Omzinian Scrap thread

[Omzinesý]

I wanna make a lang with the stress on the second syllable. According to WALS 16 languages of 220 have it.

South America: Mapudungun, Aroana
Nirth America: Stoney, Dakota, Paiute (Southern), Pomo (Eastern)
Europe: Basque (Bidasoa Valley), Basque (Oñati)
New Guinea: Tolai, Siroi
Australia: Arrernte (Western), Alyawarra, Mbabaran, Lamu-Lamu, Thayban, Uradhi

The next task will be to check how the secondary stress affects the language.

Arrernte (and possibly others of the Australian ones) may have secondary stress only because of its VCC syllable structure (i.e. it might have previously had initial stress, but then all consonant-initial words got unstressed vowels added to the beginning). Though I suppose if that were true, words that always began with vowels would have initial stress.

Interesting. Do you happen to have a source? It could be interesting to see a bit more about Arrernte phonological history. Could it be possible that those words really do have initial stress.

I checked Mapudungun, and it seems that it actually does not have secondary stress, but research is difficult cos the language is dying.

Basque stressing seems to depend on dialect, but those two apparently do have secondary stress.

The data are incomplete as best. Digging deeper could be a good subject for a thesis if somebody needed one.

[Arayaz]

I wanna make a lang with the stress on the second syllable. According to WALS 16 languages of 220 have it.

South America: Mapudungun, Aroana
Nirth America: Stoney, Dakota, Paiute (Southern), Pomo (Eastern)
Europe: Basque (Bidasoa Valley), Basque (Oñati)
New Guinea: Tolai, Siroi
Australia: Arrernte (Western), Alyawarra, Mbabaran, Lamu-Lamu, Thayban, Uradhi

The next task will be to check how the secondary stress affects the language.

Arrernte (and possibly others of the Australian ones) may have secondary stress only because of its VCC syllable structure (i.e. it might have previously had initial stress, but then all consonant-initial words got unstressed vowels added to the beginning). Though I suppose if that were true, words that always began with vowels would have initial stress.

Interesting. Do you happen to have a source? It could be interesting to see a bit more about Arrernte phonological history. Could it be possible that those words really do have initial stress.

Oh, no, this is purely my own speculation. I happen to have in my reference grammar folder A Learner's Guide to Eastern and Central Arrernte, but obviously the dialect in question is Western Arrernte, and I've not found an online source for it.

It seems that stress in fact is initial in some words, but only where it would otherwise be ultimate, which seems to disprove my theory.

I checked Mapudungun, and it seems that it actually does not have secondary stress, but research is difficult cos the language is dying.

Basque stressing seems to depend on dialect, but those two apparently do have secondary stress.

The data are incomplete as best. Digging deeper could be a good subject for a thesis if somebody needed one.

I have a material for Basque that discusses stress. I seem to recall it being secondary, but I will have to check that when I get home.

[Omzinesý]

I checked Mapudungun, and it seems that it actually does not have secondary stress, but research is difficult cos the language is dying.

Basque stressing seems to depend on dialect, but those two apparently do have secondary stress.

The data are incomplete as best. Digging deeper could be a good subject for a thesis if somebody needed one.

I have a material for Basque that discusses stress. I seem to recall it being secondary, but I will have to check that when I get home.

I found this in the internet.
Tone and Stress in Basque: a Preliminary study
Jose Ignacio HUALDE University of Southern California

"Michelena (1972, 1977) distinguishes four 'accentual types in Basque, admitting a certain ammount of variation within each of the four major types.. His_classification is the following:
Type I. In this accentual system2, words may have one of two suprasegmental patterns: either a sustained accent (in Michelena's and Jacobsen's (1972) terms), which is considered the unmarked pattern, or a falling contour, which is characteristic of plural nouns and a small number of singular and indefinite nouns. This type is found in the Western-Central area, comprising most dialects spoken in the provinces of Biscay and Guipuzcoa and some bordering dialects of Navarre.
Type 11. This is the Souletin-Roncalese system, ofthe Easternmost Basque speaking area. Michelena establishes a comparison,between this accentual type and that ofGascon. In tnese varieties, stress, which is phonemic (Le. may carry grammatical information), is generally assigned on the penultimate syllable. As we will see later, and Michelena notices, there are two clear subtypes within this type, the Souletin and the Roncalese.
Type Ill. This type is found in some areas of Navarre. Michelena remarks that the acoustic impression that this stress type gives is not very different from the way Castilian Spanish stress sounds. The predominant pattern is penultimate stress. There is a clear phonetic distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables. However, this prominent stress is not phonologically relevant at the word level. Words cannot be distinguished by suprasegmental features, unlike what is the case in the two accentual types mentioned above.
Type IV. In this accentual type, stress is assigned from the beginning ofthe word and falls on the second syllable, unless the stem is monosyllabic in which case the stress falls on the stem.
This is the system found in a small area along the Southern bank of the Bidasoa river, comprising small areas of Guipuzcoa and Navarre."

