> crikey blimey it's all turned blue
Yeah, the site has a different color scheme for each season (because I felt like it many many years ago when it was a purely personal site). You can also change the color scheme if you want (only visible on your browser) at https://chridd.nfshost.com/options/.
Hey! This is such a wonderful, amazing tool! Thank you so much for making it, and all the hard work behind it. But, I have a few questions: what are the /slashes/ and {brackets} used for? What do the "_" and "#" indicate?
A loser:
The searchable sounds are automatically generated from the original document (which I didn't write). Either the original document doesn't have tonogenesis, or it's not in the right format. I'll have to look at it later; I've been tired and/or busy and/or bad at getting around to stuff much of the time recently.
Mcmisher:
/slashes/ around text like that generally indicate that something is in IPA, specifically a phonemic/broad/less detailed transcription ([brackets] generally indicate phonetic/narrow/more detailed transcriptions).
{braces} indicate alternatives, so for instance, {m,n} → ŋ would mean that both /m/ and /n/ change to /ŋ/.
The _ and # indicate in what context the sound change takes place. For instance, _i means the change takes place only before /i/; i_ means the change takes place only after /i/; i_o would mean the change takes place between /i/ and /o/. Uppercase letters indicate types of sounds (see section 5), so for instance, V_V means "between two vowels". # means the beginning or end of a word; that is, #_ means the first sound in a word, and _# means the last sound in a word. Something like #C_ would mean "after a consonant that's the first sound in a word".
The capital letters and % are explained in section 5 when browsing the index (https://chridd.nfshost.com/diachronica/all#Abbreviations). @ seems to be mostly used in Uralic, where it's explained "/@/ means that a vowel assimilates to the one that comes before it.". Otherwise, maybe look at the specific entry.
+ being indexed seems to be a bug.
Hey, so I wasnt able to find anything on these symbols. Do you mind telling me what they mean in the context of phonological evolution?
I, Y, Ł, Ω, ъ, ь, and ᵚ (superscript close back unrounded vowel if you cant see it)
They are listed but the Key does not say anything about them.
Currently the only way is to edit the URL. When you click on a sound, the URL will end in something like ?q=a; change that a to two IPA characters and you can search for diphthongs.
(Also searching for a vowel will search for diphthongs including that vowel, so "ai" will be included in a search for "a".)
You mean the links (and the homepage background)? Because it's fall (in the northern hemisphere) and my website switches themes depending on the season.
(If you don't like it, you can change the theme here: https://chridd.nfshost.com/options/)
I ended up here after trying to look on how to better evolve my conlang (and this is honestly the best resource I've ever found!). However, this doesn't show changes for tones (which is a concept I'm also evolving) from what i can see. Are tones included in this?
Hi! Do you take submissions for additional sound changes? I have a copy of Comrie's The World's Major Languages with changes from e.g. Indo-Aryan to Prakrit and even IE to Latin not mentioned here and a collection of JSTOR articles on proposed changes in various language families on my computer. If preferred I could just provide citations and links to articles.
Looks like there are sound changes for pitches, I just hadn't gone through enough to find them lol. It would be nice to have Xⁿ on the front page to access all of the tone changes though
Tone numbers: Clicking on the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 will show things involving those tones; unfortunately, it'll also show letters with subscripts. This is something that I need to get around to fixing at some point.
> Hi! Do you take submissions for additional sound changes?
You can post them and I'll see what I can do.
It looks like all of the results for [+long] are U, which stands for "syllable", so long syllables instead of long vowels. [-long] would be for changes that specifically apply to short vowels, since V by itself could be either long or short.
Hey, chridd, I'm looking to make an updated version of the Index before the year is out. You've been very gracious in putting this resource together; to that end, I have two questions:
1. Would you be willing to help? (Particularly as involving converting the PDF to Unicode--I'm dumb as a bag of hammers when it comes to coding.)
2. How best can I contact you for purposes of updating the online searchable database once the new version of the Index is compiled?
Have a wonderful day!
I can try to help.
I'm not sure what you need help with regarding Unicode. The PDF linked on this site should be in Unicode (is it not for you?), and the .tex file linked there is the one that generated the PDF. You'll need to use xelatex instead of pdflatex etc.; if you're running LaTeX from the command line, then type xelatex index-diachronica.tex instead of pdflatex index-diachronica.tex; if you're using some other program, then I don't know, maybe check the settings or something. You'll also need to install this font https://software.sil.org/charis/ or change \setmainfont to a font you do have. If you're having some specific issue, I'll need more details.
If you've already started working from an older .tex file, then I can try to help.
The HTML and search feature are generated from the .tex file, so the easiest way for me to update things would be to just provide an updated .tex file and I should be able to do the rest. You can upload it to any file sharing site and post the URL as a comment here. If you need to contact me elsewhere, I'm pretty sure I have DMs open on Twitter (@chrideedee) and I'm chridd on the CBB forum and reddit (though I haven't logged in to either of those in a while).
I hope this is helpful.
