Re: Nonpulmonic conlang?

Veoler wrote:
> R A Brown wrote:
>> Veoler replied:
>>> Well, I once made a nonpulmonic relex of my main conlang. But it only
>>> lasted for a day. One thing that put me off was that I had a hard time
>>> remember what sound each letter in the orthography represented. Maybe
>>> it had been better if I had used IPA, but I'm not yet knowledgeable in
>>> the nonpulmonic area of IPA.
>> Let's see. If we don't use the pulmonic airstream, then we are left with two
>> other possibilities: glottalic (or pharyngeal) airstream; lingual (or
>> velaric) airstream.
>>
>
> The consonants I had was
> p_> t_> t`_> k_> q_>
> f_> s_> S_> x_> (or kx)_>) X\_>
I see - ejectives stops and quite a few ejective fricatives. Even if
these weren't ejectives, there'd still be a problem, I guess, in getting
satisfactory orthography.

> O\ (if this is the x-sampa for open-mouth-until-the-lips-go-apart, a
> smacking sound)
If you mean the bilabial click, then it's the correct symbol.

> O\ (another consonant, a kissing sound)
looks like the same symbol!

> And a consonant where you place the lips between the teeth, and then
> draw the lips out from them, with the facial muscles, a bilabial
> egressive airstream.
I don't think this even has a name - nor IPA symbol. If I'm making the
sound right, it's actually quite noisy, sort of like a cork coming out
of a bottle - I guess that could be non-pulmonic substitute for a vowel.

> !\ where you hold your tongue as you initially do when you pronounce
> tK)` and then make a click where the tongue hit the floor of the
> mouth.
It's the symbol for the post-alveolar click (Zulu/Xhosa |q|)

> |\|\ where you release it as a lateral.
Yep - that's the symbol for the lateral click (Zulu/Xhosa |x|)

But, as I wrote in my earlier email, clicks are not _exclusively_
non-pulmonic as, although the primary articulation is made with
ingressive velaric airstream, they do involve a secondary articulation
produced by an egressive pulmonic airstream.

>
>>> 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.
>>
>>> and I only had a low number of phonemes, so the language appeared very
>>> inefficient.
>> Are you saying that languages like Hawaiian(8 consonants + 5 vowels*), and
>> Maori (10 consonants + 5 vowels*) and so on are inefficient?
>>
>> (* or 10 vowels if you reckon the long vowels as separate phonemes).
>>
>
> I meant that if you have a syllable in a pulmonic lang, lets say
> "gapkel", it is pronounced and perceived (by me) as two "units", which
> happen to be syllables: gap + kel.
Agreed.

> Now, in a non-pulmonic lang, I perceive each consonant as its own
> "unit", which isn't a syllable but nevertheless are perceived as
> equivalent unitwise to a syllable in a pulmonic lang. So a word with
> six clicks is perceived as six units long, while "gapkel" only is two
> units long, which makes the click word three times longer.
I see. Just the clicking sound. Two things strike me here: the sound is
not going to carry over much distance; without an added vowel, I'm not
sure easy it is going to be fora listener to distinguish the different
types of click.

But this leaves the ejectives, which are the greater part of your
inventory, and I do not see how they can constitute units comparable
with syllables.

> So, having only a few consonants, compared to the number of
> _syllables_ in a natlang, such as Hawaiian, it felt much more
> inefficient. But maybe a native speaker of the nonpulmonic lang would
> be able to make it flow much better.
If were using only non-pulmonic sounds, I don't think we have a
pronounceable language.

--
Ray
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fieri per pauciora.
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