Re: Stress and consonants

Realism versus naturalism.  If you strive for "realism" in a language, if
you are defining it as I think you are, then you are bound by the rules of
existing languages and language types.  If you strive for "naturalism," you
can have a perfectly naturalistic human language that obeys no known
linguistic rules.  If you want to make "s" an allophone of "t" under
circumstances you describe, you might want to work out some kind of sound
shift or law that would make other consonants shift, too; but I don't see
why that can't be "naturalistic."  Who, and I mean those who have no
training in philology, would guess that some Celtic languages would ever
pronounce things the way they do?  To the layman it seems utterly weird.
With some explanation, you could do anything with a conlang as long as
you're consistent.  Why not?

I think your idea is cool.  Besides, there's always ANADEW.  Somebody will
answer you here with a natlang example of consonants that change
pronunciation with stress.  Perhaps even consistently. :)

Sally

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kate" <snapping.dragon@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:05 PM
Subject: Stress and consonants


> 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. =)
>
> --
> Katya
>