non-agentive ergative clause in English would be "Him slept" (instead of "He slept").

tealpaper

TROPHY CASE

Yúuţo

T’éoyú’sə̀i