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

Matt Pearson wrote:
> Tokana has a rather minimal phoneme inventory, although not as
> minimal as your proposed nine sounds--Tokana has eighteen
> (seventeen in the Coastal dialect, which has all but lost <f>):
Archaic Watakassí had the following

Vowels: i a u (3)
Consonants: p t k b d g m n f s v z w l y (15)

Same number has Tokana.  Classical Watakassí has, via palatization,
increased the inventory to

p t k b d g m n f s S C v z Z tS dZ w l y (20)

(tj -> tS kj -> C gj -> j sj -> S zj -> Z; and dZ < unstr. daZ or datS)

Common Kassí, incidentally, had
Vowels: i a @ e o u (6)
Consonants: p t k q b d g m n f s h v z w r y (17)

And my original design had ONLY
Vowels: i a u [w/ contrasting lenght]
Consonants: p t k n w l y
10 or 13 phonemes, depending on whether you count the long vowels as
separate phonemes.
And, what's more, syllable structure (C)V(n) - only 96 possible
syllables!
(It was a reaction to Kizval, with its huge inventory, exceeding 100 I
think, and horrifically complex syllables)

/s/ and /T/ were the first fricatives added, then came /m/ and voicing;
later /T/ and /D/ were made into /f/ and /v/, and then finally came the
palatized consonants.

> Of these, <y> is a back/central unrounded vowel, <th> is a
> lamino-dental stop, and <lh> is a postalveolar lateral fricative.
Interesting that those sounds exist in such a tiny inventory.

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