Re: The beautifulest phonology

At 10:45 am +0100 23/3/02, BP Jonsson wrote:
>At 06:34 2002-03-22 +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>> >As you might expect I rather prefer /i a u/ or even /i e a u/.  Any chance
>> >you will have a reduced set of vowels in unstressed or final position?
>>
>>No - I don't find reduced vowels _beautiful_ at all.  They might, however,
>>appear in a conlang where aesthetically pleasing phonology is not the
>>(main) aim, e.g. BrSc   :)
>
>I didn't say "a set of reduced vowels", but "a reduced set of vowels".
>I too would e.g. prefer /i a u/ over /I @ U/!
Sorry, as it's 'natural' in English, Russian and some other languages that
such a reduced set is also a set of reduced vowels, I was thinking you
meant both.  Indeed, my reference to BrSc also implied that I'd understood
it that way.

But the answer is still 'no', if we are defining 'the beautifullest
phonology' and nothing else.

Mention of BrSc reminds me of vowel harmony which I didn't think about when
I wrote my first 'beautifullest phonology' email.  Yes, I think vowel
harmony is aesthetically pleasing.  But if I were creating a conlang with
vowel harmony, I would probably do it very much as Turkish does, and that
would introduce vowels that, in themselves, I do not find pleasing - but
the overall effect would be pleasing.

This I think is one of the serious weaknesses of this 'beautifullest
phonology' approach (apart from beauty being a subjective criterion and, in
this case, 'in the ear of the listener'), namely that we seem to be
thinking of phonemes, or sets of phonemes, in isolation.

To return to my cooking analogy, if I simply mixed together all the
'beautifullest foods' or, if you prefer, the 'most aesthetically pleasing
to the taste buds' foods, I think the result would not be pleasant.  We
would need a little sourness to counteract the overall sugary effect; we
would need other flavors to spice the thing up.

a few harsh sounds might add spice to the language  :)

>And previously I wrote:
>> >I agree -- to the point of almost introducing gemination in Kidjeb,
>> >although it would work against the long
>
>which sentence I for some reason didn't complete.  It should have been:
>
>...the long standing tradition of Sohlob having non-initial voiceless stops
>only after /s s\ x/.
But is Sohlob designed to have the 'beautifullest phonology'?  Or are there
other aims?

Ray.

P.S. Does anyone actually say 'beautifullest' or 'beautifuller' now?  I
thought 'most beautiful' and 'more beautiful' were the usual forms in
contemporary English.


=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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