A Minecraft SMP Idea

Conlang Idea #1

I plan to apply two sets of sounds and grammar changes to this protolang to create a language family.

Consonants: m, n, p, t, k, q, ʔ('), ts, tɬ(tl), s, ɬ(hl), ħ(hh), ʕ(hq), h, r, l, j, w

Vowels: a, e, i, o, u (with long and short variance of each)

Syllable structure: (C)V

Stress: same as Latin, without the closed syllables part, as in, stress falling on the antepenult by default with it instead falling on the penult if it contains a long vowel(or maybe a diphthong? idk)

Writing system: a logography that would transition to a syllabary

Word order: VOS

Adjectives: derived from nouns

Adpositions: derived from both nouns and verbs

Grammatical Number: singular, plural, and distributive

Grammatical Gender: none

Noun Classes: none

Tenses: past or perfect, present or imperfect, and future

Aspects: cessative, perfective, and imperfective

Moods: none at the moment

Copulae: the words for "exist"(standard), "live/dwell/reside"(locative), and "stand"

Noun Cases: none

Augmentatives and/or Diminutives: none, though auxiliaries exist

Interjections: a simplified version of English's interjections

Pluractional: none

Double marking: none

Evidentials: reportative, inferred, and dubitative

Mirativity: included by default with the inclusion of evidentiality

Ergativity: none

Affirmative: word for "yes"

Negation: an auxiliary derived from "lack"

Conjunctions: and, or(Any more I should include?)

Question marking: an interrogative marker; /hqatlo/

Demonstratives: this and that

Rhetorical questions: auxiliaries

Comparative: none

Superlative(which could be an auxiliary intensive form): none

Equative: none

Contrastive: none

Sublative: none

Excessive: none

Valency-changing Operations: passive/mediopassive and causative

Number System: base-16

Sets of Number Words: none, though the descendants might evolve two similar but different ones

Taxonomic Division of Animals: none

Taxonomic Division of Colors: red, yellow, green, blue, white, black

Taxonomic Division of Emotions: none

Idioms: the following ones below...

???: (LIT. to fall off a very high place with no slime blocks or water underneath) to pursue a goal that would end at the cost of one's own life

???:  (LIT. leave to combat without a weapon) to make a mistake before starting a task

I might need some idioms and metaphors about learning and experience. Swimming is out of the question since the world is close to normal Minecraft, and IDK about crafting, which would be a boring association for some reason. Maybe you guys could come up with something from looking at the lexicon.

Conceptual Metaphors: Let's say the flow of time is perceived the same as Mandarin, with "up" being related to the past, and "down" with the future. Fire could be associated with anger, pain, and death(if playing on modes where a person would die without the ability to respawn and thus be out of the game). Rain could be associated with sadness. Sunlight could be associated with happiness. Players and NPCs can drown in water, and fire is useful for lighting places, at least until the invention of torches.

They could learn farming by figuring out how to plant and harvest melons, thus associating moist dirt with strength or wellness and dry dirt(which is still tilled) with weakness or sickness, or whatever is similar if players and NPCs can't receive sicknesses unless mods are utilized.

There are some ideas I still need to think of, like the natural evolution of interjections and conjunctions, and the uncovering of conlang tutorials that talk about negation. For one of the language families, I want to include trilled affricates(or post-trilled consonants) and pharyngealized ones. I settled on a jungle island big enough to house two or more distinct languages.

That one with the post-trilled and pharyngealized consonants, I plan for some interesting stress systems and articles. For the stress, I'm thinking of taking a similar direction to Biblaridion's original tutorial conlang, with the system becoming one where stress still falls on the antepenult by default, with one exception being the penult being the one that's stressed if the final syllable is closed and with a short vowel, the other exception being the final one being stressed if it is closed but with a long vowel. Or maybe a diphthong? IDK. I'm also thinking of evolving an indefinite and definite article from the words "one" and "this" respectively.

I'm also thinking of the lateral obstruents de-lateralizing to their corresponding non-sibilant alveolar consonants, with clusters between [t] and [l] allowing for the reemergence of /tl/, and those of [h] and [l] leading to /hl/ returning, the same story for clusters of [s] and [l]. And I'm thinking of syllables like /yi/ and /wu/ becoming /ii/ and /uu/, to experiment with assimilation. Maybe a similar story for /ij/ and /uw/. I don't want triphthongs even in the protolang, or double-length vowels.

I'll give the protolang a simple system of comparatives, superlatives, diminutives, etc, evolving it into two different systems, the descendant with the trilled affricates including a system mimicking the one for Classical Oqolaawak(albeit representing equatives and whatnot via auxiliaries), the other descendant including a system similar to that of Taqva-miir.

For the second descendant of the protolang, I'm thinking of turning the stress system into the same one that Classical Oqolaawak has, which is based on morae. Open syllables with short vowels in that dialect are one mora, open ones with long vowels or diphthongs closed ones with short vowels are two morae, and closed ones with long vowels or diphthongs are three morae. Stress in the classical dialect with this system would always fall on the third-to-last mora, the third one from the end of the word. For articles, I'm thinking of just a definite article from the word for "that".

I'm also thinking of [w], when bordering [u] and in the proper environments, fortifying to a velarized [βˠ] and/or a labialized [ɣʷ] that may or may not lose their secondary articulation, or the plain versions, or all four, depending on varying environments. I'm thinking of the same story for [j], fortifying into [ʝ] when bordering [i], also in the proper environments. I'm thinking of those fricatives becoming phonemic.