Re: Vallian (was: How to minimize "words")

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...>
Date: 23-Feb-2007 15:56
Subject: Re: Vallian (was: How to minimize "words")
To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>

Hey John

First of all, thanks for all the help, you clarified things and made me
reconsider some of things I'm thinking of putting in Vn.

On 23/02/07, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
>
>
> affixes, but relativ pronouns would probably be much tuffer to do away
> with
> (and then there're the hi'er-lexicality pronouns like "both"... tho that
> specific one might be replaceable with a verbal affix.)

Sorry if I sound like I'm contradicting you, but relative pronouns are
actually some of the easiest to get rid of. In German, for example, instead
of:

"Der Mann, _der ins Kino gegangen ist_, spricht Englisch"/"The man _who has
gone into the cinema_ speaks English"

it's possible, if seemingly increasingly unusual, to say:

"Der _ins Kino gegangene_ Mann spricht Englisch"/"The _gone into the cinema_
man speaks English".

My German is too rusty to be able to tell you whether *"The _I gave [him] a
hat_ man speaks English" would be possible instead of

"Der Mann, _dem ich einen Hut gegeben habe_, spricht Englisch"/"The man _who
I gave a hat to/to who(m) I gave a hat_ speaks English",

but it's certainly not IMpossible linguistically, even if it is,
Germanically.

(I believe that Turkish, and some other agglutinative languages which only
allow one main verb per sentence, do this).

>3. Since there is a single final consonant cluster incorporating a nasal
> >(viz.) -nt, representing PNC by HN + VLC (e.g. _-mp_) would be ambiguous;
> >to
> >avoid ambiguity, I could represent final nasalised stops by either HN +
> VC
> >(
> >e.g. _-mb_ or simply by VC, e.g. -b. However, to me this seems ugly; I'd
> be
> >interested in others' opinions.
>
> If it's /nt/ [nt] vs /nd)/ [nd], what's so ugly about <nd>?

As the language is inspired by Finnish/Latin/Quenya, I'm trying not to have
too many final consonant clusters (or what look like them). Though I suppose
there is the excuse that final consonant clusters (such as "nd") look like
Estonian, the relationship between F and E being analogous to that between
German and Dutch or maybe Italian vs. Spanish vs. Catalan.


>4. Whilst using HN + VC presents no problem for stops and fricatives
> >(_-nd-_, _-nz-_, etc.), a problem arises when transcribing liquids,
> nasals,
> >and rhotics, particularly in HTML, since combinations like [nr] and [rm]
> >readily appear in the language anyway, and the Roman alphabet/HTML/ASCII.
> >Have others solved this problem?
>
> I don't think any natlang contrasts nas+son clusters with prenasalized
> sonorants in the first place.

Interesting. As I was thinking of getting rid of Finnish's triconsonantal
clusters (like -rst- in "torstai"), which are infrequent, anyway, maybe I
could also get rid of consonant clusters and just have -nd-, -th-, -ry- etc.
as prenasalised/aspirated/palatalised consonants, not clusters.


> Didn't you say you don't have /j/, only /v\/? Seems OK to me however, <j>
> feels "more consonantal" than <y> anyway. CF Hungarian however, which
> doesn't seem to have problems marking palatals with <y> but /j/ with <j>.
> But I agree that, say, "Gyorgy" does not really look monosyllabic.

Sorry, I should have made clear that y and j exist, i.e. "ly" (palatalised
/l/) is possible as well as "lj" (/l/ + /j/) and ll (fully-palatal /l/). The
first and last are fairly easily (not to mention intuitively) represented by
"ll" and " l.l" (where "." should be a middle dot) as in Catalan.


> Again, I thought you didn't _have_ /w/?

Well, not having a /w/ would make it easier to use "w" as a "labialisation
sign", but I was thinking of having /w/ too.

