Widmann’s Language Creator

Phonology

Consonants

Places of articulation

Labial and labiodental consonants include /p/, /b/, /f/ and /m/. How many labials?

Dental/alveolar distinction?

Retroflex consonants are widely used in Indian languages. How many retroflex consonants?

How many palatal consonants?

How many uvular consonants?

A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis in the lower larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined. Stops and trills can be reliably produced only at the epiglottis, and fricatives can be reliably produced only in the upper pharynx. When they are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term radical consonant may be used as a cover term, or the term guttural consonants may be used instead. In many languages, pharyngeal consonants trigger advancement of neighboring vowels. Pharyngeals thus differ from uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction. For example, in some dialects of Arabic, the vowel /a/ is fronted to [æ] next to pharyngeals, but it is retracted to [ɑ] next to uvulars, as in حال [ħæːl] 'condition', with a pharyngeal fricative and a fronted vowel, compared to خال [χɑːl] 'maternal uncle', with a uvular consonant and a retracted vowel. How many pharyngeal consonants?

How many glottal consonants?

Modes of articulation

How many ejective consonants?

How many voicedimplosive consonants?

How many approximant consonants?

How many palatalised consonants?

Languages differ in the number and nature of their liquid consonants. Many languages, such as Japanese, Korean, or Polynesian languages (see below), have a single liquid phoneme that has both lateral and rhotic allophones. English has two liquid phonemes, one lateral, /l/ and one rhotic, /ɹ/, exemplified in the words led and red. Many other European languages have one lateral and one rhotic phoneme. Some, such as Greek, Italian and Serbo-Croatian, have more than two liquid phonemes. All three languages have the set /l/, /ʎ/, /r/, with two laterals and one rhotic. Similarly, the Iberian languages contrast four liquid phonemes. /l/, /ʎ/, /ɾ/, and a fourth phoneme that is an alveolar trill in all but some varieties of Portuguese, where it is a uvular trill or fricative (also, the majority of Spanish speakers lack /ʎ/ and use the central /ʝ/ instead). Some European languages, for example Russian and Irish, contrast a palatalized lateral–rhotic pair with an unpalatalized (or velarized) set (e.g. /lʲ/ /rʲ/ /l/ /r/ in Russian). Elsewhere in the world, two liquids of the types mentioned above remains the most common attribute of a language's consonant inventory except in North America and Australia. In North America, a majority of languages do not have rhotics at all and there is a wide variety of lateral sounds though most are obstruent laterals rather than liquids. Most indigenous Australian languages are very rich in liquids, with some having as many as seven distinct liquids. They typically include dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal laterals, and as many as three rhotics. On the other side, there are many indigenous languages in the Amazon Basin and eastern North America, as well as a few in Asia and Africa, with no liquids. How many liquids?

Should it use nasal stops (like /m/ and /n/)?

A lot of languages in southern Africa use clicks. How many clicks?

Should it use voicing?

Should it use aspiration?

Should it have fricatives?

Vowels

Oral Vowel Heights

How many degrees of opening should the language have? The most common number is three, resulting in a typical vowel inventory of /a e i o u/, but values from two to five are all well-documented.

Languages sometimes have as many nasal vowels as they do oral ones, but often there are much fewer. For instance, French distinguishes four degrees of opening in its oral vowel system, but only two in its nasal one. How many degrees of opening for nasal vowels should the language have? 0 means no nasal vowels, and 1 means as many as oral vowels, but you can specify a number inbetween.

Languages often reduce the number of vowels in subsequent syllabels. How many degrees of opening for reduced vowels should the language have? 0 means only one (schwa), and 1 means using the full vowel set.

Some languages phonologically only distinguish vowel height, but it's much more common to distinguish between front and back vowels. Some languages furthermore add a central vowel series to the mix. How many degrees of backness should the language employ?

Some language distinguish short and long vowels. Should the language do this?

Some languages phonologically only distinguish vowel height, but it's much more common to distinguish between front and rounded vowels. Some languages furthermore add a central vowel series to the mix. Should roundedness be distinctive?

