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

* Sai Emrys said on 2005-01-13 03:24:35 +0100
> Q1: What is your *phonemic* inventory? I.e., what are all of the
> discriminated phonemes in your conlang(s). (IPA / CXS / X-SAMPA)
The conlang Taruven:

Vowels:
/A/ /e/ /i/ /u/ /u\/ /y/

Consonants:
/p/ /t/ /k/
/b/ /d/ /g/
/s/ /S/ /f/ /T/ /h/   /x/
/z/ /Z/ /v/ /D/ /h\/
/m/ /n/ /N/
/l/ /r/ /j/
/rR\)/

Now for the complications:
- all sounds, consonants and vowels alike, can
be long (except the very last consonant, which is always long, and /h/,
/h\/ and /j/, which are always short)

- all voiceless consonants have an aspirated counterpart
- all voiced (and all the vowels) have a breathy counterpart
... for the two points above, the exceptions are /h/, /h\/, /x/ and /j/

All in all, that means 24 vowels and *81* consonants...

> Q2: What are the allophones? I.e., for each phoneme, what are the
> "normal" variants that don't change meaning?
If a nasal is in a cluster, it assimilate in position to its
following neighbour. Allophones haven't been perfectly worked out yet
and really depends on dialect and register too.

> 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.?
See above.

> Q3: How do your choices for the above reflect the goals of your
> language? E.g., if it's an auxlang [here!?], it's probably motivated
> by having common, strongly "universal" common-use phonetics to
> maximize learnability. So, for whatever your goals are for the
> conlang, how do they apply to the choices you made for phonetics /
> phonology?
It's an artlang, so the sounds are chosen for prettiness.


t.