2024/02/02 - Starting Off

Welcome to my first post where I'll be documenting the progress for my conlanging project.

I should probably start off by saying that conlanging (the artform of constructing languages) is a hobby of mine that I have been pursuing for many years now. I started working on my first conlangs over twelve years ago, but have only been studying linguistics formally for six or seven years, the number depending on whether you count the English-focused linguistics class I did in high school, which admittedly was a much truncated, dumbed down version of what I later studied in university.

I have enjoyed studying linguistics more so in university, where I even had a class where I got to make a conlang. Said conlang wasn't the best, but it set the higher standard for my more recent projects. I have then gone onto further post graduate studies in linguistics. Presently, at the time of writing this page, just starting my Doctor of Philosophy in Arts, where I will be documenting a whole language and writing a grammar.

This is to say that I am relatively experienced with conlanging and linguistics, though not as much as some of the better known conlangers you've probably heard of if you found this site. In terms of my experience creating conlangs, I have created a few which I may share in part or whole on this site, but I am not that keen to focus on them, as I am wanting to try and work on this new project. Of the previous conlangs, the ones that I have shared on Reddit, Yaimon and Pazè Yiù, are in my opinion, decent conlangs, but neither had the detail or comprehensive development I've always desired out of a conlanging project.

So, with that out of the way, I'd like to give my goals for the project, which will define the constraints and ideas that I have and upon which I will build the project. Now, the general goals for the project are distinct from the goals for the conlang, so I'll get them out of the way first.

These goals are:

• To create a naturalistic conlang. This will involve developing its history quite far back, which will involve a large amount of sound changes and grammatical developments.
• To design a setting for said conlang that fulfils its role as a background.
• To create more conlangs for this setting. These will almost certainly be necessary for naturalism purposes, as borrowings and areal features exist in basically every language on earth. However, these secondary conlangs will be far less detailed to begin with as they are only necessary to help build the primary conlang.

Now more specifically, the goals and ideas for this conlang I have are, divided by category:

Phonology & Phonoaesthetics

• A syllable structure that is relatively constrained, but conversely, a strong tendency for vowel reduction, specifically medial vowel loss. Conditions for vowel loss will have to be an important consideration.
• A consonant inventory that will have been historically reduced in size to allow for some odd alternations.
• Aspirate versus tenuis as the primary phonation distinction in obstruents.
• A vowel system that appears simple on the surface (five cardinal vowels with perhaps another vowel appended on), but has undergone a lot of shifts, mergers, and assimilations. I want ablaut galore.

Grammar

• Split-ergativity conditioned on aspect. Need I say more?
• Furthermore, the reflexive/mediopassive became the passive which became the perfective aspect. Shenanigans will ensue.
• Case marking and adpositions both exist and have to interact with each other.
• Verbs are gonna be weird. My idea is layers of TAM marking strategies due to nominalisation and then the usage of those nominalised forms with auxiliaries.
• Adjectives don't exist. There's nouns that cover some attributive categories, and verbs that cover others, along with derivational strategies to switch between the two.

Culture & Context

• The 'modern' language is meant to be spoken as the dominant language in an isolated centre of civilisation. Compare to real world Mesoamerica or the Andes, which wereisolated from the other major civilisations in Afroeurasia.
• This language is spoken during the equivalent of a local early iron age, though the region is technologically behind the rest of the world, which will be at the most advanced around the Renaissance or Song dynasty China. Thus there will be borrowed vocabulary from outside nations that concern advanced technologies.
• The language has served as a superstrate over an older language spoken in that civilisation, which serves as a source of many borrowings. There are other neighbouring languages which serve as the source of borrowings.
• The languages speakers have moved around a lot, due to migrations that were caused by various climatic and political shifts, which means that the ancestral language will likely be quite different phonologically and grammatically from the modern one.
• There will be other languages in its family that are more or less closely related to it, though none of these other languages will be of comparable prestige.

This basically covers all the goals I have for my conlang. Unfortunately, I have yet to bring any of these ideas to fruition. The first step, as one might expect, is to design the ancestor language's phonology and grammar.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the journey!

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