Dundulanyä

Dundulanyä [dundulɐnjɛ] is a conlang of the CYTBN conworld. Both the language and the setting are still under construction: see the External history section on this page for more.

Phonology

Dundulanyä has a moderately large, but asymmetrical, vowel inventory with six short and four long vowels, along with three diphthongs and two consonants (short and long versions of the same one) that can fill the syllable nucleus.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Close-mid	e eː		o~ɔ
Open-mid	ɛ
Open		ɐ äː
Diphthongs	aɪ̯ eɪ̯		aʊ̯
Syllabic consonants	ʀ̩ ʀ̩ː

The consonant inventory is more complex, with a pattern of “soft” and “hard” consonants traditionally recognized by classical Dundulanyä grammarians, not on a phonetic basis but starting from their relationship inside Dundulanyä morphology. In most cases, the difference is based on aspiration.

→ PoA ↓ Manner		Labials		Dentals		Retroflexes		Palatals		Velars		Laryngeals
		Soft	Hard	Soft	Hard	Soft	Hard	Soft	Hard	Soft	Hard	Soft	Hard
Nasals		m		n		ɳ		ɲ		ŋ
Stops	Unvoiced	p	pʰ	t̪	t̪ʰ	ʈ	ʈʰ	c͡ɕ	c͡ɕʰ	k	kʰ	ʔ
	Voiced	b	bʱ	d̪	d̪ʱ	ɖ	ɖʱ	ɟ͡ʑ	ɟ͡ʑʱ	ɡ~ɣ	ɡʱ
Fricatives		ɸ~f		s		ʂ		ɕ				ɦ	ħ
Approximants		ʋ		l				j					ʀ

The /pʰ/ phoneme is mostly a invention of Dundulanyä grammarians to preserve symmetry in stops; it has a separate letter in the script, but as a phoneme it is only found in the name of the letter itself and in a few words of onomatopoeic origin; the vast majority of contemporary speakers merge it with /ɸ~f/.

Morphology

Ablaut

Dundulanyä is characterized by a complex system of vowel alternations that was inherited from its proto-language.

Nominal examples:

• a/zero root: bhaṭuṣa (bhaṭ-uṣ-): ABS bhaṭuṣa, ERG bhaṭuṣis, DAT abḍhoṣak, LOC abḍhoṣā, LOC.PL abḍhauṣēn
• e/i root: dehuṣa (deh-uṣ-): ABS dehuṣa, ERG dehuṣis, DAT dihoṣak, LOC dihoṣā, LOC.PL dihauṣēn
• a/zero root, synchronically irregular: hāṅkä (haf-n-kä- < *śǝ́f-ṇ-koy-): ABS hāṅkä, ERG hāṅkäs, DAT iṣfaṅkäk, LOC iṣfaṅkä, LOC.PL iṣfāṅkän

External history

Dundulanyä is a conlang project that I “officially” started in early December 2021 (coincidentally around the fifth anniversary since I started Chlouvānem), although it and its goals are, to a large extent, the conflation of multiple projects that I sporadically worked on for most of 2021:

• A long process of “refinement” of Chlouvānem – that happened offline, so it was never reflected in any edit on the wiki pages here – by eliminating or changing some quirks that had formed over time and that had brought me to a standstill in working on that conlang by late 2020. Ideas for the refinement started from nominal morphology but then they eventually snowballed to the point it was impossible to implement them without basically starting the conlang anew;
• A radical reboot of Tameï that was meant to give it an a priori language family in a slightly changed conworld setting (although still on an alternative Earth); this was the language I originally created the glottonym Dundulanyä for;
• Various unnamed sketchlangs, mostly attempts at Hurro-Urartian diachronic conlanging, that were the results of a general interest in Ancient Near Eastern languages as a side-effect of my work on Lifashian (my “conlang of choice” for most of 2021).

Dundulanyä is meant to be the first conlang for a sort of reboot of Calémere – Conworld-Yet-To-Be-Named (CYTBN) – as, much like in Chlouvānem itself, there had come to be quite a few things in and about Calémere that I wasn’t that sure of keeping, but changing them would have meant to change so many things about the conworld that depended on them. CYTBN, as of now (December 5, 2021) is just a vague and unwritten collection of ideas, so there’s nothing to write about it – but it eventually will incorporate a few elements of Calémere. Dundulanyä will play a role in CYTBN vaguely similar to the one Chlouvānem had in Calémere, although unlike earlier conworld reboots I have decided not to trash everything away (hence why I’m looking for a different name for CYTBN), keeping eight years’ worth of documentation about Calémere and five years’ worth about Chlouvānem intact.

Compared to Chlouvānem, Dundulanyä is going to tone down somewhat the Sanskrit and particularly the Lithuanian and Japanese influences, while being more influenced by PIE itself, Hurrian, Urartian, Elamite, Anatolian languages, and the Semitic and Turkic languages as a whole.