Phonology of a Whistle-Lang (was: Sound changes)

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 09:59:15 -0400 "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
writes:
> 85 tones! Hmm that could make for an interesting conlang. I will
> probably
> add 3 more tones to that, and then we can have a pianolang. :-P
> T
-


ZJZJZW! (a greeting)

Actually, recently i've been thinking about a whistle language that could
be written in the Latin alphabet without needing crazy digraphs or
diacritics.
Here's what i've come up with:

Whistle-Lang has both voiceless and voiced phonemes.  It is based on a
three-tiered tone system of High, Middle, and Low.  All phonemes
(whistlemes?) should take around the same amount of time to
pronounce/produce; therefore the flat tones can be 'long' by being
repeated.

Here are the phonemes, with their orthography:
(since they all have pretty much the same place of articulation, they're
categorized by style)

Flat:
j = L
i = M
f = H

Half-Rising:
p = LM
d = MH

Half-Falling:
q = ML
b = HM

Dipping:
y = MLM
u = HMH

Hopping:
n = LML
h = MHM

Full-Falling:
m = HL

Full-Rising:
w = LH


The voiced equivalents of all these whistles are written with a preceding
|z|, hence |zh| is a voiced MHM whistle, and |i| is a voiceless M
whistle.  Or, you could have the voiced whistles be the orthographic
default, and mark the voiceless ones with |s|; or maybe it would be
better to mark all of the for voicingness with |s| and |z|... I'm not
sure yet.

I picked the letters for the orthography based on their visual
characteristics for representing the whistle tones.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "there is darkness all around us;
  but if darkness *is*,
  and the darkness is of the forest,
  then the darkness must be good."
     ~ song of the BaMbuti in troubled times