Re: Tallefkeul: tones and whatnot

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:

>
> Tairezazh is somewhat more weird in regard to nasals; there's minimal
> pairs
> for initial n- and m- (eg _nek_ "spaceport" and _mek_ "yellow"), but in
> all
> other positions there's only one nasal phoneme, the pronunciation of
> which
> depends on the surrounding sounds - the "neutral" allophone, found
> between
> to vowels, is dental. To increase confusion, all non-initial nasals
> are
> spelt |n|, even in inflected forms; _tshenek_ means "most yellow",
> f'rinstance.
>
Niceness :)) . Maggel has strange nasals too. It has basically 4 nasal
phonemes /m/, /n/, /J/ and /N/. Those are present initially, between vowels or
finally. But as soon as they touch a consonant they lose their identity and
assimilate. And even then it's complicated, as /m/ leaves the group there ;)) .
The thing is that for assimilation purposes, /n/, /J/ and /N/ behave
identically and assimilate in the same way, while /m/ assimilates differently.
The nasals assimilate in position (and voice, but that's collateral damage and
is so simple I don't even mark it even in the phonetic transcription I use for
Maggel) with the consonant they are in contact with. But there is a limit to
their possibilities of assimilation (they cannot "stretch" too far from their
original place). Both for /m/ and for /n///J///J/ the limit is at the same
place: the labiodental position. /m/ can assimilate to the labiodental position
(becoming [F]), but not any further in the mouth. Instead in those cases a [p]
or [b] phone appears is inserted between the nasal and the other consonant. In
the same way, /n///J///N/ can assimilate until the labiodental position, but
not any more in front. In those cases a [t] or [d] phone is inserted instead.
Note that as you can see, in the labiodental position the distinction
between /m/ and /n///J///N/ disappears as they all assimilate to [F] there.

> They
> >are
> >used to more complicated clusters too. What about the opposite of |a
> fre|:
> >first: |a mile| [@ mbreId]: last ;)))))
>
> One day or another, I'm going to understand how [mbr] is easier to
> pronounce
> than [mr].
Well, personally I don't find it easier. I've never had any difficulty
pronouncing clusters like [mr], [nr], [lr], etc... But Maggel's rules of
assimilation are pretty strong, and [r] is alveolar, so [m] cannot assimilate
that far. So a [b] is necessarily inserted. Anyway I find that it serves its
purpose: |mile| pronounced *[mreId] wouldn't have looked strange enough ;)))) .

 And slightly later, I'm going to start pronouncing the "p"
> in
> words like "tempt".
>
I never have, and probably never will, unless doing it on purpose. I usually
only pronounce the nasal, not the inserted stop (and sometimes even assimilate
the nasal to the alveolar position of /t/).

Christophe.

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