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  1. - Top - End - #91
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by nelk114 View Post
    So you're suggesting, effectively, two independent harmonic systems coexisting?
    For example, take the following hypothetical cases:
    Pũka-->Pũkɑ
    Pũga-->Pũgɑ̃
    Pũkta-->Pũkta, and
    Pũgda-->Pũgdă
    Is that what you had in mind, or am I misunderstanding? Interesting in any case.
    I suppose if we had palatalised consonants, for example, they would have their own effects (for instance fronting the harmony).
    That is exactly what I had in mind.

    And lets not forget about non-stop consonants.
    Pũla-->Pũlɑ̃ and so forth

    Pũgi-->Pũgɯ~ (how did you add the tilde?)
    or using the idea for the harmony i posted
    Pũgi-->Pũgɤ~ (again how do I add the tilde to the letter?)

  2. - Top - End - #92
    Pixie in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    I hear tell of a language with rhotic vowel harmony, which could be pretty fun to do

    The Yurok language is well known among linguists for several unusual features. One is phonological: Yurok is among a very few languages of the world to have the rhotic vowel sound /ɚ/ among its phonemes (another such language is American English). In addition, Yurok has a rhotic vowel harmony process by which underlying non-high vowels /a/, /e/, and /o/ may become /ɚ/ in a word that has /ɚ/; for example, the root /nahks-/ 'three' becomes [nɚhks-] in the word [nɚhksɚʔɚjɬ] 'three (animals or birds)'.
    but yeah in general some sort of harmony would add a lot to the language. I like the idea of two harmonies coexisting, too -- maybe a fronting/backing harmony and a rhotic/null harmony? (I personally don't really like the aesthetic of nasal vowels)


    we might as well start thinking on a vowel inventory? Sounds I like: ɚ ɛ e u

  3. - Top - End - #93
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    With the rhotic harmony we could possibly have it where a sequence of two vowels or a diphthong could break it, but in a different way. A diphthong may just not assimilate and block further harmony, but a sequence of two vowels may harmonize the first vowel then turn it into an approximate and block the harmony for the rest of the word.


    pa - tɚn - ate
    patɚnɚtɚ

    pa - tɚn - e - ate
    patɚnɻate

    pa - tɚn - ajte
    patɚnajte

    or perhaps the diphthong becomes rhotic
    pa - tɚn - ajte
    patɚnaɹte
    Last edited by Balyano; 2014-03-03 at 01:08 AM.

  4. - Top - End - #94
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    The rhotic harmony seems like it could work. How would they interact (if at all) with rhotic consonants (i.e.'r's)? Perhaps a reset?
    I still think it'd be interesting to have an alternative distinction between consonants besides voicing, for example aspiration or palatalisation (I also just remembered prenasalisation, which could be interesting...); these could perhaps interact with vowel harmony in their own ways.
    In the presence of two independent vowel harmonies, I won't bother suggesting throwing consonant harmony into the mix...

    N.b. the tilde is in the 'combining diacritical marks' section of unicode; Times New Roman/Arial/Courier New should have it and some other fonts may as well. They can be accessed through Character map if need be. The tilde beside the letter is still comprehensible though.

  5. - Top - End - #95
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    This thread is doing what I wanted it to do: force me to look up a whole bunch of stuff to keep up with the discussion (my OE philology isn't that heavy on actual phonology).

    The two sets of vowel harmony seem fun, but I wonder if we are going about this the wrong way. Should we build a language from intricate sound systems and add meaning later, or should we try to make a proper vocabulary and grammar and add flavor later? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, these proposed systems are flavor, not meaningful, right?

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by BWR View Post
    Should we build a language from intricate sound systems and add meaning later, or should we try to make a proper vocabulary and grammar and add flavor later? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, these proposed systems are flavor, not meaningful, right?
    I figure do some phonology so we know what to make the roots and affixes look like. Then some basic grammar to know what kinds of affixes and function words we will need. Then come up with a list of basic vocabulary that the language will need, roots and affixes and such. Then make words for the vocabulary list that fits the phonological rules we made. Then give it a tune up and make changes where necessary. So we probably shouldn't get too intricate at first. But we still haven't determined the phonology yet.

