Creating a Fictional Language Family Part 3: Vowel Hiatus, Diphthongs and Monophthongization

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Proto-lang 1 (the ancestor of the two modern languages we’re working on) permitted “vowel hiatus” – that is, it allowed two vowels to exist next to each other. The only rule governing vowel hiatus was that the first vowel must be short; apart from that, any vowel combination was legal. But vowel hiatus is pretty unstable, and it doesn’t survive into the daughter languages. 

Language 1a deals with vowel hiatus by creating semivowels, in this series of sound changes:

V → V(+semivowel) / _ V(+long)

i, u → i̯, u̯ / _ V

i, u → i̯, u̯ / a _

This results with a table of diphthongs that looks like this:

  i u a
i N/A u̯i ai̯
u i̯u N/A au̯
a i̯a

u̯a

 N/A
iː N/A u̯iː a̯iː
uː i̯uː N/A a̯uː
aː i̯aː u̯aː

N/A

These diphthongs will be affected by vowel harmony. After vowel harmony occurs, you get something that looks like this:

  i u a
i N/A u̯i, o̯e ʌi̯, ae̯
u i̯u, e̯o N/A ʌu̯, ao̯
a i̯ʌ, e̯a u̯ʌ, o̯a N/A
iː N/A u̯iː, o̯eː ʌ̯iː, a̯eː
uː i̯uː, e̯oː N/A ʌ̯uː, a̯oː
aː i̯aː, e̯aː u̯aː, o̯aː

N/A

As you can see, this language has a lot of potential diphthongs, including some pretty weird ones. These diphthongs hit the precise phonaesthetic I’m going for. The lowered ones in particular remind me of Latin (oe, ae) and Old English (eo, ea), appropriate for a language I want to have an archaic feel. 

Language 1b follows a slightly different path to resolve vowel hiatus than 1a:

short i, u → j, w / V _

short i, u → j, w / _ V

a → ∅ / _ V(+long)

This results in the following table:

  i u a
i N/A uj aj
u iw

N/A

 aw
a ja wa

N/A
iː N/A wiː iː
uː juː N/A uː
aː jaː waː N/A

There’s another step, though. Some of these diphthongs undergo monophthongization, which in some cases results in the creation of new vowels:

uj, aj → yː, ɜː

yˤː → uː

iw, ɯw, ɜw, ɑw → yː, uː, ɞː, ɒː

The final table looks like this:

  i

u

 a
i N/A yː, uː ɜː, ɑː
u yː, uː N/A ɞː, ɒː
a jɜ, jɑː wɜ, wɑ N/A
iː N/A wiː, wɯː iː, ɯː
uː juː N/A uː
aː jɜː, jɑː wɜː, wɑː

N/A

This means that [uː] is now a hybrid vowel. Sometimes it’ll be transparent to front-back harmony, and sometimes it’ll alternate with [yː]. 

With this final chart, we can also see that the syllable structure of this language has changed. Keep in mind that, unlike the semivowels in Language 1a, [j] and [w] are true approximants, acting as consonants and existing outside the syllable nucleus. While the monophthongization has prevented them from occurring at syllable codas, they can still occur at syllable onsets. Thus, the syllable structure shifted from (C)V(C) to (C)(W)V(C) (where W is a glide).

That’s all for now! (Normally, I would recommend some literature on resolving vowel hiatus here, but honestly, most of what I did here was pretty much intuitive.)

Creating a Fictional Language Family Part 2: Evolving Vowel Harmony

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Hello! Now that I’ve shown off the protolanguage (and done what was probably a far too lengthy explanation of emphasis harmony), I’m getting into the descendant languages, creating the vowel harmony systems as they evolve from emphasis harmony in the two descendants: Language 1a and 1b.

Language 1b

(Yes, I know, I’m explaining Language 1b before I explain Language 1a. But I’d already decided on the naming convention, and this one makes more sense to introduce first.)

In Language 1b, emphasis harmony causes vowels to back. The emphatic vowel [iˤ] goes to [ɯˤ], and the emphatic vowel [aˤ] goes to [ɑˤ]. [a] also changes when not emphatic, going to [ɜ]. (I was initially skeptical of the realism of this last change, but a similar thing happens in Arabic. Many dialects of Arabic have non-emphatic [a] going to [æ] in most environments, and in Tunisian Arabic, it shifts all the way to [ɛ].) None of the vowel changes in Language 1b are affected by stress.

This leaves us with a paradigm that looks like this:

Front

Back

i, iː¹

 ɯ, ɯː
u², uː²

ɜ, ɜː

ɑ, ɑː

¹opaque progressively

²sometimes transparent bidirectionally

Language 1a

In language 1a, emphasis causes the lowering of vowels. The emphatic vowel [iˤ] goes to [eˤ], the emphatic vowel [uˤ] goes to [oˤ], and the emphatic vowel [aˤ] goes to [ɑˤ]. Unemphatic [a] goes to [ʌ] when short, but it goes to [ɑː] when long. This makes [ɑː] a neutral vowel, and, interestingly, means it’s transparent to vowel harmony – an unusual characteristic for a long low vowel, but one that makes sense given the background history. This leaves us with a system that looks like this: 

High Low
i, iː e, eː
u, uː o, oː
ʌ ɑ
ɑː²

¹opaque progressively

²transparent bidirectionally

But wait! There’s a twist!

