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No matter what pair of words you try to use to illustrate a difference in pronunciation, there is unfortunately some commonly spoken dialect of English which is specifically designed to defeat you. There are English dialects where "dog" and "cat" have the same vowel sound in the middle. You can't win.
When concocting my consonant palette, how many consonant clusters is too many? If I really want to feature /kt/ and /gl/ and such, with unique glyphs once I get to orthography, how deep can I go while still sounding natural?
So the answer to the first question is there isn't an upper limit, but your second question makes me feel like you have a different understanding of what's going on from what I'd expect...? Generally, true consonant clusters don't have individual glyphs. It happens (e.g. x being /ks/), but compare the number of possible consonant clusters in any language to the number of glyphs that encode those consonant clusters, and you'll be looking at like less than a percent. It's simply not practical, and writing systems are practical, and evolve toward further practicality. No such constraints are placed on actual languages in terms of their phonology—or, more specifically, each language decides what is going to practical on its own, and it can decide anything from zero consonant clusters is practical to there is no constraint at all on what two—or three or four or five—consonants can occur next to one another.
how do wordssssssss? and phonotactics....
Conlanging grammar? Fun. Conlanging words? It's always eluded me. I do not know why. Any words I construct just always end up sounding.... constructed. Robotic.
I need a list of the words that COULD exist in English but don't. Like all of the words that English phonotactics would allow, but aren't established words. Think of all of the possible wugs ✨
hello conlangers of tumblr, i need help knowing a good phone app for storing phonology and other grammar stuff. i tried using conlanger's toolkit but it doesnt have a tool for phonology. preferably id like a app, but a phone-compatible site would be great aswell.
Would phonotactics pay child support?
Would Phonotactics pay Child Support?
Yes
No
I saw your post about #tag linguistics and it was fascinating! I was wondering if you knew any online resources/references describing the phonotactics of different languages for a mostly inexpert audience? When I poke around with my meager googling I tend to only turn up English, but I'd be really curious to see the basic rules laid out for comparison among a few different languages!
Oi! Hey there! ^.^ Hope you're doing well and thanks for the kind words!
Unfortunately I've been out of the academic loop since 2016 and I only remember a handful of resources, most of which aren't inexpert audience friendly(?).
The resource that pops to mind, regardless, is WALS Online - The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. It's a cross-linguistic feature comparison tool. It allows you to generate and investigate global maps based upon a single linguistic feature or multiple features simultaneously. I think it's a cool shortcut because it checks plausibility (for people who might not know interrelatability) on whether a language might have a combination of features. It helps visualize patterns across languages, language families, and regions.
For instance, since we're talking phonotactics, here's the map for syllable structure. Problem is WALS pulls no punches on jargon, and most of the sources it cites are, like, grammars you'd only find in print on a campus library.
On WALS, each language has a page where its features are listed. To learn the details of how the feature manifests, you'd have to use other sources. But WALS at least provides the relevant starting point of individual languages to investigate. Wikipedia ain't... always accurate or comprehensive, of course, in something like linguistics... but it's an easy way to start poking once you know the names of languages you want to snoop at.
You could try your luck with the currently-defunct World Phonotactics Website on the Wayback Machine, though that's not one I know much about, and there is the whole, uh, defunct thing going for it.
I'm sorry I can't be more help!
Nice stopping in, and thanks for the kind words of that viral post. Funny (if typically tumblr) story about that. I posted it eight years ago intentionally at an off hour of night in hopes it'd get two notes and fade into obscurity. That's why it has nicher fandom-specific references; it wasn't anticipated to escape containment, just be a convo between two friends. Yeah oops bwahaha. Gosh I was so energized at the time. Anymore I don't think it holds up remotely, factually, from any academic standing, and the inaccuracies make me twitch, but I doubt most people notice, and I hope it gives people the fun and excitement about linguistics I was feeling. ^.^ Linguistics is so cool!! And I s'pose it's been cool that one of my most-spread posts is nerdy. Oh, alas, science side of tumblr, I was amongst y'all once.
Movelang #001 FU - Codifying the Syllable Structure
Nophhurra, and greetings! This post is a short follow-up to the previous one where I discuss some changes and determinations made in Movelang's syllable structure. After toying around with some base lexical material and words that I've coined, I now am much more confident about how the language's syllable structure looks.
In the introductory phonology post, I intentionally left the phonotactics a bit vague, because at the time when I had initially codified the structure in my notes, I was more unsure of how syllables should look, whereas in the time since, I've been able to coin a handful of starter words and become much more certain about how syllables in Movelang look and behave. Since then it's only been a matter of reckoning the actual behavior in my notes, based on the words and common affixes I've begun coining and using.
As you can see, the structure has changed a tad bit to say the least, with this updated shape reflecting the shape common to all the syllables in my current initial set of words. Any syllable may begin with no consonant at all, any single onset consonant, or an allowed consonant cluster of a plosive + fricative, or plosive + liquid. Phonemic null onset also applies word-internally, and consequently, hiatus is also allowed phonemically. Syllables also have a few rules concerning what consonants may end a syllable, if one is present. Word-internally, any consonant may end a syllable, except for /j/, but word-finally, only a handful of consonants may end the final syllable, these being /m t k q s ɾ/. The one exception to the word-internal rule, is when there is a geminate consonant used as a simultaneous coda and onset, in which case, any consonant many end the syllable, as it also counts as the onset of the following syllable.
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That's all I wish to say for now, until next time! The next full post concerning Noun Classes and the first showing-off of Movelang's Lexical Material is currently in the works, and should be out soon! I hope you all are as excited as I am, and until then, please feel free to ask any questions you may have! Cheers!
