Phonology - request for comments

Hi all. I'm working on a language called Dhakrathat, specifically the early
stages of it, from which will be derived several daughter languages. But I
can't get to the daughter languages until I get the proto-language in
working order, and to do that I must have a phonology I can live with and
won't change too much.

Until this point, my Proto-Dhak phonology has looked like this (monospaced
font is helpful!):

         UVP  AUVP   VP   UVF  VF  N    A
bilabial p    p_h    b    p\   B   m    w
dental   t_d  t_d_h  d_h  T    D   n_d  l
alveolar t    t_h    d    s    z   n    r
palatal                                 j
velar    k    k_h    g    x    G   N
uvular   q    q_h    G\   X    R   N\
glottal  ?    ?_h         h

Key:
UVP=plain unvoiced plosive
AUVP=aspirated unvoiced plosive
VP=plain voiced plosive
UVF=unvoiced fricative
VF=voiced fricative
N=nasal stop
A=approximant or other
Phonemes are given in X-SAMPA. If in doubt, just match up the row and column
they're in.

Ok. This is a pretty good inventory, I think, but a few things about it
annoy me.
1) I don't want to use BOTH dental and alveolar stops, and BOTH velar and
uvular sounds, but I do want a variety of sounds so that they can develop in
different ways in the descendent languages.
2) If I do eliminate either the dental or the alveolar set, I would still
want to keep the fricatives, but they would seem out of place without their
corresponding stops.
3) This system seems too "ordinary" to me; I want something more "exotic,"
yet still organized nicely and with few gaps (such as the fricatives without
corresponding stops cited in #2).

So I decided I might eliminate the dental and uvular sets and add
glottalized (ejective) stops. Instead of using /T/ and /D/ without any other
dental sounds, I decided maybe I could use lateral fricatives which could
later develop into dental fricatives, and as an added bonus this would give
an interesting variety of other outcomes in the daughter languages.

Revised phonology:

         UVP  AUVP  EUVP  VP  UVF  VF  N  A  UVLF  VLF
bilabial p    p_h   p_>   b   p\   B   m  w
alveolar t    t_h   t_>   d   s    z   n  r  K     K\
palatal                                   j
velar    k    k_h   k_>   g   x    G   N
glottal  ?    ?_h             h

Key:
UVP=plain unvoiced plosive
AUVP=aspirated unvoiced plosive
EUVP=ejective unvoiced plosive
VP=plain voiced plosive
UVF=unvoiced fricative
VF=voiced fricative
N=nasal stop
UVLF=unvoiced lateral fricative
VLF=voiced lateral fricative
A=approximant or other

So there we have it. What do you.PL think? Should I use the lateral
fricatives or just accept the fact that /T/ and /D/ are the only sounds of
their kind? (After all, /j/ is the only palatal.) Does it even make sense
for lateral fricatives to become interdental? Also, is there such a thing as
an aspirated glottal stop? I think it's possible, but I'm not sure.

Here are some of the sound-change rules I've thought up so far:
p_h > pp\
t_h > ts
k_h > kx
p_> > p (maybe pp)
t_> > t_d or t_d_h, thence > tT
k_> > q
?_h > h
K   > T
K\  > D

Do those sound changes make sense? I have a pretty consistent pattern for
aspirated stops (affricatization), but there isn't really a pattern for
ejectives. Does it make sense for /t_>/ to go forward in the mouth but /k_>/
to go back?

Well, thanks for the comments, everyone :)

Eric Christopherson
raccoon@elknet.net / rakkoon78@hotmail.com