And as for the aspirates, there's
> the Pinyin solution- use <b d g> for unaspirated stops, <p t k> for
> aspirated. That would mess up the orthography for the prenasals (unless
> prenasalized aspirates do not exist?), but a possible fix could be to
> transcribe stops preceded by a nasal _also_ as prenasalized: so /nd)/ =
> <nd>, /n.d/ = <nnd>.

Hmm, sorry, not sure what you mean there.

>(Maybe I could make a rule that, say,
> >"lh" represents aspirated /lh/ and that an /l/ followed by a ("full") /h/
> >=>
> >"lk"?)
>
> Aspirated sonorants? I'm not sure if contrasting those with sonorant+h
> clusters is a good idea in the first place, but in a similar fashion, how
> about /lh)/ = <lh>, /l.h/ = <lhh>??

Yes, this is possible, (as in Indian names in transcription, like
Chhandigarh, where "Chh" actually stands for "tSh") but ugly - overnight I
thought of maybe using an underlined "h", e.g. "l_h_" for your "lhh".

>Two^H^H^Hthree^H^H^H^H^Hfour! things I forgot to mention:
> >
> >1. (...) various palatals (as opposed to palatalised consonants)
>
> Hooold it. You contrast palatals, palatalized consonants AND consonant + j
> clusters? /J nj) n.j J.j/? Geez, no wonder you're having orthography
> problems. :)

LOL.

>and maybe an underline would do for the retroflex consonants?
>
> Or an underdot?

An underdot would be great for "official" publication, but for the moment
I'm trying for a transcription that doesn't look horrid in
HTML/Word/OpenOffice documents. Also, I need to use characters that of
course are actually /available/ for use in HTML/OpenOffice (and preferably
all available in the same font).

>Does anyone have more than rhotic, and if so, how do you represent it?
>
> "More than one" you mean?

Yep, more than _one_. Oops!

I currently have <rx> for lone /R\/ in uwjge
> (plain <r x> are /r x/, and /R\/ in clusters does not contrast with /r/ so
>
> it can be written as plain <r>); previously r-circumflex. There was also a
> phase where I didn't bother writing the distinction at all.

Interesting. I suppose I could also use that transcription system with
others, writing "rh" for both "aspirated r" and "aspirated r followed by h",
too.

>The main problem I see is that C could become seriously overloaded: one
> >system I have considered using involves "c" for /ts/, c-caron for /tS/,
> >c-dot for the palatal plosive and c-cedilla for the palatal fricative;
> does
> >anyone (else) think this could be seriously confusing?
>
> Well, not seriously, but maybe a bit.
>
> >I am open to using "x" for the velar or uvular fricative, but whichever I
> >represent with it, what about the other, and what could I use to avoid
> >writing "ks" at the end of words?
>
> Would <kh qh> be too generic? (And as per abov, then transcribe /h/ in
> clusters as <hh>.)  There's also h-bar for something maybe. Or <j> for
> /x/,
> as per Spanish (you could then switch to <i> for /j/ or <'> for
> palatalization...)

Hmm. Well, as I think I mentioned above, I am trying to avoid use of "hh"
either alone or in combination w/ other consonants (and anyway, I would like
as far as possible to use the same letter or symbol for the same symbol
throughout, so "h" for example always indicates affrication, an umlaut
always indicates fronting, etc.). Though using an underline, as I think I
mentioned above, could work. (In a professional publication, using an
overline might be nice.)

>I would also like to be able to use some single letters for affricates (the
>
> >ones I envisage using are /ts/ /tS/ /tT/ /cC/ and maybe /kx/ /qX/. Any
> >ideas?
>
> I do think c with or without a caron would do well for the first two;
> maybe
> t-bar (or d-bar, if there's an aspirated counterpart to also transcribe)
> for
> /tT/. /cC/ looks like a bad idea in the first place if you also have all
> of
> /tS) tj) c kj)/, but c with acute could do.

So d'you think having both c (=/ts/) and "ts" (as in "hats", Finnish
"katso") is a bad idea, too?