    Then look for some gaps in vocabulary to fill, possibly take a subject like smithing, figure out a bunch of terminology that it needs, come up with words for those terms, possibly basing new roots off old ones to mimic the look of a natural language. For instance the root for anvil may look suspiciously like the root for boulder. The root for forge may look suspiciously like someone took the roots for fire and hole and stuck them together and deleted a sound or two. ect. Could even have multiple words derived from the same compound by simplifying it in different ways, simulating the compound being made and simplified at different times in the languages development or even that they were the same word developed two different directions by different dialects and were then borrowed between them.

    example of the above idea lets pretend

    doku = boulder
    dokwa = anvil

    tsil = fire
    nefi = hole
    tsilnej = forge looks like tsilnefi with the f deleted and the ei sequence turned into a diphthong
    tsillef = brick oven formed from the same compound by instead assimilating the n to l making a geminate l, and deleting i

  7. - Top - End - #97
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Ok, that makes sense. So what we really need to do first off is determine what to work towards. Did we ever reach a conclusion about what sort of basic sound we wanted? I suggested, and at least one other person liked, the idea of a very airy language filled with vowels and soft consonants. Are there any other suggestions? Because that might be a good thing for the next vote.

  8. - Top - End - #98
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    For general sound, it looks like the only ideas were your breathier, breezier, melodic tongue, and my idea, which I've quoted in full below.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ozy View Post
    I really like the look and feel of consonant clusters, but at least a few people wanted a more flowy, vowelcentric language. I came up with a compromise which is sincerely odd, but I thought I'd post it regardless.

    Basically, I was wondering what would happen if we had sonorancy strictly increase (or increase with slight variation) over the sentence -- grinding, crushing, crumbling sounds steadily giving way to airier and breezier ones. The end of each sentence would be significantly lighter than the start of the next, which might sound a bit odd, so maybe there could be a set of syllables considered typical of each weight/sonorancy (like solfege syllables, kinda) that could act as downward steps from airier back down to darker.

    For example, if we had five different heights of syllable (1 being the darkest sounding, 5 being the lightest sounding), and one sentence ended with a syllable at height 5, and the next sentence started with one at height 2, then the proto syllables 4 and 3 would occur between the sentences, kinda waterfalling down between levels of sonorancy.

    Could be cool? But I dunno.
    Are there any other ideas? Should we discuss the pros/cons of each of those?

  9. - Top - End - #99
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    That is an interesting idea. Anyone else have suggestions before we start discussing things?

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    I'll be honest I don't know what constitutes ''breezy'' ''airy'' ''dark'' or ''light''. Is breezy and airy something with lots of fricatives? or just voiceless fricatives? Is dark voiced and nasalized sounds and light voiceless ones? Are these music terms that everyone knows but me? Also how do I get superscript on this thing?

    For Ozy's idea, if I understand it correctly, perhaps the ancestor of the language had multiple degrees of stress, i'm aware of real languages with three degrees of stress so why not. The roots contain aspirated, tenius and prenasalized stops, and voiceless fricatives. When they are suffixed onto another root the difference in stress, or a difference in stress in an ancestral version of the language, causes the aspirated stops to become tenius, the tenius to become voiced, and the prenasalized to become nasals, and the fricatives to become voiced fricatives. Further suffixes are even less stressed and what would have been tenius becomes voiced, voiced to voiced fricatives, nasals to nasal vowels separated by approximants, and the voiced fricatives to approximants. And have the vowels under go reduction with the progression until they become schwas.

    Not sure how to do superscript in here, tried pasting but it de-superscripted it, so just pretend that ''ph'' means aspirated p and ''mb'' means prenasalized b.

    for instance with labials
    primary stress > secondary stress > unstressed
    f > v > w
    ph > p > b
    p > b > v
    mb > m > Vnw (Vn here means nasalize the preceding vowel)
    perhaps

    tɬ > ɬ > l
    ts > s > h
    or
    ts > s > z

    lets pretend we have

    kat- phe- ŋgep-
    katpɪnɰəv (the n there is supposed to be superscripted)

    te- te- te-
    tedɪđə
    Last edited by Balyano; 2014-03-05 at 01:23 PM.

  11. - Top - End - #101
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by Balyano View Post
    I'll be honest I don't know what constitutes ''breezy'' ''airy'' ''dark'' or ''light''. Is breezy and airy something with lots of fricatives? or just voiceless fricatives? Is dark voiced and nasalized sounds and light voiceless ones?
    Here's what comes to mind for me, at least, when I hear the terms light or dark.

    Darkest:
    - consonant clusters
    - voiced sounds
    - nasals and stops
    - place of articulation in the back of the mouth
    - consonantal nuclei (l, r , m, n)

    Lightest:
    - (C)V structure
    - unvoiced sounds
    - approximates
    - articulated closer to the front of the mouth

    I'd be curious how BWR's definitions compare, because 'light' and 'dark' aren't exactly clearly defined.

