Re: A "minimalist" phonology...

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Danny Wier wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yoon Ha Lee" <yl112@...>
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 9:50 AM
> Subject: Re: A "minimalist" phonology...
>
> > Yes--that puzzled me.  Danny, do you have an example of where /ts/ would
> > appear?  I grant I'm only really familiar with Seoul dialect, but....
>
> I have no idea. I was actually speaking of allophones/regional variants for
> "c" in my hypothetical "minimalist" conlang, not Korean itself.
Oh, I see!  I don't remember the actual wording of your sentence, but I
(and apparently at least one other person...was it Fabian?  my memory is
going...) interpreted it as referring to Korean, not an example that bore
some resemblance to Korean.  Apologies.  <sheepish g>

> But I read in a German translation of _Hunminjeongum_ that Middle Chinese
> /ts/ was represented by Hangul /c/; also MC /tsh/ (aspirated version) as K
> /ch/ and MC /dz/ as K /cc/ (_ssangcieut_). And since an IAL in my opinion
> should limit the number of phonemic affricates, I proposed "c", which can be
> pronounced /tS/ or /ts/ or maybe /tc,/ (c-curl) or even /c/ depending on the
> speaker's natural tendency. (And "j" its voiced equivalents.)
<whistle>  I didn't know there were German translations of Korean stuff,
period...though I suppose it was naive of me to suppose that they might
*not* exist.  <wry look>

Interesting stuff.  Wish I knew more about the history of Hangul.  <sigh>

> P.S. To YHL: Did I post the URL to that translation?
Not that I recall, but I deleted the message (I tend to prune my email
fairly regularly, otherwise I can't find things!) and definitely might be
incorrect.  Wouldn't mind seeing a repost, though.  :-)

YHL