/kx) qX)/ are a bit too unusual
> for there to be any good glyphs, so let's roll out the bad ones... Number
> sign and ampersand? This isn't going to be looking any less kitchensinky
> anytime soon. :b

Heh. At this point I am seriously looking at using capital letters as
separate sounds: I had a look at some Bantu Wikipedias and it doesn't
actually look too bad.

Of course, it's not quite the same - Bantu languages use capital letters
where we would use them (for proper nouns), but the noun-class prefix
precedes - so you get seSotho "Sotho language", for example. It miGht staRt
to look a bit unTidy if you uSed them aLl over the plaCe, and beCome even
moRe so if you were foRCed to use Them moRe than onCe per woRD, THough.

>2. I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of Finnish's neutral vowels and
> >adding /M/ and /7/, and maybe /E/ /V/ and some variation on /@/ (all in
> >X-SAMPA) as well. How about u-tilde, o-tilde (as in Estonian and Voro),
> and
> >e-umlaut for /@/?
>
> Sounds good to me, better than i-umlaut/e-umlaut/e-breve at least.

Heh, i did actually use a variation on this system at one point (the only
difference being that there were dotted and undotted i's, as in Turkish).

>If you have /E/ and /V/ in your language, how do you
> >represent them?
>
> You could consider digrafs with <a>, ae ao ligatures, or a dot under <e õ>
>
> (this last one is after the example of some Bantu langs.)

Yeah, I like the dot idea - the main problem is  adding them to letters like
e-acute (see below) if they even "exist" at all in OpenOffice.

>3. Tone: I'm also toying with tone. I have an idea that I could use an
> >acute
> >accent for high tone on vowels w/o umlauts, and a circumflex for high
> tone
> >on vowels w/ umlauts - but what if, instead of two-tone (high and low)
> >system, I want to have a three-tone (high, mid, and low) or more
> >complicated
> >system?
>
> a) Switch umlauts for digrafs (the French solution)
> b) Switch the circumflex for dubbel acute & grave (the Hungarian solution)
> c) Stacked diacritics (the Pinyin solution)

Well,  professional typesetter might be able to type a double-acute (as in
Hungarian) over "a", but as Hungarian only uses them over "o" and "u" (as it
lacks German and Finnish's a-umlaut), Unicode/HTML (possibly) and OpenOffice
(definitely) lack "a-double-acute".

(This may be going off-topic, but IMHO Unicode really should have included
all possible combinations of letter+accent, reserved for future use.I like
the stacked diacritics idea, the main problem (again) is how do you get them
in a word processor?!

>4. Oh, and I almost forgot, Vallian has /consonant gradation/!
>
> Neat. Was there a question in there however?

Nope, sorry, just thought that since I had written so much about Vn already
I should note that particularly salient feature ;-) (And I'm apparently
limited to five emails to the list a day, so I didn't want to use one up
just for that.)

>PS As an aside: I've talked about palatalised, prenasalised, labialised,
> >and
> >aspirated consonants; Wikipedia reports that there are also languages
> which
> >have post-nasalised (bn) and pre- and post-stopped nasals (pn, mp). I'm
> not
> >aware of any language that uses pre-palatalised or pre-labialised
> >consonants. Anyone?
>
> Labzn/ palzn are coarticulations, not pre- or post-anything. I suppose you
> could have eg. /jp_j/, but initially that'd probably turn to [Cp_j] or
> [ip_j].

Ah, I see.

>Also, are there any languages that use pre-fricativized
> >consonants?
> >
> >I.e., given a language in which "pam" could be a word, but not "pram"
> >(because of a restriction on consonant clusters in initial position) are
> >languages any words in which "spam" could be a word, despite the
> >aforementioned restriction, due to pre-fricativized consonants?
> >
> >Jeff
>
> I dunno any examples, but I recall that at least /st/ has been quoted to
> act
> seemingly as a phoneme in some languages. But you could just consider that
> strange phonotactics too.

True enough

Thanks again.

 <http://latedeveloper.org.uk>

-- 
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They say the danger's gone away
But I can hear the marching feet
Moving into the street

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