Re: Stress and consonants
| From: | Edgard Bikelis <bikelis@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, October 25, 2006, 0:16 |
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Kate wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Maybe you can help me by telling me whether or not this is plausible.
>
> I'm considering making pronunciation of consonants in one of my
> languages somewhat dependent on stress. I haven't developed the idea
> at all, so here's a crude example of what I mean:
>
> If the word /tati/ had stress on the last syllable, it would be
> realized as:
>
> [ta.ti]
>
> If the word /tati/ had stress on the first syllable, however, it would
> be realized as:
>
> [ta.si]
>
> [s] would be an allophone of /t/ that would occur in certain contexts,
> perhaps intervocalically except when it begins a stressed syllable...?
> (I really don't know yet.)
>
> I can't think of any examples of stress in natlangs affecting
> pronunciation of consonants in a similar way, so I'm hoping someone
> here will either be able to give me examples or tell me that I should
> drop this idea if I care about realism. =)
>
Hi!
That reminds me of the pronunciation of mediaeval Latin. If I remember
well, /ti/ sounds [ti] if stressed, and [tsi] otherwise. For instance:
/ius'titia/
[iustitsia]
That /i/ becomes [Z], but that is another story anyway.
About the realism, a good way of preserving realism is taking
inspiration from what you know, rather than inventing something
yourself. But I ask myself, how could be a conlang really... natural?
It's like a sculpture. You have both, they look a lot alike, but still
the substance is different. Think about what Plato said, on his
Republic, about poetry. If poetry is imitation of reality, and the
sensible... visible reality is just an imitation of the real Truth, any
poem is just an imitation of an imitation, a lie. He concludes that it's
better to stick with the 'first grade imitation', like many think about
conlanging. I like Plato a lot, but he didn't quite thought about
hobbies ; ). Personally I like good imitations, enough to do it myself,
still, I don't ever try to recreate vines... I just draw them.
That is my first IPA/X-SAMPA post, please criticize gently ; ).
Edgard.
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