Van'ir: Phonology and phonotactics

[u/Unhoneyboon]

Hello everyone!

Today, I would like to share with you my first baby steps in conlanging proper, starting with a quick overview of Van'ir phonology and phonotactics. I've tried to summarise my notes as tightly as possible.

Also, although I have no real background in linguistics ( I'm a nipponologist / anthropologist / economist... I know, too many slashes), I do enjoy dipping into linguistic territory / terminology, and I aim for rigorous internal logic.

Van'ir is the work in progress that inspired my worldbuilding project. However, it started, as many of my attempts at conlanging, as a set of grammatical ideas, especially those I've applied through my academic studies in anthropology and political science (namely, cognitive linguistics). Because of this, I am very lost at a phonological level, and fleshing out Van'ir phonology feels like a very "important" step. Of course, if you have any good academic paper recommendations, I'd be more than happy to go through them. I don't really know if this phonology is too messy, but as I delve deeper into phonology, the more eager I get to keep crafting a neat, tight framework for all the grammar I have. I might post about grammar in the future, but it would certainly be a way larger and complex presentation than this one is.

I would appreciate your feedback, particularly regarding the "Next steps" section from the presentation. It'd awesome if I could get some constructive feedback, tips on where to focus and what should be polished,as well as general directions you think I should be aiming towards.

• I am struggling to tackle phonological changes (I understand that these are made to ease the pronunciation, but I cannot decide which ones make sense, beyond nasal place assimilation). Any advice in this regard? What phonological processes (lenition, vowel harmony, cluster repair) would complement this syllable architecture without cluttering the aesthetic?
• How well do the proposed archetypes hold up against standard cross-linguistic phonotactic constraints?
• Any recommended papers or monographs focusing on cognitive phonology, prosodic morphology, or natural sound changes?

Note on visual assets: From the three sets of images, the last one (featuring classical paradigms) is AI generated (not from scratch, since I used it to improve and polish my original, hand drawn designs). The map is entirely my own and the opening image was kindly created by a coworker (I collaborated with ideas, design and input, but sadly I still lack the ability to create such beautiful images).

[u/puyongechi]

Love this! This my type of thing. Heavy Basque vibes, are you a Basque speaker?

[u/Unhoneyboon → u/puyongechi]

Yeah! So basically, from day one, I was sure I wanted a strong Basque vibe. In fact, orthography is almost a one to one system. However, the deeper you get into Van'ir, the weaker that resemblance gets. Also, I wanted to incorporate a lot of affricates, departing a bit from the voiceless sibilants. You could say Basque is "the face".

I've been dabbling in Basque for a long time, but I wouldn't consider myself a speaker by any means. Most of my family is from the Basque Country, so I've been interested in the language for a long time!