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Re: Thagojian phonology (was Re: oh no, not Tech phonology again)

From:Daniel A. Wier <dawier@...>
Date:Friday, February 25, 2000, 17:34
>From: Paul Bennett <paulnkathy@...>
>_Ejective_ clicks??? Surely the sign of a phonology pushed too far :-)
Ever heard of a language called !Xu~? And they thought Ubykh was extreme... (In !Xu~, you have ejective clicks, aspirated clicks, voiced clicks (simultaneous "ng" sound), clicks with sibilant release...)
>Hmmm... I like the idea of creaky voice... I wonder if there's a >theoretical reason why (on the model of nasality in other langs) creaky >voice could not spread to following (or surrounding) syllables? It's >certainly something you've got me thinking about. Possibly creaky voice >remains until the next glottal sound, or word end, whichever comes first?
I thought it could spread... if I pronounce a vowel immediately before or after an ejective, the vowel creaks a little bit. Or a nasal, rhotic or lateral before the ejective...
>Also AFAICT, The Modern Yi syllabary seems to have just about the same >distribution plan for nasals as Thagojian, though with the addition of >prenasalised voiced affricates, and the use of slightly fewer POAs.
It does... still quite a few points of articulation. I had the list written down; I gotta go to the library and look it up again though.
>On an even broader aside, what about things like <gp> or <kd> (or worse ><gwhp'>)? Do you have clear-cut rules that determine what happens?
Well you have assimilation of voice/voiceless/ejective status first of all. <gp> would probably become <kp> (and <gp'> would become <k'p'>). <kd> would become <gd>. The latter case may be a voiced click.
>Maybe <h> and <h.> for the uvular fricatives?
That'll work! <h> represents a voiceless uvular fricative in Pinyin translit of the world's most spoken language after all.
>Doing that made the burden of the latin alphabet even harder to bear, but I >feel about as strongly as you about romanisations that resort to caps (or >smallcaps for that matter). The worst example that springs immediately to >mind is Klingon -- ugh bleah yukk.
I posted on my own reform, which I knew was going to be rejected because of the preponderance of "purists", and of course Messieur Okrand's own dogma.
> > The first two aren't bad, though I could've used t-tilde and l-tilde >(really > > a stroke through the letters, as in Hebrew transliteration). > >Hebrew?? Who whats the which what? Why Hebrew? Why t and l and not t and >d?
A typo. Mea culpa.
>N-graphs are fine. I could happily use a septograph, though I find it >hard to imagine when I'd need to.
Why not, English does! ;) (I remember two tetragraphs when I learned phonics in first grade, to wit "ough" and "augh".)
><y'> = x-sampa /M\/ or IPA {turned-m-right-tail} -- /i/ is to /j/ as /M/ is >to /M\/ Another way to imagine it is as an 'unrounded' /w/
Oops... I forgot about that one.
><y> is to <w'> as <y'> is to <w> It's also a 'rounded' /j/
The inverted lowercase h of IPA. Notice I shortened the post; the list should be happy :P~~~~~~ Danny ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com