Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: !Ui phonemes

From:bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 23, 2002, 10:34
 --- And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote: >

<big snip>

> > It's certainly misleading to describe a language > with the basic 5 > vowels, in long/short, oral/nasal, > breathy/creaky/modal versions > as having a lot of vowels (viz 5 * 2 * 2 * 3 = 60). > And similarly > for consonants. We need some different criterion to > measure the > phonetic richness of a language (e.g. what > proportion of the IPA > chart systematically corresponds to phonetic > realizations of > phonological forms in the language in question). I > guess that > the languages that win on that score are found in > the Caucasus > (and much beloved by Bfowol). >
hmmm . . .. if you count vowels that way, bac ( which has 5 cardinals, which can be diphthongised with |y| /I/ or |w| /U/, and lengthened with |h| or nasalised with |n| ( |ey| /EI/ is [e]; |uw| /UU/ is [u] &c ) ) should have 45 possible vowels. add ( in correct speech ) three versions of each of the 13 consonants ( nasalised, lenited and normal ), ie 39 consonant sounds, and you have an inventory of 84 phonemes ( and this is before you allow prelenition and prenasalisation, which, depending on whether you view them as phonemic, could increase the number further ) that's twice the number in english, yet based on 5 vowels, 13 consonants and four mutations ! bn ===== bnathyuw | landan | arR stamp the sunshine out | angelfish your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com