Tech
| Tech | |
| Spoken in: | various countries |
| Timeline/Universe: | Danny Wier's future history |
| Total speakers: | unknown |
| Genealogical classification: | Nostratic
|
| Basic word order: | VSO |
| Morphological type: | fusional |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | mixed |
| Created by: | |
| Danny Wier | 1997- |
Tech is a conlang by Danny Wier, spoken by a kind of Elves in a near-future world and based on the Nostratic hypothesis. The language is only known from various posts to the CONLANG mailing list, according to which it is a very complex language with a large phoneme inventory; it has been compared to Ithkuil and characterized as a kitchen sink conlang.
Phonology
Consonants
Tech is famed for its rich consonant inventory. One version Danny Wier posted on February 23, 2000 included as many as 327 consonants, involving secondary articulations such as palatalization and labialization. Later, Danny systematized the consonant inventory and arrived at a more moderate (though still rich) inventory of phonemes, with most of the "phonemes" of earlier incarnations being merely allophones of these phonemes.
According to a post from July 9, 2001, the consonant phonemes of Old Tech are:
| Bilabial | Alveolar or dental | Post- alveolar |
Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||||
| Plosive | ejective | pʼ | tʼ | ʈʼ | kʼ | qʼ | ʔ | ||||
| voiceless | p | t | ʈ | k | q | ||||||
| voiced | b | d | ɖ | ɡ | ɢ | ||||||
| Affricate | ejective | tsʼ | tɬʼ | tʃʼ | |||||||
| voiceless | ts | tɬ | tʃ | ||||||||
| voiced | dz | dɮ | dʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | ɬ | ʃ | ʂ | ħ | h | ||||
| voiced | ʕ | ||||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||
| Trill | r | ɽ | |||||||||
| Approximant | w | l | ɭ | j | |||||||
Vowels
Like the consonant inventory, the vowel inventory of Tech has for long been in flux, with (again) very large inventories having been considered by the author. According to the aforementioned post from July 9, 2001:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | a |
Grammar
Little can be found on Tech grammar. But apparently, the language is heavily fusional, using consonantal roots similar to Semitic, ablaut and affixation.
External links
- oh no, not Tech phonology again from February 23, 2000
- Semi-official Tech presentation: I. Phonology from July 9, 2001
- A Tech FAQ from December 25, 2002
- finally, something besides phonology in Tech... from March 27, 2004
