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Some basics of nominal classification

aight so, i wanted to make a post about nominal morphology but i cant be cause i would need to go into: case markings, derivational morphology and expression of plurality, most of which i have not stabalized in my master doc so ill just go into the expression of grammatical gender or grammatical classes in my conlang.

a lot of grammars talk about grammatical genders because a lot of grammatical gender systems are sex-based (french, spanish etc.) but i prefer the terme nominal classes for a three reasons:

the gender binary is fake and cant be limited to a binary sex system, even within natural gender systems (german (masc, fem, neutral), a variety of african languages which are not even sex-based)

even within sex-based, binary gender systems, it makes no sense to speak of gender for objects, concepts and so on so the sex dichotomy only applies to a few lexemes (and even then it's debatable)

the nominal classes in my conlang is based on different criteria that are completly outside of gender/sex considerations, at least within the nouns.

So, with these considerations in mind, lets get into the nominal classes in my language. I considered 4 different classes that are a result of the combination of 2 binary variable:

whether the considered (philosophical) object is animate

whether the considered (philosophical) object is found above or below the earth

Indeed, the linguistic community that speaks this language lives under the ground, and spends most of its life in complexe cave systems that they made as their dwelling.

this creates a few cognitive considerations in the distribution of objects into the different nominal classes that i will go into later.

from this we can deduce 4 nominal classes:

deep inanimate (dwelling, books...) DI

deep animate (people, bugs, fire...) DA

surface inanimate (mountains, rocks, fallen snow...) SI

surface animate (animals, clouds, falling snow...) SA

the usual way one can tell that a language has a nominal class system is agreement. In my language, gender agreement shows in different ways. one of the most elaborate is that each noun case affix agrees with the nominal class of the noun.

nominal class agreement shows in different ways all throughout the language besides nouns: all nominals bear some sort of agreement mark.

at first i wanted to give each noun a different ending depending on its nominal class but im starting to rethink this decision as it's kind of boring. going forward ill either have a few "stereotypical" endings for each nominal class but that are not necessary for a noun to belong to a class or ill just say f it and just make class unmarked in the lexeme.

im still working on the case markings and the case system so i wont be able to show much right now but ill start working on a few case infographics soon.

[maonng]

Phonology 4/4 - prosody

And this is the last infographic in this phonology series, the first series of infographic on my conlang.

This one is quite wordy unfortunatly but i wasn't sure how to make it more visually appealling. i also didnt want to spend too much time on prosody as it is not something that will be very important to the language (with it being dead and all...).

anyways, ill probably go into more details about the modal prosodic patterns because i like the idea, maybe ill think of a way to add it to the writing systems since its so important.

im not sure what's next. i have a lot of grammatical material that needs cleaning up and formatting but i dont really feel like stabalizing it yet.

what im probably going to do is start a post where i aggregate the vocab ive been working on with a short intro to the nominal morphology rules. the thing is that most the conlang is still highly unstable so i cant write anything in it yet.

[maonng]

Phonology 3/4 - phonotactics

yo, this time its about phonotactics.

turns out i dont know shit about phonotactics but i tried to make it work out with what little i know without doing the research lmao.

have i said that im not a fan of phonology yet?

anyways, it is what it is, im more than ready to be done with this so be ready for the next and last part of the phonology/phonetics series.

[maonng]

Phonology 2/4 - Allophony

Okay so this infographic goes over some of the rules for allophony. i might come up with additional ones as I go along and ill update this infographic if thats the case.

I debated about making tree representation for each allophony rules and phonemes but i decided against it cause im lazy and it would be kind of redundant.

obviously, compared to a natural language its not a lot of rules and variation and its only context based variation and not social/place/age... variation. i imagine that, because the speaking community is quite small and located within a small area, it would result in a quite homogeneous speaking community but obviously that would not prevent prononciation change overtime and and stuff like that. That's not something i want to spend too much time on because, at the end of the day, its a dead language in-universe.

also, i dont really love phonetics/phonology so i dont particularily want to spend too much time on it lmao.

anyways, next infographic is going to touch on phonotactics and im going to end the phonology series wihth an infographic on prosody and suprasegmental features. obviously, i mentioned stressed syllables already but ill go into more details about the accentuation rules later.

[maonng]

Phonology 1/4

okay so, basically... phonology...

This is the first infographic in a series of a few going over the basic phonology of my conlang, this first one goes over the basic phonologic inventory of the conlang, next is going to be about allophones and such and then probably phonotactics and finally prosody.

also i'll start working on a spelling and writing systems but im not sure if ill include it to the phonology series as it's not STRICTLY in the realm of phonology/phonetics.

also there is no example words on the infographic itself because I wanted to keep it clean and clear but ill probably do a post with sample words and phrases later

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first post and quick pres of my conlang

okay so i will use this blog to post about my constructed language that ive been working on for a game im making.

ill share stuff about the grammar but also some posts only in the language cause i need to get good at writing in it

ill be working on a phonology infographic for the first big post so expect that.

as for the quick presentation of my conlang: it's a mostly agglutinative language with a highly flexible word order and an extensive case system (still working on that). in universe, it's a dead language but im making it as though its still alive (the speakers met with a tragic fate). it uses two writing systems that i made up used in different contexts but for ease of use i made up a standard spelling but for most of the time i just use ipa.

i wont go into too much more details here and focus on working on the language