Re: DECAL: Examples #2: Phonotactics

Hallo!

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:28:51 -0800,
Sai Emrys <saizai@...> wrote:

> Q1: What are your allowable syllable structures?
>
> Q2: Onset clusters?
>
> Q3: Codas?
>
> Q4: Any changes depending on place in word, etc.?
Actually, I do not use hard and fast rules for that in Old Albic.
The maximum allowable syllable structure is CCVCC, with the sonority
of the consonants decreasing towards the margins.  There are few
CCC clusters in the language and no CCCC clusters.

It may be noted that the consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ occur only
in lexical roots and some derivational suffixes (and there at most
one of them in a single morpheme), but not in inflectional endings.
(Similar to the behaviour of PIE *b, *d, *g, *gW to which they
are cognate.)

> Q5: Motivation / reasoning / goals behind this?
As with the phoneme inventory, personal style and also plausibility
as a pre-Celtic language of Britain (not much of a constraint as we
know next to nothing about what those languages were like) and
distant cousin to Indo-European (which means that Old Albic is
pretty much like an IE language with regard to phonotactics).

Greetings,

Jörg.

Reply