    Quote Originally Posted by Balyano View Post
    Also how do I get superscript on this thing?
    This converter is a pretty useful tool. If you don't know x-sampa, just remember that to superscript something, put an underscore before it.

    I'm low on time now, so I can't say much on the bulk of your post, but it looked pretty cool and well thought out from what I saw. If we do decide consonant clusters are something central to a dark sound, those would probably make up the roots and the different stress levels would cause certain sounds to elide. Or something.
    Last edited by Ozy; 2014-03-05 at 02:08 PM.

  12. - Top - End - #102
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ozy View Post
    I'd be curious how BWR's definitions compare, because 'light' and 'dark' aren't exactly clearly defined.
    I was thinking lots of vowels and vowel clusters, avoiding too many consonants breaking things up, a low number of 'hard' consonants like stops, affricates, plosives, etc. Most consonants would be 'soft' like approximants.
    The idea I had, hard as it is to realize (in the sense 'make real'), was something that sounded sort of like a gentle breeze that picks up and dies down.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    This was basically what I thought with breezy or airy^
    Feel free to call me Born.

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  14. - Top - End - #104
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    perhaps discussion or a vote on

    lots of consonant clusters
    vs
    occasional consonant clusters
    vs
    few if any consonant clusters

    also perhaps discussion on what types of cluster
    Spoiler
    Show
    type example
    CAVX - twas
    CCVX - ktor
    CCAVX - gvle
    CCCVX - spta
    SCVX - stum
    CSVX - psel
    CNVX - kni
    CSCSCSCSACSCSSCSSCASCCCACCCCSSSAAVX - tfpskfdvrcxtsztfhklsbd☢jdgkqfsfrlep
    etc.
    C = any initial consonant
    A = approximant or liquid
    V = vowel or syllabic consonant
    X = coda or lack there of
    S = fricative
    N = nasal


    maybe a vote along the lines of

    1: very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants and few clusters
    2: very choppy with lots of stops and clusters
    3: something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
    4: something else entirely

    what do you think we should vote on? What should the ballot look like?

    are we counting the results of the last vote so that we have an language that is
    atonal
    vowels with length distinction
    limited set of codas
    medium number of vowels
    clicks, but only with special purpose

    or is this contested?

  15. - Top - End - #105
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    We probably should work within the constraints of the last vote, or else there would be little point in voting about it.

    1: very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants and few clusters
    2: very choppy with lots of stops and clusters
    3: something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
    4: something else entirely
    This seems like a good thing to vote on. It should give us an idea of what sort of sounds we have to work with and what to aim for. Does anyone else have any ideas or comments they want to make before we get to the act of voting?

  16. - Top - End - #106
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Maybe instead of just voting for one of the ideas or another, we could do a ranked vote for this one? Since there's more than just two options, and since I'd be happy with a few of them, I think that could be a better way to decide.


    I also think that we should be voting on:
    -lots of consonant clusters
    -occasional consonant clusters
    -few if any consonant clusters

    as well as a vote of:
    -very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants
    -very choppy with lots of stops
    -something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other
    -something else entirely

    (which is a slightly modified version of what you wanted). The reason for splitting them up like this is that we could still have some very consonanty clusters which still sound breezy (shwlsl), and no clusters but still be choppy (katakataka), and in general, I think that phonotactics and phonetic inventory aren't similar enought to combine into one vote.

    Is that good logic? I'm also game for the vote to start whenever, to keep this party rolling.
    Last edited by Ozy; 2014-03-10 at 10:22 AM.

  17. - Top - End - #107
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Seems like a good idea.
    Perhaps we could discuss the kinds of clusteers after we have decided how frequent they will be and how it sounds.

  18. - Top - End - #108
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ozy View Post
    Maybe instead of just voting for one of the ideas or another, we could do a ranked vote for this one? Since there's more than just two options, and since I'd be happy with a few of them, I think that could be a better way to decide.
    Works for me. So, with the larger number being the preferred outcome:


    -lots of consonant clusters 1
    -occasional consonant clusters 2
    -few if any consonant clusters 3


    -very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 3
    -very choppy with lots of stops 1
    -something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 2
    -something else entirely 1

  19. - Top - End - #109
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    -lots of consonant clusters 2
    -occasional consonant clusters 3
    -few if any consonant clusters 1


    -very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
    -very choppy with lots of stops 2
    -something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 2
    -something else entirely 1

    I ranked breeziness and choppiness the same because I like a mixture of the two. I would have given Ozy's idea a 3, but I fear that it could make orthography and/or learning difficult. It would obviously work for a real language and it's a cool idea that I like, but it might make the learning curve too steep.

