Re: Caucasian phonologies and orthographies

En réponse à Nik Taylor :


>[sg] is legal in French?  It doesn't become [zg] or [sk]?
Not in my idiolect, and most people I've heard speak the same way. Spoken 
French allows clusters with disagreeing voiceness.


>Using IPA for example sentences?  Or a "new orthography"?
IPA! I find the French orthography optimal as it is: it is not "the best", 
whatever that means, but it contains the right balance between phonemicism 
and etymological reminders. Also, I find it aesthetically appealing. And 
since it's used to write a language that is *not* Spoken French (we have a 
situation not unlike the one existing in Ancient Rome between Classical 
Latin and Vulgar Latin. Written French is only ever spoken when it is 
*read*, and contains various features, like the simple past, that don't 
exist in Spoken French), it doesn't *need* to change. It fits its purpose.

And I don't feel Spoken French needs an orthography. After all, it is 
*Spoken* :)) .
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En réponse à Roger Mills :


> >Oh, and if you want a run-down of [sga'la], here it is: -ga- is the root,
>meaning "guy".....
>
>What is "ga-" in real life?
You mean in Written French I suppose: "gars" :) . But in Spoken French, 
[ga] is *very* real :) .


>Yes you should.  And perhaps, harking back to an earlier comment, and to
>make it look even less like a Romance lang., you should consider analyzing
>it without schwa-- I've actually seen such analyses, where e.g. morphemes
>like /l/, /Z/, /n/, /m/, /t/, /s/ etc. simply have their schwas inserted by
>rule. It's wrong-headed of course, but it can be done...........  (Though I
>don't recall how these analyses dealt with intra-morphemic schwa, as in
>/pëti(t) ~pti(t)/ )  Although native speaker intuition and history says
>"schwas are deleted", it makes the rules only slightly more complicated if
>OTOH you say "schwas are inserted".
Actually, I doubt you can *make* any rule for schwa deletion (or insertion, 
if you want to take a wrong-headed way :) ). Euphony is master here, but 
personal taste in euphony is very important too. So the rules would be 
person-dependent :)) .

However, rather than making rules of schwa deletion (which I don't think 
are possible), I'll just list each possible form for each morpheme. For 
instance, the first person subject prefix has the possible forms /Z/ (with 
allophones [Z] and [S]) and /Z@/ (yeah, I make them phonemic because they 
can appear both in the same environment).

>IIRC the only major problem is accounting for /dy/ "du" < //d+l+[C]//.  But
>I'm sure the mind that created Maggel will have no trouble with a rule
>whereby  l > y between consonants.....:-))))))))))))
LOL! However, if I ever do such a description, I'll stick with the facts. 
I'm not making a conlang here :)) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.