Re: The beautifulest phonology

At 1:48 pm +0100 21/3/02, BP Jonsson wrote:
>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?
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   :)

[snip]
>
>>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.
Quite - I suspect a conlang devised just for the (apparent) beauty of its
phonotactics would, in fact, be a very bland affair.

>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.
...and, indeed, if one's conlang has "con-diachronicity" then one's got to
come up with a set of phonemes that make sense in that context, whether the
sounds are subjectively pleasing or not.

>>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.
It occurs in some English dialects and is - probably for irrational reasons
- not a feature I like.  I don't find the AngloAmerican /r/ a pleasing
sound.  If one's going to have a rhotic, then do the thing properly a trill
it  :)

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.
They tend to disappear, I agree. But I don't find adjacent vowels ugly.

>>I think [j] and [w] will only appear in diphthongs.
>
>Why?  Would it include rising diphthongs (jV and wV types)?
Probably - I can say no more.

>
>>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?
Probably not - but similar features are found elswhere.

>>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!
Don't get too excited.  I was just joining in the "beautifullest phonology"
game, for as Roger Mills wrote:
"Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>
>>Oh well, as others are joining  in........
>
>That's about my attitude toward such a subjective topic.......Nevertheless,
>ladies and gentlemen--  ........"
Ray.

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

Reply