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Re: Phonation or Register Tones (was: Trial of the century?)

From:Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 20, 1999, 16:46
Kenji Schwarz wrote:

>On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:
-----<snip>-----
>> It appears that tonal conlangs are common enough. But I dare say >> that there are not many conlangs with contrastive phonations. >> Some languages contrast creaky voice, modal voice, and breathy >> voice at the syllable level. I have heard that many Austro- >> Asiatic languages do this as well as a few Amerind languages. In >> any case, it is quite rare the world over. Could this account for >> why this might be rare > >Ah-ha! Not so fast! It just so happens that my other conlang, >Sayat, has a _sort_ of distinctive phonation feature. As a member >of the little-known Pseudo-Tungusic language family (a branch of >that greater conlang, Altaic), Sayat has "vowel harmony", which is >fundamentally based on tongue root retraction/advancement. The >actual phonetic effect of this is most clearly heard as >pharyngialization. In Sayat, word stems are marked as either >"hard" or "soft" ("hard" being pharyngialized), and all affixes >change their vowel quality to match. > >I have no idea how to represent this in ASCII IPA, so I'll skip >examples. It's essentially like those examples of Turkish vowel >harmony we've all read about in introductory linguistics books -- >just that the distinctive feature is really tongue >root/pharyngialization, not height/frontness. >
I knew I couldn't be the only conlanger on the list who has thought of something like this, although tongue root (TR) features isn't quite the same as phonation. Actually, I haven't heard of many conlangs with a vowel harmony based on TR features. This really sounds interestingly kewl and suspiciously naturalistic. 8-) Can you pronounce these pharyngealized vowels yourself? I have some data on a tungusic language called Even in a book titled _The Sounds of the World's Languages_. There are some sample words and eight x-ray tracings of the vocal tract of a Even speaker articulating both the plain and pharyngealized vowels. But even with all these data, I find it extremely difficult to pronounce the pharyngealized vowels as they are described to me. I have yet to hear them though. I myself have no problem in pronouncing the phonation contrasts in Boreanesian.
>> Anyone else dare challenge the uniqueness of Boreanesian? 8-) > >Wouldn't dream of it :) How does this work across syllable >boundaries -- is there any tone sandhi ('phonation sandhi'?) ? >
No there isn't. The phonation of major syllables remains constant. Phonemically, creaky syllables always end in a glottal stop /?/ and clear syllables always end in a glottal fricative /h/ (or voicelessness). But there is a sort of regressive assimilation process of the glottal coda of major syllables in colloquial speech. As a rule, the /?/ in creaky syllables assimilates with the following consonant and becomes corresponding stops in colloquial speech. The /h/ (or voicelessness) in clear syllables remain constant. Both of these lead to some sounds I find particularly pleasing across syllable boundaries; pre-stoped nasals, geminate stops, and pre-aspirated nasals and stops. I also find voiceless sonorants at syllable codas rather pleasing. The only thing is I'm not as fond of are creaky coda sonorants - I suppose I can't please all my aesthetic tastes if I wanna be naturalistic. Besides, creakiness somehow fits naturally within the Boreanesian phonological framework. Regards, -Kristian- 8-)