See, emphasis doesn’t just alter vowel quality – it can alter consonant quality too. Emphatic /kˤ/ often goes to /q/, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this would impact other velar consonants. If this change occurs after emphasis harmony is established, it could create a velar-uvular consonant harmony system:

proto xaːkˤ > xˤaˤːkˤ > modern χaːq

proto xaːk > modern xaːk

Velar-uvular consonant harmony isn’t common, but it does occur in some Totonacan languages. But what we have here isn’t just velar-uvular consonant harmony – it’s a system of consonant-vowel harmony. Uvulars only occur in words with low vowels, and velars only occur in words with high vowels. This sort of harmony, “faucal harmony”, is very rare, though it occurs in Interior Salish. However, emphasis harmony leaves behind an interesting and (as far as I know) unprecedented property: faucal harmony can occur in words without any uvulars in the stem.

proto tˤuv > tˤuˤv > modern tov

proto tˤuv-ik > tˤuˤvˤ-iˤkˤ > modern tov-eq

I’m not too worried about this, despite its apparent lack of precedent. The sound changes that arrived at this point are all naturalistic, and I don’t think that it would be likely to get removed via assimilation, given the clear link between low vowels and uvulars in other contexts. 

This leaves us with two pretty fun vowel harmony systems evolved out of the old emphasis harmony system. The harmony system in language 1b is still pretty bland, but there are things coming that will make it a bit more interesting. For further reading on emphasis harmony and faucal harmony, I recommend Ananian and Nevins’ Postvelar Harmonics: A Typological Odyssey, which goes into far more detail than I can about emphasis harmony in Palestinian Arabic and faucal harmony in Interior Salish. I also recommend Rose and Walker’s Harmony Systems, an excellent guide to consonant harmony, vowel harmony, and vowel-consonant harmony – especially good if you’re considering implementing some type of harmony in your language. In the next installment, I’m going to further complicate the vowels by discussing diphthongs and vowel coalescence! 

Creating a Fictional Language Family Part 1: Proto-phonology, and a Discussion of Emphasis Harmony

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Hello! This time, as promised, I’ll be actually getting into the conlanging. Let’s start with some protophonology:

Lang 1-proto Consonants

Bilabial

 Alveolar

Avleolopalatal

Velar
Stop/Affricate

Voiceless

p

 t tɕ

k

Emphatic

pˤ

 tˤ tsˤ

~

 kˀ

Voiced

 b d dʑ g
Fricative

Voiceless

f

 s ɕ x

Voiced

 v

z

ʑ

 ɣ
Liquids –

ɾ l

    
Nasals m

n

 –

–

Lang 1-proto Vowels

Front

Back

Close

i iː

u uː
Open

a aː

Phonotactics: Default (C)V(C) syllable structure. Allows word-initial syllable structure of sPV(C), where P is a voiceless plosive. Allows vowel hiatus of up to two vowels.

On the whole, this is a fairly standard phonological system: it’s got a classic three-vowel system with a length distinction, full series of voiceless and voiced plosives at the three major places of articulation, and a fourth palatalized place of articulation (though note the alveolo-palatal obstruents instead of the more common palato-alveolars). But you’ve probably noticed the “emphatic” category. Let me explain that.

Some Afroasiatic languages, such as Arabic, have a series of consonants with a pharyngeal secondary articulation*. These consonants are referred to as emphatic consonants, and they derive from a series of obstruents in Proto-Afroasiatic that contrasted with separate voiced and voiceless series, much like the one you see here.

These pharyngealized consonants often have the interesting property of spreading their emphasis to nearby sounds. In some dialects, this may only affect adjacent consonants – in others, it can affect the entire word, in a process called “emphasis harmony”. Even more intriguingly, vowels affected this way tend to change their quality. Sometimes vowels affected this way will back, sometimes they will lower, sometimes they do both. This starts to create something that looks like vowel harmony.

However, there’s nothing happening at the phonemic level. These vowel shifts are purely allophonic, still being determined by the presence of an emphatic consonant. However, if the emphasis distinction were to be lost after emphasis harmony has taken effect, we might end up with a system of actual vowel harmony. In fact, we could end up with several different systems in different descendant languages, depending on how emphasis harmony affected the vowels. The two descendant languages that I’m creating differ in how they handle emphatic vowels, resulting in two very different harmony systems.

In these systems, vowel harmony will spread like emphasis harmony did in the protolanguage, resulting in some unusual properties. Emphasis harmony tends to spread bidirectionally. When it spreads regressively, it is most often unimpeded, but when it spreads progressively, it often is blocked by high front segments. This includes the vowel [i], but also consonants like [j] and even [ʒ]. For this protolang, I’ll follow this pattern. Emphasis harmony isn’t blockable regressively, but is blocked progressively by [iː], [ɕ], [ʑ], [tɕ], and [dʑ]. These patterns will persist into the descendant languages, meaning they’ll end up with vowel harmony being blocked by consonants!

In the next installment of this, I’ll be getting into the actual languages, evolving out vowel harmony systems for two descendent languages. Future posts on this won’t be nearly as research-heavy. Emphasis harmony is a niche enough feature that I thought it merited a fair bit of explanation; most of the other changes won’t need a whole blog post of background.

*It’s actually uvularization in Arabic, not pharyngealization. However, it’s almost always represented with the pharyngealization symbol, and a lot of places will still refer to it as pharyngealization instead of uvularization, so I’ll follow the standard. Also take note that references to “emphatic” consonants aren’t always talking about pharyngealization/uvularization. In Proto-Semitic, the emphatic consonants were ejectives, and they retained this quality in some modern languages. Emphatic consonants also gave rise to implosive consonants in some non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages. 

Editor’s Note: I’m completely guessing at the date on this one. The concept of evolving emphasis harmony into vowel harmony goes all the way back to Yiksighe (though I did it really weirdly there). I’m dating this to December 8, 2022 – the creation date for the earliest documentation I have of the protolanguage – but most of the research here was done earlier for Yiksighe.