Re: Phonology - request for comments

----- Original Message -----
From: FFlores <fflores@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: Phonology - request for comments


> Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> The dental/alveolar distinction is not very pronounced, *unless* there's
> different allophonic behaviour maybe. For example, let dentals alone while
> alveolar become postalveolar before front vowels.
> The same for velar/uvular (for example /ki/ = [ci] and /qi/ = [ki]).
> If you want more variety, you could try a labiovelar series (/k_w/,
> /g_w/, etc.) or really coarticulated sounds (kp, gb, Nm ties), or
> prenasalized stops (mb, nd, Ng, N\G\).
You read my mind on this one. That's exactly the distinction I had planned
to make for the uvulars and velars, with the exception that uvulars before
BACK vowels become glottals (of course there is no voiced glottal stop, so
/G\/ would have to be dealt with specially).

> > 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.
>
> Yes and yes IMHO. Consider Japanese allophones of /h/, [P] and [C].
> See how Spanish changed /S/ into /x/! As for the asp. glottal stop,
> I think it's perfectly possible, though it may not be very distinct
> from the non-aspirated one if you emphasize it at the beginning of
> words. I myself cannot say sentence-initial /a/ without actually
> pronouncing [?a], so to distinguish /a/ and /?a/ I would pronounce
> /?a/ = [?_ha].
Ok. Now that I think about it, one of the sibilants in modern Semitic
languages is thought to have derived from a lateral fricative. But now I'm
reconsidering using plain old /T/ and /D/ again. I'm sure it'll work itself
out in the end.