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Re: Phoneme system for my still-unnamed "Language X"

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Sunday, September 11, 2005, 19:25
Well *there's* a well-thought phonology! I'll say it's disturbingly regular
with respect to POA, tho ... if only you could add dental vowels, it'd
collapse into a regular tesseract I guess. ;) But meanwhile the ejective ->
nasal+approximant rule is quite nifty. Is it ANADEW or a wild innovation?


>There are no semivowels or non-syllabic vowels. (There are a few >glides, but they're listed below under "Consonants".)
So what IS the difference between a semivowel and a glide? The way they are used in the phonology?
>2.2.2. Consonant gradation
>(d) A plosive-lateral or ejective-lateral sequence at the onset of an > open syllable corresponds to a voiced plosive with lateral release > at the onset of a closed syllable (e.g. [p_hl_w] : [b_l], > [p_>l_w] : [b_l], [bl_w] : [b_l]). (That is, if I can actually > learn to pronounce those lateral-release stops. ;)
I'm fairly sure [b_l] is impossible... unless you can twist your lower lip to a "W" shape? But given that you use [l_w] for a labial lateral in the first place, maybe [bd_l)] or perhaps even [d_l_w] would be a good phone here.
>I hope I managed to weed out all the >inconsistencies that had crept in over the weeks... > >Regards, >Julia
Hate to bring the bad news, but I think I spotted one:
>Some more assimilation in consonant clusters: > >(a) A sequence consisting of an ejective and an aspirated plosive (in > either order) changes into a voiced plosive followed by a voiced > fricative (e.g. /p_>k_h/ and /p_hk_>/ -> [bG]; > /p_hp_>/ -> [bv] or [bB]).
>(c) An aspirated plosive changes into a fricative if followed by > another plosive or by an ejective (e.g. > /p_hk_h/ -> [fk_h] or [p\k_h], /p_hg/ -> [vg] or [Bg]). > >(d) An ejective changes into a voiced plosive if followed by another > ejective or by a plosive (e.g. /p_>k_h/ -> [bk_h]). (I'm not sure > yet how to handle voicedness assimilation here...)
Note how you list *two* realizations [bG bk_h] for the same cluster /p_>k_h/. Of course, if you reversed rule (c) to apply to aspirates *preceded* by another stop, it'd work again. But currently, rule (a) seems to contradict rules (b) and (c). John Vertical

Replies

# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
Julia "Schnecki" Simon <helicula@...>