Re: DECAL: Examples #2: Phonotactics

Sai Emrys wrote:

>Same deal as last time.
>
>Q1: What are your allowable syllable structures?
>Q2: Onset clusters?
>Q3: Codas?
>Q4: Any changes depending on place in word, etc.?
>Q5: Motivation / reasoning / goals behind this?
For RHEAN -

Q1:
syllable structre is KVF
- K is any single consonant, permissible onset cluster, or nothing
- V is a vowel, either short or long
- F is any single consonant (except /h/, /dZ/, /B/ or /4/*), permissible
final cluster, dipthong-glide (/i/ or /u/)**, or nothing.

* coda /r/ and /4/ are the same sound, pronounced [r] and written _r_.

** this explains why, for example, _k'au_ is one syllable [Xau] while
_c'aur_ is two syllables [tSa"ur], or why _kai_ is one syllable and _haik_
is two.

Q2: I still haven't figured this all out. Rhean clusters can be sadistic:
[Gd], [pS], [gz], [zd], [mr], [xp], [gn], [fk] are among the strange onsets
attested in the lexicon. There should eventually be a page on the Rhean site
explaining the cluster rules. Right now I still haven't discovered what they
are.

Q3: Similar to the above, but codas seem more restricted than onsets (is it
the other way around in English?). Nasal+stop and liquid+stop are common
here, and final /z/ can follow pretty much anything (dvaarz, hebz), though
it is [s] in cases like _rakz_ etc.

Q4: it seems that in Rhean, coda is coda whether in the middle of a word or
at the end of it. Medial clusters are unlimited (as far as I know) because
any coda can be followed by any onset. In fast speech, these will often get
run together and assimilate voice etc. 'Geminates' due to
compounding/derivation are usually not pronounced geminate.

Q5: Sometimes I look at some of this and have NO idea what I was thinking.
The motivation would have been that I liked the sound of the word at the
time. 'Reason'?... meh.

For TOLBORESE -

I still haven't worked out all of the phonotactics for this one. They're
considerably more restricted than Rhean, but the rules are still tricky to
discover.
Q1: CV(F)

- C is any single consonant (even /N/ occurs initially). Though the glottal
stop is not phonemic, syllables that begin with 'no' consonant have an
initial glottal stop.
- V is a vowel. Each vowel is its own syllable and there are no diphthongs.
- F is one of the consonants p t k l m n N r s S. While the unaspirated
stops /p t k/ are usually written _b d g_, I write them _p t k_ in final
position because they're always unvoiced there (and /p_h t_h k_h/ don't
occur finally)

Q2, Q3: None.

Q4: Certain prefixes/particles cause the first consonant to be geminate
("hard join") or prenasalised ("soft join"); compounds can bring coda+onset
together. But there are no true word initial or final clusters.

Q5: Mostly to break away from what I'd done in Rhean.

For OMURAX -

Q1: KVF
- K is a single consonant, cluster, or nothing
- V is a vowel or a diphthong (and there's a lot of those: ai, au, ou, eu,
ei, io, etc)
- F is a single consonant, coda cluster (see below) or nothing.

Q2: Onset clusters are pretty simple: any stop + liquid, /s/ + unvoiced
stop, or /s/ + unvoiced stop + liquid. All of these plus a few more can
occur in the middle of a word.

Q3: The only coda clusters I can think of are [nt] and [ns]. There may be
final [nks], which would be found in the ergative case of a word that ended
in [nka]

Q4: word boundaries are very important. The only consonants that occur in
word-final position are /t n r l s f/. A few words were written with a final
_d_ but it's believed the /d/ was pronounced [t] here. Final /f/ plus the
ergative -s makes /ps/. Final /n/ and /t/ vanish before -s.

Q5: See the Q5 above.

>Thanks,
>
> - Sai
M