Re: DECAL: Examples #1: Phonetic inventory examples & motivations

My conlangs are: Methkaeki, Okaikiar, Curnalis.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 06:24:35PM -0800, Sai Emrys wrote:
> First off: phonetic / phonemic inventory.
> Q1: What is your phonemic inventory?
in CXS

Methkaeki:
   Vowels: & a E e I i O o U u
   Consonants: b S tS d D f g Z dZ k l m n N p r\ s t T v z

Okaikiar:
    Vowels: a e i o 2 u y @
    Consonants: d k_h l m n r z

Curnalis (so far; it's a discovery process):
    Vowels: a e i o u
    Consonants: a b d f g j k l m n p 4 s t ts v w z

> (Side question: CXS is the "standard" notation for this list?)
I wouldn't say "standard", but it's the most common one, and the
assumed one if not specified otherwise.

> Q2: What are the allophones?
Methkaeki has some English-like allophonic rules:
   Any vowel may become [@] in an unstressed syllable;
   Voiceless stops may be aspirated;
   The rhotic /r\/ may be realized as [4].

Okaikiar:
   Voice is not phonemic.  Thus /d/ may be realied as [t], etc.
   Consonants are frequently devoiced when they occur on either side of
   /@/: /d@zor/ sounds more like [t@sor].

   The one phoneme *listed* in voiceless form, /k_h/, is, as indicated,
   normally aspirated [k_h]. Presumably for that reason, it never gets
   voiced and realized as [g], but it may be deaspirated and realized as
   just [k].

Curnalis:
    Voiceless stops may be aspirated.

> Q2b: If you have any, what are the connotations / implications of the
> different allophones? E.g., do you use them for different dialects,
> registers, "accents", etc.?
No; they're just artifacts of the phonetic environment.

> Q3: How do your choices for the above reflect the goals of your
> language?
Not very well? :)  Methkaeki originated as encoded English, and so
inherited the Englishlike rules sort of by default.  Okaikiar's small
consonant inventory was something that grew out of the small number of
unchangeable attested words in the corpus.  When I set about designing a
writing system for it - an alphasyllabic one not much like Hangul but in
the same spirit -  I noticed that there were very few voiceless/voiced
pairs, and realized I could get a number of consonants that was a nice
power of two if I got rid of that distinction.  That let me use a
variety of binary representation for the consonants in the script.