At 18:03 2002-03-20 +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>I'm afraid I've discovered nothing better than the 'classic' /i/, /e/, /a/,
>/o/, /u/ - with the latter two definitely rounded.
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?
>But what about the consonants?
>
>I'll have /p/, /t/ and /k/ (I don't much mind whether /t/ is alveolar or
>dental, but think dental is preferable) - these would weaken to [b], [d],
>[g] or even [B], [D], [G] medially (a bit like Tepa or Tamil :)
And Old Finnish where [B D G] were conditioned allophones of /p t k/, tho
the condition was rather more complicated -- the sounds weakened when
initial in a closed syllable with a short vowel, which is a more
interesting condition than mere intervocalicness IMHO, altho Sohlob has
intervocalic weakening also.
>I find voiceless fricatives particularly unlovely. I'll keep only /s/ - no
>others please.
Bene! I must confess that Sohlob has a whole battery of voiceless
fricatives -- but phonological beauty is not the one and only criterion for
a sound getting included in Sohlob phonology. I tend to prefer voiceless
fricatives over voiced ones: voiced fricatives to my ear are but weakened
versions of voiced stops or voiceless fricatives -- which they also mostly
are, historically speaking.
>I'll have the two nasals /m/ and /n/, with latter as [N] before /k/.
>
>I like the lingual trill and might have /r/ and /l/ as separate phonemes;
>but I'm not sure that the trill is really beautiful. No, if its aesthetic
>beauty one's after, then I'll probably have /l/, which would tend towards
>[r] medially.
Or you could have /r/ as an/the allophone of /t/ in weakening contexts. I
for one don't care much for [D] or [G] -- noting that Finnish dialects
mostly turned [D] into /r/ [r] and [G] into zero.
>I think [j] and [w] will only appear in diphthongs.
Why? Would it include rising diphthongs (jV and wV types)?
>There must be no initial consonant compounds; the only consonants that may
>appear in word final position are /s/, /n/ and /l/.
Is it a total coincidence that Classical Greek allowed only /s n r/ in
final position?
>Consonant gemination
>as in Italian & Finnish is IMO quite a beautiful feature - so consonants
>maybe geminate in medial positions.
I agree -- to the point of almost introducing gemination in Kidjeb,
although it would work against the long
>Apart from gemination, the only consonants that may be in syllable final
>position before an initial single consonant are the three permitted word
>final consonants (with /n/ + /p/ >> /mp/ of course).
Really a terrific phonology you made up. I hope we'll be seeing it in a
language!
/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.net (delete X)
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