Ugh, fixing broken phonology

With 633 words/lexemes[1] in Taruven it was about time to check them for
phonological correcteness and consistency. I had a pretty good idea
already of the frequencies of single letters but multi-consonant-
clusters proved to harbor some surprises. It is probably appropriate to
mention that I've been playing it by ear all along, so 3% (rounded up)
errors is actually pretty good, but still... There will be rules for two
or more consonants, full stop!

So, it looks like syllables of Taruven are maximally CCVC.

Now, the "correct" words allow the following combinations:

Onset:
* any consonant + any liquid (/l/ and /r/)
* stop + fricative

-maybe-
* nasal + consonant, both of approximately same position

Which still means that |qtso| for "drink" is right out. What was I
*thinking*?

Furthermore, there's the hard choice whether onomatopoetic words and
words derived from them should be squeezed into the same strait-jacket.
Besides, I must have been sub-consciously biased by Germanic, I mean,
sibilant + consonant sounds sooo nice... and what to do with the single
instance of a palatal affricate? That word[2] is pretty much a perfect
onomatopoetic for a certain bird-sound!

Now, a CCVC-syllable combining with another becomes CCVCCVC, but the
simplification-rules are *still* in the blue... baby steps, oh yes...
differing according to dialect, why of course...

[1] that's about 10 years of work :( Efficient? Nah.
[2] |tjip|, that is: [cCip]! once every second. That bird sung around
    the clock all summer some years ago and I came *this* close to
    committing birdiecide...


t.