  20. - Top - End - #110
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    -lots of consonant clusters 2
    -occasional consonant clusters 3
    -few if any consonant clusters 1


    -very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
    -very choppy with lots of stops 1
    -something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 3
    -something else entirely 2

  21. - Top - End - #111
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    -lots of consonant clusters 1
    -occasional consonant clusters 2
    -few if any consonant clusters 1

    -very breezy with lots of fricatives and approximants 2
    -very choppy with lots of stops 1
    -something based on Ozy's idea with one style giving way to the other 3
    -something else entirely 2

    Just out of interest (although it doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of votes), what would 'something esle entirely' entail?

  22. - Top - End - #112
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by nelk114 View Post
    Just out of interest (although it doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of votes), what would 'something esle entirely' entail?
    Could be a few different things. For instance an even mix of stops and fricatives so that the language has a mix of chop and flow that doesn't neatly break down as one becoming the other. Or perhaps a slightly complicated relationship between them with lenition and fortition brought on by different circumstances like stress, emphasis, nearby words, adjacent phonemes from affixes, etc. Sandhi effects could be another way to shift between chop and flow. And there are other options as well.

  23. - Top - End - #113
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Interesting, if potentially slightly complicated--perhaps a mild version of some kind of sandhi or lenition/fortition with an overall manner based on Ozy's idea would be interesting. Combining this with double vowel harmony and polysynthesis...
    Last edited by nelk114; 2014-03-12 at 03:40 PM.

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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    haha that would indeed be something. we seem to have a mind for complicated but awesome things :)

    what are y'all thinking with regards to the vote? should we wait a bit more or just call it done?

  25. - Top - End - #115
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ozy View Post
    haha that would indeed be something. we seem to have a mind for complicated but awesome things :)

    what are y'all thinking with regards to the vote? should we wait a bit more or just call it done?
    Well the last vote had 9 people vote and this one has had 4 people so far. I say wait until Monday, perhaps being the weekend we will get some more traffic.

    That said.

    ATTENTION PEOPLE PLEASE VOTE!!!

  26. - Top - End - #116
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Well, now that the forums are back up who out there is ready to conlang? And shall we call the last vote we were on finished and move on to the next discussion or should we see if anyone else is going to vote?

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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Why don't we see just how many votes were made and for what so we can judge if the poll needs some more votes or not.

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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    You know how sometimes when you're going through old files you stumble across an old project that you never finished and forgot about? I just found the beginnings of a conlang on my old flashdrive.The vocabulary is less than a page and a quarter, and the grammar just has sentence structure, some tenses, and a few other things of the like. I was using it for a Pathfinder game and also have some sample sentences at the end of the two page document.

    If anyone is interested I could upload part of it up here or in a PM.

  29. - Top - End - #119
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Quote Originally Posted by Jendekit View Post
    You know how sometimes when you're going through old files you stumble across an old project that you never finished and forgot about? I just found the beginnings of a conlang on my old flashdrive.The vocabulary is less than a page and a quarter, and the grammar just has sentence structure, some tenses, and a few other things of the like. I was using it for a Pathfinder game and also have some sample sentences at the end of the two page document.

    If anyone is interested I could upload part of it up here or in a PM.
    I'm interested, but I think it should be its own page or pm, i don't think it should be here, could get confused for part of this one.

  30. - Top - End - #120
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    Default Re: Vote Up A Language! (A community language-construction project)

    Well, this seems to have lost a lot of steam, but I've vaguely been entertaining Ozy's idea. What I take as the most important thing for going towards more "breathy" is a movement from having consonant clusters to having fairly strict CV syllables. This is very roughly one idea for how to get it to work from a semi-naturalistic point of view [bias admission time: I'm big on fictional languages being largely realistic, and universal tendencies shouldn't be ignored without good reason.]