Vowel harmony

Suprasegmentals

Stress

Tone

Morphology

Morphological Structures and Strategies

Affixes and clitics

Affixes and clitics are morphemes that attach to a word to modify its meaning or function. Affixes include prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes, and infixes. Prefixes are added to the beginning of a word, such as 'un-' in 'unhappy'. Suffixes attach to the end, as in '-ness' in 'happiness'. Circumfixes wrap around a word, though they are rare in English; an example in German is 'ge-' and '-t' in 'gespielt' (played). Infixes are inserted within a word; while uncommon in English, an example is the Tagalog 'um' in 'kumain' (ate). Clitics differ in that they are less tightly bound to their host words. Preclitics attach before their host, and postclitics attach after. For example, in French, the object pronoun 'le' in 'je le vois' (I see him) acts as a preclitic, and in Serbo-Croatian, 'sam' in 'ja sam' (I am) acts as a postclitic. Independent words, unlike clitics, stand alone and maintain full word status in a sentence. Affixes and clitics play crucial roles in the morphology and syntax of languages, offering various ways to convey grammatical relationships and nuances.

What kind of marking should be used?

Fusion and complexity

The degree of fusion and complexity in a language can vary significantly, influencing how information is conveyed. In highly fusional languages like Greenlandic, suffixes merge together seamlessly, forming intricate and often difficult-to-separate words. This results in a high level of morphological complexity, where a single word can convey what might require an entire sentence in other languages. Turkish, while also rich in suffixes, presents these morphemes in a more identifiable and separable manner. This makes Turkish less fused compared to Greenlandic, but still morphologically rich and complex. Languages such as Latin and Russian also demonstrate high morphological complexity with numerous inflectional paradigms and a significant degree of irregularity, requiring memorization of various exceptions to grammatical rules. In contrast, languages like Mandarin Chinese use minimal inflection and rely heavily on word order and context, resulting in low morphological complexity but high syntactic complexity. Understanding the degree of fusion, complexity, and irregularity in a language is crucial for designing a conlang's grammatical structure, allowing for nuanced expression and varied linguistic features.

To what extent should the language fuse different elements together?

To what extent should the language use different inflectional paradigms?

To what extent should the language have irregularities and exceptions to rules?

Suffixaufnahme

Suffixaufnahme (German: [ˈzʊfɪksˌaʊfˌnaːmə], "suffix resumption"), also known as case stacking, is a linguistic phenomenon used in forming a genitive construction, whereby prototypically a genitive noun agrees with its head noun. It was first recognized in Old Georgian and some other Caucasian and ancient Middle Eastern languages as well as many Australian languages, and almost invariably coincides with agglutinativity. A subject, for instance, would be marked with a subjective affix as well as a genitive affix. So, for example, in Old Georgian perx-ni k'ac-isa-ni (foot-NOM.PL man-GEN-NOM.PL) 'a man's feet', the genitival noun phrase agrees in case (nominative) and number (plural) with the head noun. However, while such a possessive construction is most frequently found in suffixaufnahme, other nominal constructions may also show similar behavior. In Old Georgian, a postpositional phrase modifying a noun could take on that noun's case and number features: "Ra turpa prinvelia!" c'amoidzaxa ert-ma bavshv-ta-gan-ma [one-ERG child-GEN.PL-from-ERG] ("'What a wonderful bird!' exclaimed one of the children") has the ergative (also called narrative) case -ma on ertma repeated in the modifying postpositional phrase, headed by -gan. Perhaps use the example sentence "I saw the girl in the door of the building" (I saw girl-ACC door-LOC-ACC building-GEN-LOC-ACC).

Should the language do suffixaufnahme?

Polysynthesis

Languages such as Turkish and Greenlandic use numerous suffixes to express ideas typically conveyed through verbs, adjectives, or adverbs in other languages. For instance, in Greenlandic, "to have" is often expressed through the suffix -qarpoq, e.g., illu "house" becomes illoqarpoq "he has a house". Although Turkish isn't normally considered a polysynthetic language, it arguably should be, considering complex examples such as "Avrupalılaştıramadık" meaning "one that is unable to be Europeanised". Polysynthetic languages like these can form long, complex words that pack a lot of information.

Degree of polysynthesis?

Grammatical categories

Number

Grammatical number refers to the morphological marking of nouns, pronouns and often verbs to indicate quantity. The most familiar distinction is between singular and plural, as in English 'cat' (singular) versus 'cats' (plural). However, languages around the world exhibit a variety of number systems. For example, some languages, such as Arabic and Slovene, include a dual form to specifically denote two items, like Arabic 'kitāb' (book), 'kitābān' (two books), and 'kutub' (books). Even more complex systems exist; for instance, the Fijian language has singular, dual, paucal (a few), and plural forms. Grammatical number can also affect verb conjugations and agreement, seen in French where 'il mange' (he eats) becomes 'ils mangent' (they eat).

Should the language have number as a grammatical category?

