Re: Stress and consonants

On Oct 24, 2006, at 7:18 PM, Edgard Bikelis wrote:

> 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. =)
This idea is really similar to Verner's Law in Proto-Indo-European.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verner%27s_law .

>>
>
> 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]
I've never heard of that pronunciation (but that doesn't mean it
didn't exist). At first I thought you said Vulgar Latin, and I was
going to correct you, since in VL /ti/ is [tsj] before a vowel, no
matter what the accent.

>
> 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.