Re: Unilang: in Practice

At 6:58 pm -0400 17/4/01, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
[snip]
>sports a few words from langs outside of Europe. Most of them bear the mark
>of old-fashioned and/or amateurish linguistics, I dare say.
You may dare say here, but I wouldn't dare say on Auxlang  :)

>With that said, I'll continue my discussion on another thread, _Unilang:
>the Phonology_. Hope no-one is finding this provocative (better safe than
>sorry; some auxlangers are kind of touchy); I hope, rather, that people
>enjoy my speculations :)
Yes, I think you're safe here.  We did agree some time back that
_construction_ of an auxlang is Ok here; it's the Auxlang politics that
belong to that other list (where, as you say, some characters are kind of
touchy ;)
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At 12:30 am -0400 18/4/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>David Peterson wrote:
>> you'd have to leave all liquids out completely.
>
>I disagree.  Ninety-six percent of all languages have at least one
>liquid, 72% have more than one.  I say, have one liquid.
I agree - to omit liquids entirely is IMO unwarranted and indeed, as Nik
points out, accords with the practice of only 4% of natlangs.

I also agree that if Oskar really wants that "All sounds should be roughly
approximable by any speaker of any human language. Distinctions between
sounds should be as basic as possible.", then only one liquid is desirable.
It's well known that Chinese & Japanese speakers have problems with
AngloAmerican /l/ and /r/ - but they are not the only one.  Some African
languages do not readily the two - and the pronunciations of /r/ in the
worlds languages varies enormously.

>It could be
>written "l" or "r", it doesn't matter, but both pronunciations would be
>legal.  That single liquid could be, for instance, a lateral alveolar
>approximate, an alveolar approximate, a retroflex approximate, an
>alveolar tap, whatever.
>> And then what about the languages that have no [l], where the sound
>> [l] has changed to [d] over time or [w] or even [n] I've heard of?
>
>Those usually have an /r/ of some sort.  Thus, the single liquid would
>still work.
Yep - I would choose {l} rather than {r} as my "unilingual liquid".

>> I would leave [f] out, too, due to its odd, labio-dental nature.
>
>According to a survey of the world's langauges done at the University of
>California, "The most frequent fricative is a dental/alveolar sibilant:
>83% of the languages have some form of /s/.  Next comes /S/ and /f/.
>
>So, if there's two fricatives, I'd suggest /f/ being the second.
But here I agree with David. {f} is a luxury; as Yoon rightly reminds us:"
I know for *Korean* speakers [f] is often rendered as [p] or [h]."  And
it's not only Koreans, Japanese & Filippinos have similar problems.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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