[Omzinesý]

Did I already mention my idea of a Finnic language with this vowel inventory.

i ɨ u
e o
ä

Length is contrastive.

Starting from Finnish-ish

y i u
ø e o
æ ɑ

Short y, ø -> ɨ
Long ø: -> ɨ:
Long y: -> yi (as in Estonian), put interpreted as /ui/
Long ɑ: in non-initial syllables -> ɨ

Genitive -n lengthens the vowel as in Votic.

kala 'fish'
kala-n -> kala: -> kalɨ

[Omzinesý]

My mind is wandering.

An unnamed lang


Vowels (The inventory happens to be like that of Pashto.)
i u <i u>
e ə o <ai e au>
æ ɒ <a o>

Diphthongs
ei~æi, eu~æu, oi~ɒi, ou~ɒu <ei, eu, oi, ou>
(The first component can thus be closed or mid.)

The stress always lies on the second syllable.

- ə only appears in unstressed syllables.
- Diphthongs usually lie on the stressed / second syllable. They can though appear on the morphemic border.

Words that are longer than two syllables and end in a vowel always end in ə.


The consonant inventory has African feel.

p t t͡ʃ k
b d d͡ʒ g
ɓ ɗ ɖ͡ʒ
f θ s ʃ x
v ð z ʒ ɣ
m n ɲ
l r ʎ
j w

Phonotactics is mostly (C)V(C). Very rarely coda clusters nasal + obstruent can appear.
Nasals and liquids could be syllabic and even stressed.

Verbs are prefixing, and verb roots usually CCVC.

d͡ʒ-æ-xled
SG1-PRES-sing
'I'm singing.'

Nouns are suffixing and noun roots typically CVCC.

All nouns have a portmanteau suffix that codes
1) (around ten) Bantu-style noun class,
2) case (direct, possessed (like edafa), and ablative (appears with some prepositions and numerals)), and
3) number (singular plural).

This makes around 60 nominal suffixes (though some plural classes merger).

xileb is an abstract root for singing. 'A song' would be xilb-or.

The noun suffixes could be simplified.

Just four singular genders
-i, -u, -æ, -ɒ

Two plural genders (may contain collective nouns)
-e, -o

Possessed case just by lengthening the gender marker.
The Ablative could be marked with, say, -n.

[Omzinesý]

This lang could have some random morphology.

pʰ tʰ kʰ
p t k
b d g
t͡s t͡ɬ t͡ʂ ʈ͡ɬ
d͡z d͡ɮ d͡ʐ ɖ͡ɮ
s ɬ ɕ ʂ ɬ
z ʑ ʐ
mʰ nʰ
m n ŋ
l r ɭ ɽ
s ʃ x
z ʒ
ʋ j

i ɨ u
e ə o
ä

Most words are monosyllabic.
The syllable structure is: C(G)V(C), where G is a glide (ʋ j).

When the coda is an obstruent or lacks, the syllable has one of two tones (rising or lowering).
If the coda is voiceless, the syllable has one of three tones (neutral, rising, lowering). The vowel with a neutral tone is shorter and the coda consonant longer. (This is somewhat based on Lithuanian tones.)

a:˩˥r
a:˥˩r

a:˩˥t
a:˥˩t
at:

Three noun cases: Direct, Essive, and Ablative (appears with some prepositions and numerals).

Essive marker is -z.
-z after vowels and sonorants.
d + -z = dz
g + -z = d͡ʐ
b + -z = z
And the same when voiceless

The Ablative marker could be just -ə.

This could be a lang whose nouns (nearly) always have an article a word without an article becomes a verb, much like English.