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Re: Nonpulmonic conlang?

From:Matthew Turnbull <ave.jor@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 1:12
When I started considering a non-pulmonic conlang, the first thing that came
to mind was, nothing! I already have a conlang that has ejectives, which I
discovered before learning any theorie behind them, which lead to alot of
confusion with clicks, but anyhow : you can have rounding contrastes with
ejectives, for sure with k' because there are a few minimal pairs in my
conlang.
the one I can think of right now is tskriinukko vs tskriinukka (with a pen
vs a pen).

Also, I have a friend who beatboxes really well, and if anyone has every had
the chance to hear good beatboxing, it involves alot of non-pulmonics, so
when I imagine such a language, I imagine "words" that would be made up of a
pattern of beats.

some thing like tt-ts tststs-ka would mean one thing, tt-ts ttt-ts would
mean another, it would sound a bit like a drum beat.

so we could have some thing like

*ttttsttttstttts tt-tt-tt-tts kkkko pp-ptpt |*
would mean like "cat drink milk : I see" and tense could be stress and rythm
based.
cat drink milk EVEDENTIALITY-1SG



this is very inefficient, but it's how beatboxing, which can be compleatly
non-pulmonic sometimes, works, in fact, it could be that a non-pulnomic
natlang exists somewhere amongst its beatboxers! :O

Replies

David Vercauteren <njenfalgar@...>
René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...>