    What I came up with was a verb-initial language. Verb-first languages bias rather heavily towards prefixing, and as this is a polysynthetic language, affixes are likely to abound. Polysynethsis likely means, at minimum, two agreement affixes. As an example
    Code:
    ka- še- ko-    li
    2S- 1S- PRES-  see
    I see you
    Very likely, more. For the sake of this thought experiment, as a rather extreme example, the verb agrees with five persons (subject, object, recipient [to whom], benefactive [for whom], and direct causative [X makes Y, X forces Y to do]) and can add three other arguments (indirect causative [X has Y do, X convinces Y to do], instrumental [with what], and comitative [with who]). The order is the verbal complex, then the arguments, then a locational prepositional phrase that agrees with its object, and a purpose clause formed with a participle. Top row is the type of morpheme, second is the word, third is gloss, fourth is clarifying to what the morpheme refers (too lazy for official glossing abbreviations, hopefully they're not too hard).
    Spoiler
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    Code:
    INDCAUS- RECIP-   COM-       DCAUS- INST-   BEN- OBJ-   SUBJ- tense- root     SUBJ OBJ  INST  RECIP  COM     OBJ-   PP   OBJ  PTCP- tense- root
    tis-     ar-      šek-       pja-   k'us-   ni-  k'atš- vi-   tsa-   saskem   tif  šah  nuq   pape   tsima   k'atš- ri   mahšim q'up- sek-   talit
    INDCAUS  3S       COM-       1P     INST    1P   3S     3S   PAST    take     dog  bone mouth father brother 3S     in   tent   PTCP- FUT-   burn
    them     [father] [brother]- we     [mouth] us   [bone] [dog]                                                [tent]
    
    We made them have the dog, with [its] brother, take the bones to father in the tent with [its] mouth for us, for burning [i.e. ritual]
    Note that the root verb is TAKE in this sentence; the "made" and "have" in English are supplied by the direct and indirect causatives.
    Also note that the order of affixes on the verb is arbitrary, except for putting object/subject/tense right next to the root, as I don't have any offhand knowledge as to what's likely.

    Tisaršekpjak'usnik'atšvitsasaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'atšri mahšim q'upsektalis

    If you'll notice, there's no consonant clusters except across syllables, with the exception of pja. And in roots (in bold) there's a harder restriction - there's no clusters involving two stops. So how does this work? Well, say the root is stressed heavily - and then most of the morphemes before the root had their vowel deleted in the prehistory of the language. Compare:

    Tisaršekpjak'usnik'atšvitsasaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'atšri mahšim q'upsektalis
    Tsarškpik'snk'tšvitssaskem tif šah nuq pape tsima k'tšri mahšim qp'esktalit

    And bam, the natural order of the sentence means that the huge conglomeration of prefixes has tons of consonant clusters, while once the verb is over, the nouns, adverbs, and adjectives are largely CV with a few limited CVC clusters. Prepositional phrases and participles, both taking limited verbal inflection, sprinkle in a bit of extra clustering later in the sentence, but nothing like the first verb.

    Of course, such a long chain of prefixes isn't going to crop up all the time, and many sentences will be a lot shorter [for example, I see the dog's bone might be k'tšeškli šah tif] but I think it gets the point across as one method for making a sentence grow towards being more "windy." While it could be possible to do this with a different sentence order, I think verb-initial works best because of how it affects the rest of the sentence structure. For example, if it was verb-final, as Japanese (among many many others), you'd end up with all the nouns at the beginning of the sentence. As I presented it, that would mean everything gets more and more rough as the sentence goes on, and switching it up for clustery roots and sonorous affixes just seems far less likely to me than clustery affixes and sonorous roots (though I don't have any solid proof, just intuition).


    On a COMPLETELY different note, a few things that are also likely to be perceptually "dark" would be r-colored/rhotic/retroflexed vowels (as has been mentioned as possible harmony), pharyngealization and retracted tongue root (r-colored vowels tend to involve this is well), low tones, creakiness on the vowel (BUT creakiness can often have a high tone), and low vowels (ah/aw vowels versus high ee/oo vowels). While "bright/light" would be advanced tongue root, high tones, breathy voice (which correlates with both of the previous), and high vowels (ee/oo). To draw a connection to what Ozy already said, voiced sounds correlate with low tone and voiceless sounds with high tone. To a lesser extent, rounded vowels are darker than unrounded vowels - i/ü, e/ö, or Turkish ı or Korean eu versus u.

    Personally I don't think "back" consonants are necessarily dark: I'd say palatals like sh, ch are "brightest," then dentals/alveolars like t, s, z, th, then labials and velars like p k kh/x. Much darker than those are uvulars/pharyngeals/retroflex like q, French R, American L/R, and the Arabic Sounds™. The palatals have a tendency to pull vowels front and high the uvular/pharyngeal/retroflex pull vowels back and low, building off what Ozy said about front/back vowels and I said about high/low.
    [Due to the ambiguity of "windy" and "sonorous" and "dark" and the other words we're using, I'll also throw out that sounds like English p t k I find much less sonorous, but brighter, than the likes of mb nd ng, which are more sonorous and darker, and don't find either more or less windy.]
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