Re: The beautifulest phonology

Revision time.

From: "Danny Wier" <dawier@...>

| My "dream phonology", which is my goal for Exian (aka The Conlang Formerly
Known
| As Tech)....
|
| Consonants
| 1) voiceless-voiced-glotallic stops/affricates

Glottalic means voiceless ejective. And I didn't spell glottalic right.

I also forgot voiced implosives, which result from lenition of voiceless
ejectives.

| 2) alveolar-retroflex-palatal "sibilant-range" affricates

And corresponding laterals, nasals and rhotics, à la Dravidian. But these are
probably going to be allophones.

| 8) palatal and labiovelar secondary features

Palatalization is the same thing as "soft" in Russian, etc. and "slender" in
Irish and Scots Gaelic.

| 9) a "gemination" or "emphatic" feature, related to (7) above and similar to
| Arabic "emphasis", i.e. pharyngealization

Also probably allophonic or prosodic.

| 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"

Qualitative ablaut.

| 2) allophonic and prosodic lengthening, shortening ("schwa-ism"), nasalization
| and pharyngealization

Quantitative ablaut. Short, long and zero grade. Zero grade may leave the
residue of a "colored schwa", and form syllabic nasals and resonants, as in
Proto-Indo-European.

| 3) V-i, V-u and V-a diphthongs

Also V-I (backed i) and V-y (fronted u) -- in other words, diphthongs with
umlaut. My favorite is the <øy> of Norwegian or <ui> of Dutch.

| 4) six tones: the four tones of Mandarin (roughly) plus high and low "checked"
| tones -- seven if you include the unmarked "zero tone"

I could've said the six tones of Vietnamese, which are similar.

Now I'm finished. I'll finally get to work on this!

~Danny~