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

>Hi John
> > 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...)
> >
>
>Ain't it the truth?!
Oh, totally. My own solution so far has been to make more cakes, but now I'm
continuously having trubble deciding on which one the marzipan wreath would
go best with or which one should be filled with the apricot cream... :b


> > 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>.
>
>True enough. As I've long given up trying to design "pristine"
>systems, however, I may keep at least one of them. Again, Finnish is
>the inspiration: it uses "ng" to represent /N:/ even though it seems
>never to occur when it's not the result of CG (except maybe in
>loanwords) of /nk/ -> /N:/. So maybe I could use digraphs with "h"/"w"
>as indicators of both (a) aspiration/labialisation, and (b) of
>consonant clusters, with "j" in consonant clusters and "y" as an
>indicator of palatalisation.
Why not, sounds OK to me. I don't see offhand how this is analogous to
Finnish however - we do write the gradation results out in all cases (and
not the least because gradation has ceased to be activ long since); and <ng>
is cross-linguistically pretty commonplace for /N/ anyway.


> > /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? :)
>
>Hmm, well, yes, THAT site again lists /l/ as the only lateral, /j/ as
>the only palatal, and /h/ as the only glottal in English, so I think
>natural languages are bound to have at least one or two that are
>alone.
Yeah, but when talking voiced frics, if there's only one, it's usually /B/,
/v/ or /z/; there are examples with only /Z/ however (dialectal Spanish, for
one; check "Yeísmo" from WP)


>(And of course, /j/ and /h/ seem to be fairly common across languages,
>for whatever reason. Anyone have a theory/explanation for this?)
/j/ is a consonantal /i/ (itself a fundamental vowel) that easily results
from vowel breiking, while any consonant goes to /h/ if you lenite them far
enuff.


> > 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.
>
>Yes, they would, (to both statements!). I keep thinking Finnish "a" =
>/a/ and Finnish "ö" = /9/, though. Thanks for correcting me on that.
>TFT, John
>
>Jeff
....but OTOH, IML /A/ is fully central [a\], and /2/ is central-ish too, as
well as more open ([2\_x]), so calling them /a 9/ might not be all at much
off however. For transcription's sake, if they pair up with /& o/ then /A 2/
would appear to be for the best however.

John Vertical

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