Re: Caucasian phonologies and orthographies

From: "John Quijada" <jq_ithkuil@...>

> In most colloquial Arabic dialects /q/ has remained a stop, not a
> fricative, e.g., Levantine Arabic /?/, Hijazi Arabic /g/ and Iraqi Arabic
> has retained /q/.
It's a glottal stop in Maltese also, and a voiced uvular stop in other
Arabic dialects, as well as in Arabic loanwords in Somali.

> As to non-ejective Caucasian stops and affricates, Comrie (in "Languages
of
> the Soviet Union") reports that one or two North Caucasian languages (or
at
> least some of their dialects) have a four-way distinction in their stops
> and affricates:  voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiceless
> ejective, and voiced unaspirated.  Additionally, Comrie (or was it
> Catford?) reports that many Caucasian languages distinguish "intensive"
> (i.e., geminated) forms of voiceless stops and affricates which, in non-
> intervocalic environments, are realized as simple unaspirated plosives
> (distinguished from their aspirated counterparts).
The four-way distinction of stops and affricates you're referring to: voiced
(d), voiceless (t), voiceless tense (tt) and voiceless ejective (t').
Fricatives are three-way: voiced (z), voiceless (s) and voiceless tense
(ss).

I'm still confused as to the nature of the voiceless lax and voiceless tense
(or single and geminate). Both Chechen and Lak (the two languages described
in Alan S. Kaye's excellent book on phonologies of select African, Asian and
Caucasian languages) have them. Either it's just length ("long" consonants
in other words) or tension is involved, or heavy aspiration.

Long consonants are also found in one branch of another family: Berber.
These can be found word-initially as well as medially and finally.

> Also:  Thanks for the Wikipedia link on Ubykh.  Both Ubykh and Abkhaz are
> very near and dear to my conlanging heart, as their phonemic inventories
> and their verbal morphologies were a strong influence on the design of
> Ithkuil.
I'd like to see the phonology for Ithkuil! Did you post it onlist already? I
just came back after a long absence....

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