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Alien phonologies
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This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 12 Aug 2015, 21:37.

[comments] Menu 1. Introduction 2. Setting up the Phonological System 3. Filling the table 4. Using the system with a language 5. But qualities? This article will explain how to manage alien phonologies on CWS.

[top]Introduction

Conlangers quite frequently like to add weird and wonderful elements to languages that would not be found in human languages, and these are often imagined to be spoken by beings that are not human, or humanoid (human-like). Representing these sounds is possible on CWS through the use of a section of the site called Phonological systems.

So when should I use these? If your conlang is spoken by a species with similar or the same oral physiology as humans, and therefore able to produce the same possible set of sounds as humans, then this is not for you. This is for use, for example with other species that have different oral physiology; maybe they have more than one tongue, or no lips, or no voicebox, or a differently shaped palate etc.

[top]Setting up the Phonological System

The phonological systems on CWS are not attached to a specific language, rather the opposite is true. You are able to create a phonological system, and have more than one language use it. If you wish, you may also allow others to use it.

Before you start
Before you start setting this up on CWS, we would highly recommend that you have a sketch of the possible sounds articulateable. This is because any retroactive changes can be difficult to make, and will result in a lot of rework. If you make your system public, you'll also be unable to edit a large amount of it once it has been adopted by someone else's languages.

Adding the record
The form for creating a new phonological system can be found here. The name of the species, and the table information are compulsory. All other options are completely optional, but will give us further information about/depth to your system.

Permissions
Public - The public systems can be used by anyone to create a language. Only you may edit the system however.
Private - Only you may assign a language to these systems (including for languages that are shared).

Table data
Instructions on the page are pretty clear, however the format is pretty simple. Each line is for a new table, and each column/row is to be separated by a comma.

For example, the following setup will produce the tables shown below it.

Rows high,low loud,quiet Columns front,back high,low


frontback
high
low
highlow
loud
quiet


[top]Filling the table

Once you have added the system, you can move onto the second step. When we transcribe human languages, we can use the IPA or X-SAMPA to denote each possible sound within a human phonological system. However, since the IPA cannot be used for non-human languages, we need to come up with our own way of doing this. It is completely up to you how you wish to denote each sound; you may wish to repurpose existing IPA symbols, or come up with a completely new way.

On the fill page for your system, you'll be able to add these symbols to the tables you created in the previous steps. You can also rename each table (from their default names of "Table #x") using the field in the title above each table.

[top]Using the system with a language

Now that the system is set up, you can link a language to it. Once the language has been created, you can use the edit language page to set the phonological system used. This is displayed on the language summary page under the 'species' heading.

From here, you can add phonemes and such how you normally would and CWS should treat these normally. The main difference is that on a word summary page, and additional footnote will be added to state that the pronunciation provided does not use standard phonetic symbols (IPA) and will provide a link to further information.

[top]But qualities?

Once you have your sound system established, you can also add your own qualities just like CWS has. You can do this by using the edit phonological system page. There is an explanation on that page how to use these, and a field that allows you to copy the same ones used on CWS.

An important note here is to make sure that the 'type' parameter is correctly set to either D or S, otherwise it won't display properly - or at all. If using a diacritic, you will also need to use the HTML entity version of it (otherwise these won't be correctly added to the base symbol). To do this, it follows this format: &#x????; (where the ???? represents its unicode codepoint - use google to find this).

All done correctly, this will work just like the normal CWS qualities :)
Comments
[link] [quote] [move] [edit] [del] 14-Aug-20 03:16 [Deactivated User]
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