Re: New H/G lang?

Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> I don't have my notes with me, as I wasn't going to ask at this stage in the
> lang, but I've begun thinking about a new conlang over the weekend.
>
> Here's a very brief description, and a few questions, please answer frankly and
> candidly:
>
> The lang has an enormous consonantal phono, I make it 288 consonants (3 series
> (regular, labialised & palatalised) of an 8 POA x 12 MOA consonant grid).  Could
> the human brain actually handle this differentiation in "real life"?  Also,
> there's only two vowels, would i-bar and lowered-schwa be "realistic" vowels?.
> All this sounds VERY suspiciously like a lot of stuff that has been discussed on
> the list recently, but I swear it's (mainly) subconcious borrowing, the idea has
> been on my mind for some time..
>
        I think that with a structure of the word like yours, so many
consonnants don't pose any problem. But if the schwa was to be elided
for example, there would be a problem of consonnant clusters and
reduction of them, as I think there would be no PoA left for that
without loss of information. About the vowels, I'm not sure that i-bar
and lowered-schwa are a good idea. They are much too schwa-like both (in
fact, the schwa can often be a i-bar in some languages). If you want to
have only two vowels, I would vote for two very different vowels, like
/a/ and /@/. To stick with your idea, I think /a/ and i-bar would be
just fine, with a lot of allophonic variation (maybe triggered by the
consonnants) of course.

> All roots are CVCVCV, and are defined using the "voiceless stop" row of the
> consonant table (ie {pitaca}, {xat[ika})  Each of the three syllables "moves" to
> a different row on the consonant table (ie to Voiced Affricate or Prenasalised
> Voiced Stop) to show a different grammatical function.  For example: POS,
> Person, Tense, Degree, Reflexivity, Number etc.  Is this like any other
> (con|nat)lang?  It seems to me like a kind of "inverse arabic" <G>, but that's
> probably not a very good term.  I make that 36^3 possible shades of meaning for
> each of (8^3)x(2^3) roots?
>
        I had once this idea too. But I never quite used it. I find sometimes
remnants of this idea in some of my conlangs, like the use of voiced
infixes in Moten for singular cases, whereas the plural cases use the
voiceless versions.

> How reasonable would it be to postulate this as a late-neolithic/early
> bronze-age hunter/gatherer lang?  I've tried to go for something that is
> phonetically similar to the little I know of North American langs (with two rows
> of clicks just for good measure, as I find clicks very nice-sounding), but
> probably failed miserably.  So far, the only bit of vocab I have is that time
> terms are based on binary fractions (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc) of either a solar day
> or a lunar night, depending on when the action in question occurs.  Also, there
> is great cultural significance to songs, as in many Australian and (afaik) North
> American cultures.
>
        Such a structure would be good for a proto-form of a language, a
reconstructed form of a language by the linguists of your conculture, as
so many consonnants and so few vowels promise a good deal of phonetical
changes, especially seen the grammar you want to give to it.

> A lot of your comments might be "Gosh-tarn it, take it to conculture, wierdo!",
> but I'm not at that stage yet, and I'm still not on conculture (memo to self...)
>
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--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
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        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com