Re: The beautifulest phonology

My "dream phonology", which is my goal for Exian (aka The Conlang Formerly Known
As Tech)....

Consonants
1) voiceless-voiced-glotallic stops/affricates
2) alveolar-retroflex-palatal "sibilant-range" affricates
3) a lateral series: tl dl tl' hl dhl nl
4) velar and uvular series
5) voiceless-voiced fricatives
6) nasals, which under mutation can become voiceless-aspirates or prenasalized
implosive stops/affricates
7) Celtic-type spirantization (or lenition) and nasalization mutation series
8) palatal and labiovelar secondary features
9) a "gemination" or "emphatic" feature, related to (7) above and similar to
Arabic "emphasis", i.e. pharyngealization
10) a full set of laryngeals (glottal and pharyngeals, six in all, including a
"pharyngeal/epiglottal ejective"

Vowels
1) a twelve basic vowel system with high/mid/low, back/front and
rounded/unrounded oppositions, complete with a system of vowel harmony, Umlaut
and "breaking"
2) allophonic and prosodic lengthening, shortening ("schwa-ism"), nasalization
and pharyngealization
3) V-i, V-u and V-a diphthongs
4) six tones: the four tones of Mandarin (roughly) plus high and low "checked"
tones -- seven if you include the unmarked "zero tone"

The main inspiration for these rules: the three Caucasian families
(Abkhaz-Kabardian, Nakh-Daghestani and Kartvelian), Semitic, Vietnamese, Korean,
Na-Dene, and certain Indo-European langs like Celtic, Germanic and Armenian.

~Danny~

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