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Re: Unilang: the Phonotactics

From:Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
Date:Friday, April 20, 2001, 11:55
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 13:41:35 +0200, Pavel A. da Mek <pavel.adamek@...>
wrote:

>What is wrong with /m/ and /h/? >Let it be simple: only stops are not allowed as final C.
Okay, I think I have a solution to this; it's quite intertwined with morphology, and might perhaps as well be on that thread. I'd have two classes of morphological items, one of monosyllabics, one of bisyllabics; and two types of syllable structure, one for accented syllables, one for unaccented syllables. The monosyllabic items would have the structure I described earlier, with only plosives disallowed as final C's; so final /m/ and /h/ would be okay. Sample sequences: /tres/, /mois/, /glar/, /kim/. Bisyllabics would have one accented syllable, and one unaccented, "reduced". The accented syllable may be structured just like the monosyllabics, except if it's the first in the bisyllabic stem; then it can only have /n s r l f h/ as a final C. Reduced syllables are basically the "endings" used in the morphology; they are unaccented, by definition. They have their own inventory of more distinctive phonemes: the vowels /a i u/, and the finals /n s r/; if it is a "stem syllable", i.e. part of a bisyllabic stem, it may have one onset C from the following list: /p t k m n l r s/. So reduced syllabes are CVC, and grammatic endings (a subset of reduced syllables) can only be VC. A further limitation: the following medial combinations (across syllable- boundaries: the final C of one + the onset C of the next) are legal: any /n s l r/ + /p b t d k g/; /sm lm rm hm fl fr ns ls rs/. Note that some of the combinations here are already ruled out by other rules above; e.g. /lb/ won't occur because only accented syllables can have final /l/ or initial /b/, and two accented syllables won't coexist in one morpheme. Okay, this may all seem complicated, admittedly... Let's just look at some samples: Final-accent bisyllabics: /kan'tron ma'frais sin'kuai las'gam mun'dreu a'lah/ Primary-accent bisyllabics: /'muspin 'koini 'lonkar 'drahma 'nusmus 'tienir 'fanki 'arma/ And the complete list of possible grammatic endings: /a i u an in un as is us ar ir ur/ Finally, I might add that these rules would mostly apply to the native words of the language itself; there could be moderations in the rendering of the names of countries and persons. So "Francois" can be /fran'sua/ instead of /ran'sua/. Óskar