Re: Nonpulmonic conlang?

ROGER MILLS wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>> Another thing was that I felt that each phoneme behaved as a
>>> syllable,
>>
>> That I do not understand. All the above sounds are contoids
>> (_phonetic_ consonants); they cannot possibly behave as syllables.
>
> I can imagine something like a Salishan (?) or other NW Coast
> Amerindian language (using some of your symbols)-- [p'ts'tl'xk']
> meaning maybe 'the canoe is going downstream' or whatever ;-))))
> though I don't know how long one could carry one like that, as,
> basically, it involves holding one's breath :-))
Yep - which rather limits the length of an utterance and, indeed, would
make meaningful communication somewhat difficult for those with
breathing problems.

Presumably the syllabic nucleus of the above is the vocoid */l'/ (or is
|tl| a lateral affricate?) - but my understanding is that an approximant,
even a lateral approximant, cannot be ejective.

Ejective (i.e. glottalic egressive) consonants are normally stops, tho
ejective fricative are, I'm told, attested in some languages. If /l'/ is
meant to represent an ejective lateral fricative (Is it possible?), then
the above utterance has no vocoids (and certainly no vowels), so for
various reasons I cannot see how a language could function with only
nonpulmonic consonants.
==================================================

Eldin Raigmore wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:55:28 -0800, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>
>
>> Has anyone made a conlang that exclusively uses nonpulmonic
>> phone(me)s? Or, has ANADEW?
>>
>> (Sign languages don't count. Cheater. :-P)
>>
>> - Sai
>
> Definitely not ANADEW.
Yes, if _exclusively_ applies to all phone(me)s, then ANADEW must be
ruled out.

> You might have a conlang with no pulmonic _egressive_ _consonants_;
> that is, all its _consonants_ would have to be either ingressive or
> non-pulmonic or both.
If the language has to be _exclusively_ nonpulmonic, then presumably
even ingressive pulmonic sounds ('sighs') must be ruled out.

It would be possible to have a language with only nonpulmonic consonants
(but whether 'clicks' should be considered _exclusively_ nonpulmonic is
questionable) and, altho I think it extremely unlikely that such a thing
occurs ANADEW, I hesitate to say _definitely_ not.

> But all vowels are pulmonic egressive; not only that, but all
> syllabic consonants -- all consonants that can serve as the nucleus
> of a syllable -- are pulmonic egressive too.
Exactly!

> So, unless your speakers aren't human, or for some other reason you
> don't want the language to be pronounceable,
or ....

... as Gary Shannon wrote:
[snip]
> Or finger snaps, hand claps, armpit noises, fingernail clicks, taps
> and drumming sounds of various kinds.
Fair enough. But as Sai explicitly wrote "Sign languages don't count.
Cheater. :-P)", I assumed he was discounting such things as the above
and was referring spoken language.

But I've also learnt over the years that one has to be very careful
about making assumptions    ;)


--
Ray
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Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]

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