- Another Esseintial Speedlang
Right. Erm... Yeah. It's another speedlang. As I'm quite pleased with the way things are going with Dánıdoo, and I've really whipped myself into a conlanging frenzy lately, I'm starting a thread on this to see if I can get another lang off the ground while I get into more serious stuff with Dánıdoo. Furthermore, I want to find an outlet for some ideas (mostly aesthetic) that I wanted to use in Dánıdoo, but proved unworkable.
So here it is.
Brief Grammatical Outline
Here are a few ideas, although nothing is set in stone.
Hííenununóóoþa is a polysynthetic language (surprise!) that makes heavy use of noun incorporation. Verbs are marked heavily for valency, with frequent use of applicatives and other valency-shift operations. I'm considering having noun classes that affect the choice of verb stem used.
I would like mostly bound morphemes, also in nouns.
Phonology
• Consonants •
/n/ n
/b t t͡s t͡ʃ k ʔ/ b t ts ch k '
/ɸ θ s ɬ x h/ f þ s ł x h
/j w/ y w
• Vowels •
Short Monophthongs
/a ɘ ɪ ʊ/ a e/o* ı u
Long Monophthongs
/ɛː iː ɔː uː/ ee ıı oo uu
Short Diphthongs
/eɪ̯ ɪ̯ɘ oʊ̯/ eı ıe ou
/aɪ̯ aʊ̯/ aı au**
Long Diphthongs
/ɛːa iːa ɔːa uːa/ eea ııa ooa uua
/ɛːɘ iːɘ ɔːɵ uːɵ/ eee ııe ooo uuo
/ɛɪ̯ː ɔʊ̯ː/ eeı oou
Triphthongs
/eɪ̯a oʊ̯a/ eıa oua
/eɪ̯ɘ oʊ̯ɵ/ eıe ouo
*see Allophony below
**rare, limited to certain verb endings or sth similar
• Allophony •
So far, all I've really got is
/ɸ w/ become [f ʋ] before front vowels
Hííenununóóoþa has at least two tones, high and low, with long vowels able to take a falling contour as well. Triphthongs can even have a v́vv́ pattern.
In addition to these two tones, I'm considering a creaky-voiced extra-low tone that would be fairly restricted in its distribution, but I haven't figured anything concrete out yet.
• Phonotactics •
Syllable structure is predominantly
(C)V(V)(V)
At the morpheme level, consonant clusters are rare. The most common clusters by far are of the type nasal/affricate/fricative + /x/, namely
/nx ɸx θx sx ɬx t͡sx t͡ʃx/
Other clusters do rather frequently occur though as a result of short-vowel elision, especially ones starting in /n ɬ h/.
• Sample Vocabulary •
sóółxınınee
hánou'ounouníþíí
á'oosxánununúút
nıtííenıłchxóó
eı'éénıłıt
bxíwéé'wu
óó'łxu
uutsxúúłunoo
I'm afraid I have no idea what these mean yet, but I do have a pronoun:
þííł - I (humble)
Ponderables
The phonology presented here is still quite raw. There are several things I'm not sure about yet. Any and all input would be appreciated.
- I'm not sure about the affricates /t͡s t͡ʃ/, as I feel having both is a bit much, yet I would think the inventory much impoverished if I lost either.
- /a/ and /ɘ/ may turn out to be the same phoneme, as /a/ only occurs with high tone except in word-final position, while /ɘ/ only occurs with low tone, and doesn't appear word-finally except as part of a triphthong.
- I would like to work out some rules about which consonants can occur with which vowels, but I don't know how to go about it without copy-pasting from Arapaho.
Anyways, that's it for now. Just wanted to get this rolling to see what happens. Like with Dánıdoo, I'm going to try and do a bit each day and see where it leads.
Oh, and I love the name of the language.