Gender

Grammatical gender is a classification system for nouns, which affects the form of other related words such as adjectives, pronouns, and verbs. Unlike natural gender, which is based on biological sex, grammatical gender can classify nouns in ways that are not always intuitive. For example, in German, 'der Tisch' (the table) is masculine, 'die Lampe' (the lamp) is feminine, and 'das Buch' (the book) is neuter. Many Indo-European languages, like Spanish, use a two-gender system (masculine and feminine), as seen in 'el libro' (the book, masculine) and 'la casa' (the house, feminine). Some languages, like Swahili, use noun classes instead, which can function similarly to gender; Swahili has multiple classes including ones for humans, animals, and inanimate objects. Grammatical gender can impact agreement rules within a sentence, influencing the form of articles, adjectives, and sometimes even verbs.

Should the language have gender as a grammatical category?

Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM)

Articles

The

Should the language have a definite article?

Should the language have an indefinite article?

Should there be adjectives? (Or just nouns and verbs?)

In some languages, adjectives are verbs, in others they are nouns, but in most they form a separate word class. If they are verbs or nouns, other questions about adjectives will be disregarded.

Head and Dependent Marking

The sentence

Case: Marking of subject and object.

Case marking is a grammatical system that indicates the roles of subjects and objects in a sentence. The nominative-accusative system, found in languages like Latin and German, marks the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs with the nominative case and the direct object with the accusative case. For example, in Latin, 'puella' (the girl, nominative) can be the subject, while 'puellam' (the girl, accusative) is the object. In contrast, ergative-absolutive languages like Basque and Georgian treat the subject of intransitive verbs the same as the object of transitive verbs, both marked with the absolutive case, while the subject of transitive verbs is marked with the ergative case. For instance, in Basque, 'mutila' (the boy, absolutive) is both the subject of 'mutila etorri da' (the boy has come) and the object of 'neskak mutila ikusi du' (the girl saw the boy), with 'neskak' (the girl, ergative) as the subject. Stative-active systems, such as those in some Amerindian languages, distinguish between subjects based on the action's nature—whether it's voluntary or not. Lastly, some languages like Mandarin Chinese use no case marking, relying on word order and context to distinguish between subjects and objects.

Should the subject and object be marked?

Possessive construction

Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases

Should the possessor in a possessive construction be marked, for instance by using a adposition or grammatical case?

Marking of owned (possessive)

Should the owned in a possessive construction be marked?

Adpositions (prepositions, postpositions etc.)

Should adpositional phrases be head-marked?

Should adpositional phrases be dependent-marked?

Word Order

Greenbergian Word order

Order of verb, subject and object

NDem or DemN

AN or NA

NGen or GenN

Should the possessor/owner precede or follow the possessed/owned?

Prepositions or postpositions

Prepositions and postpositions are types of adpositions, words used to express relationships between elements in a sentence, particularly involving spatial or temporal relationships. Prepositions precede their complement, as seen in English: 'in the house', 'on the table', 'before the meeting'. For example, 'The cat is on the mat' uses 'on' as a preposition indicating the spatial relationship. Postpositions, on the other hand, follow their complement. Languages like Japanese and Hindi commonly use postpositions. In Japanese, 'テーブルの上に' (teeburu no ue ni) means 'on the table', with 'ni' functioning as the postposition. Similarly, in Hindi, 'मेरे पास' (mere paas) means 'near me', with 'paas' as the postposition. Some languages, such as Finnish and Hungarian, use both prepositions and postpositions, while others may use a combination of adpositions and case endings to indicate relationships.

Should the language use prepositions or postpositions?

NNum or NumN

The relative clause

The following sentences indicate various possibilities (only some of which are grammatical in English): So perhaps we should try three main options (roughly corresponding to Georgian): (1) woman-NOM REL-FEM-DAT I-NOM letter-ACC write-FUT Tbilisi-LOC live-PRES (2) I-NOM letter-ACC write-FUT-REL woman-NOM Tbilisi-LOC live-PRES (3) woman-DAT I-NOM letter-ACC write-FUT-REL, 3RD-SING-DEM-FEM-NOM Tbilisi-LOC live-PRES Investigate these additional options: (4) "[Which person I saw yesterday], that person went home". (A correlative structure, as in Hindi.) (5) "The person [that I saw him yesterday] went home". (A complementizer linking the two sentences with a resumptive pronoun indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause, as in Arabic, Hebrew or Persian.) "The person [that her I saw yesterday] went home". (Similar to the previous, but with the resumptive pronoun fronted. This occurs in modern Greek and as one possibility in modern Hebrew; the combination that him of complementizer and resumptive pronoun behaves similar to a unitary relative pronoun.)

Which strategy shold be used?

Seed

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