Sad to see no information on Epiglottals here as I was trying to look for sound changes relevant to /ʜ ʢ ʡ/ aswell as strident vowels such as /a͌/ (UNOFFICIAL IPA*)
I am trying to figure out much more about these exotic sounds aswell as their production and learnability as they seem heavily un-researched and poorly documented.
This is some great stuff despite that though!
Here is one representation of the data as CSV; I'm not sure if it's the best:
https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-1.csv
First field is the ID (the part after #... when linking to the sound change); second is the actual text (HTML encoded); third is the original sound, fourth is what the sound changed to, and fifth is context.
When multiple sound changes appear on the same line, I put multiple lines in the CSV; when there are alternatives (e.g. {t,d} → ɾ) I've separated them with |, since that character is not otherwise used.
I've also uploaded copies of the actual data files the program uses (which aren't in a standard format):
https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-less-processed.txt
In this file, sound changes are on lines starting with C and are just the text of the sound changes. ‹...› surrounds stuff that the program sees when parsing the sound changes but which is excluded from the user-visible HTML; «...» is stuff that's included in the user-visible HTML but ignored when parsing the sound changes.
https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-processed
In this file, sound changes are on lines starting with c. There are five fields, same as in the CSV, separated with ASCII character code 1. Within "from" and "to", ASCII character 2 separates different sound changes; within "context", ASCII character 2 indicates negated contexts (though I just noticed this isn't always right). Within each change, ASCII character 3 separates alternatives (like | in the CSV).
I hope at least one of these is useful and that this was clear enough.
All the arrows → should really be changed to chevrons > since the convention in linguistics is to use → for synchronic rules and > for diachronic changes
1 comment removed. Please do not post IRL threats in my comment section (or anywhere else, for that matter).
Also just a reminder that I'm not the one who actually wrote the Index, I just converted it to a different format and wrote a search tool.
I mean, I have no idea if they intended to follow through with it/were serious. I *hope* (and suspect) they were just exaggerating / venting or whatever, but I don't know them well enough to know for sure so I was worried at the time.
Based on your comment, it sounds like they were trying to target /me/.
You’ve my contact info, yeah? If you need or want me to escalate this to a legal team I’m happy to do so. You shouldn’t have to suffer for the sake of the Index.
I am a historical linguist based in one of the world's top 5 universities. This resource has been an incredible tool for me over many years of research. Thank you very kindly for having produced the searchable index.
What are the / and _ symbols supposed to mean, I assumed the underscore is a substitution for the aforementioned sounds subject to change and the slash is “when” but I’m not sure of this and there are instances where this interpretation doesn’t make sense, it’s never explained on the site here either, I would be very happy if you explain what they mean.
Hey! This is such a wonderful, amazing tool! Thank you so much for making it, and all the hard work behind it. But, I have a few questions: what are the /slashes/ and {brackets} used for? What do the "_" and "#" indicate?A loser: The searchable sounds are automatically generated from the original document (which I didn't write). Either the original document doesn't have tonogenesis, or it's not in the right format. I'll have to look at it later; I've been tired and/or busy and/or bad at getting around to stuff much of the time recently. Mcmisher: /slashes/ around text like that generally indicate that something is in IPA, specifically a phonemic/broad/less detailed transcription ([brackets] generally indicate phonetic/narrow/more detailed transcriptions). {braces} indicate alternatives, so for instance, {m,n} → ŋ would mean that both /m/ and /n/ change to /ŋ/. The _ and # indicate in what context the sound change takes place. For instance, _i means the change takes place only before /i/; i_ means the change takes place only after /i/; i_o would mean the change takes place between /i/ and /o/. Uppercase letters indicate types of sounds (see section 5), so for instance, V_V means "between two vowels". # means the beginning or end of a word; that is, #_ means the first sound in a word, and _# means the last sound in a word. Something like #C_ would mean "after a consonant that's the first sound in a word".I would like to suggest the following sound changes: r → ɐ̯ → a̯ / V_{C,#} (part of old high german to Bavarian)Here is one representation of the data as CSV; I'm not sure if it's the best: https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-1.csv First field is the ID (the part after #... when linking to the sound change); second is the actual text (HTML encoded); third is the original sound, fourth is what the sound changed to, and fifth is context. When multiple sound changes appear on the same line, I put multiple lines in the CSV; when there are alternatives (e.g. {t,d} → ɾ) I've separated them with |, since that character is not otherwise used. I've also uploaded copies of the actual data files the program uses (which aren't in a standard format): https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-less-processed.txt In this file, sound changes are on lines starting with C and are just the text of the sound changes. ‹...› surrounds stuff that the program sees when parsing the sound changes but which is excluded from the user-visible HTML; «...» is stuff that's included in the user-visible HTML but ignored when parsing the sound changes. https://chridd.nfshost.com/files/diachronica-data-processed In this file, sound changes are on lines starting with c. There are five fields, same as in the CSV, separated with ASCII character code 1. Within "from" and "to", ASCII character 2 separates different sound changes; within "context", ASCII character 2 indicates negated contexts (though I just noticed this isn't always right). Within each change, ASCII character 3 separates alternatives (like | in the CSV). I hope at least one of these is useful and that this was clear enough.