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

> > 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).
Well don't have them then. (I'm afraid I can't help if the problem is trying
to have your cake and eat it too...)


>I was thinking of getting rid of Finnish's triconsonantal
>clusters (like -rst- in "torstai"), which are infrequent, anyway
As well as practically always loanwords (CF "thursday").


>maybe I could also get rid of consonant clusters and just have
>-nd-, -th-, -ry- etc. as prenasalised/aspirated/palatalised consonants,
>not clusters.
No, I like the idea of palatalization / cluster-with-j and similar pairs as
gradation alternants. Actually, if this is the MAIN reason for their
co-occurence (you mentioned them arising that way in another message), you
could do with one spelling for both; the syllable closure would be
sufficient to tell which way to pronounce eg. <ly> or <th>.


>Well, not having a /w/ would make it easier to use "w" as a "labialisation
>sign", but I was thinking of having /w/ too.
In addition to /v\/? That's pretty rare I think... but probably for
sound-evolutionary reasons, so I can't see why it wouldn't work.


> > 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.
What's not to understand? Example:
* /ph) th) ch) kh)/ written p t c k
* /p t c k/ written b d j g
* /mb nd JJ\ Ng/ written mmb nnd ññj NNg (I'm unable to type an eng but you
get my drift, do you?)

This might not be too adaptable to your 9-POA system however, and if
aspirates are just alternants of "normal" consonants (so you don't need
palatalized aspirates, rounded aspirates etc.) the <h> scheme could work
just fine after all.


>So d'you think having both c (=/ts/) and "ts" (as in "hats", Finnish
>"katso") is a bad idea, too?
Not necessarily, since that /t/ is dental. "Hats" and "katso" *are*
phonetically affricates tho, you'll need Polish or something for a genuin
[t.s]


> > 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)
Oh, and a 4th alternativ would be use _two_ vowel letters if you needed more
than one diacritic; this is in use in !Xóõ (one of the San languages). If
you have vowel length and wish to write that out independatly, you might be
still in trubble, but I don't think you've mentioned having vowel length.


>but I'm a BIG fan of "-nen -> -se"
BTW that's a case of suppletion, y'kno? There's no further diachronic
explanation, unlike with most other consonant stem alternations.


> > > (Maybe I could make a rule that, say, "lh" represents aspirated /lh/
> > > and that an /l/ followed by a ("full") /h/ => "lk"?)
> >
> > <lk> for /lh/ seems a little strange, IMO. Does the sequence /lk/ not
> > occur?
>
>Sorry. What I meant was that /lh/ could change automatically to /lk/
>phonetically, not orthographically.
Hm. Since you have a separate /x/ too, wouldn't /l?/ be a more expected
fortition result? Unless the /h/ comes from an older /x/ by some way; or
maybe vice versa: ? > k in this context?


(This bit from Eric:)
> > I believe there are probably phonetic reasons nasalization differs
> > from e.g. labialization and palatalization, in that in occurs before
> > or after consonants, but not necessarily simultaneously with them;
> > someone who has actually studied phonetics should correct me, but I
> > think that if you pronounce e.g. a [b]-like phone with simultaneous
> > nasalization, the result is [m], not a prenasalized [b] (which I am
> > unsure how to show in XSAMPA).
AFAIK that's exactly it. [m] = nasalized [b]. Nasalization may _technically_
be a co-articulation, but it _acts_ more like a phonation most of the time.


>Wikipedia has a few pages which claim this or that language has
>prenasalation - it even claims that some Australian languages have both
>pre-nasalization and post-stopping (e.g. ~d, n_d)
All I'm seeing is a claim of prenasalization vs. _pre_stopping (/mp)/ vs
/pm)/) which looks a lot more plausible.


> > You might also want to consider preaspiration, especially since you
> > like Finnish anyway.
> >
>
>Indeed. At least on Sami dialect has this; I don't remember reading
>anything
>to that effect but maybe the dialects of Finnish spoken in Sami areas have
>them too.)
Finnish has preaspiration all over the place, if you count the clusters with
coda /h/ as that. And yes, some (if not all? I'm no capital-e expert on
them) of the Sami langs have "proper" preaspiration. Curiously tho, northern
Finnish dialects don't adopt that, but they do have C + /h/ clusters more
commonly than the others.


>I have also considered a pitch-accent system, but I don't think this
>is compatible with stress, even if it is none-contrastive (on the first
>syllable, as in Uralic); is this correct?
I think so, but don't hold me on that.


>1a) /p, t_d, t`, c, k, q, ?, m, n_d, n`, J, N, N\, r, 4, r`, T, s, S, Z,
>s`,
>C, x, X, h, P, W, w, l, l`, L,
/Z/ as the only voiced fric. in such a large system looks rather suspect...
I'd either toss it or bring in at least /z z`/ alongside. Or did you decide
shift /j/ to that maybe, as it's lacking from this list? :)


>3a) /T_h, s_h, Z_h, s`_h, C_h, x_h, X_h
>
>         t_T_h, t_s_h, t_S_h, (c_x_h, c_C_h)
Are you sure you're not going overboard here? Aspirated fricativs are
extremely rare to begin with, voiced ones dubbly so, as is contrasting them
with the corresponding aspirated affricates. But if they're just allophones
of fric + /h/ in closed syllable, I suppose it's not completely implausible.
:)


>4a) /p_j, t_d_j, t`_j, c_j, k_j, q_j, ?_j, m_j, n_d_j, n`_j, N_j, N\_j,
>r_j,
>4_j, r`_j, T_j, s_j, S_j, Z_j, s`_j, C_j, x_j, X_j, P_j, l_j, l`_j
I would think /c_j C_j/ are impossible to contrast with /c C/ since they're
palatal to begin with.


>*Since the sequence /Ng/ exists independently, I don't know whether it
>would
>be better to use ng for /Ng/ or ~g.
Huh? You totally forgot to list this /g/ previously then. (Unless you mean
/N.~g/, in which case I'd go for a repeated eng.)


>Compared to all that, the vowels are incredibly easy:
>
>/a, e, i, o, u, {, 9, y, (E, O, 7, M (@))/
>a, e, i, o, u, ä (a umlaut), ö (o umlaut), ü/ÿ (u/y umlaut)*, (&#949;**,
>?***, õ,
>&#361;, &#277;/&#283;/&#399;)
Wouldn't /A/ fit into the system better than /a/, and /2/ (IPA o-with-slash)
better than /9/ (IPA oe digraf?) Having both of the latter would also seem
good if you had /E O/ too, tho.


>**Greek epsilon, also used for E in the IPA
Actually, that's a different epsilon symbol - IPA (and derived African
orthograffies) uses the "Latin" epsilon. The difference, I gather, is that
the Greek one may have a "member-of-set" like appearence, but the Latin one
mayn't.

John Vertical

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