Re: Nine (was: Re: Back)

>From: Rob Nierse <rob.nierse@...>
>Subject: Nine (was: Re: Back)
>Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 12:51:32 +0200
I love this 'Nine' project, so I'd like to comment...

>Then I got an idea I really liked: the vowels preceding the /n/ get
>nasalised. So I got:
>p t k
>e a o (liked those better than i a o)
>e~ a~ o~
>
>with a rule saying: a~p > am  etc..
Why don't you keep the /n/ phoneme and state that the sequences /en an on/
are realized as [e~ a~ o~]? That way, you can have syllable initial /n/. And
you save yourself two phonemes, since the nasalized vowels would no longer
be independent phonemes. Isn't there, after all, some law that says 'all
languages have at least one nasal'? (I know it also says 'all languages have
at least one plosive', but I think they've all got a nasal too.)

>VVV    singular noun    "ua~i"  [wa~y] house
>VVtV   plural noun        "ua~ti" [wani] houses
>VtVkV    genitive          "uta~ki" [utaNi] of the house
>VtVktV                        "uta~kti" [utaNdi] of the houses
>and so on.
Wow, I'm confused. How did the [n] and [N] and [d] get there? Yeah, and the
[y]!? Radical allophonics? Say, are nasals allophones of the plosive
phonemes? What about having fricatives as allophones of plosives? Icelandic
phonotactics, for example, realize occurences like /kt tk pt/ as [xt Tk ft]
(two plosives are not normally allowed to meet in Icelandic).

So, by what I gather from your system, I think the system I'm proposing is
like this:

      /p t k/
        /n/
      /e a o/
    /j       w/


Just my five cents, keep up the good work! :)

Oskar
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com