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First report on Coní

From:Daniel Andreasson Vpc-Work <daniel.andreasson@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 19, 2003, 15:19
Christian Thalmann wrote:

> > As of now, I can give you a teaser. There are six vowels: > > > > /I E a O U 8/ > > > > There's a rule which says that when a vowel is stressed, it > > becomes tense: /i e a o u }/.
> Isn't this a phonetic rather than a phonemic alteration? It > would be better to use [...] instead of /.../ then.
You're right.
> And what about /a/? It could become [A] in the tense or lax > position...
We thought about that, but she wanted to keep [a] when stressed as well.
> > /8/ is written |û| as of now (u + circumflex).
> I'm never fond of writing systems that assign complex glyphs > such as |û| to a low-profile vowel such as /8/. IMHO, a vowel > that goes unnoticed in speech shouldn't stick out and wave its > hands in writing. But that's totally subjective of course.
I agree. But if it *isn't* used as a schwa, then it's not more low-profile than any other vowel.
> I would suggest |y| for the schwa, as Welsh does it AFAIK. Or > since /8/ is basically /o/-flavored schwa, |ø| would also work. > The slash even suggests a certain "reducedness" that would fit > the concept of /8/.
Yes, |y| is a good idea. The problem is that it's already used for other phonemes. (The palatalized series of consonants.) There might be a way around this, though, by changing those graphemes to something else. /ø/. Now, that's an idea. I want to pronounce it /2/, but that's a minor problem.
> Finally, you could just keep |u| for /8/ and use |w| or |û| or > |ou| or something for /u/ instead.
Yes, several good ideas. I'll forward this mail to her and we'll see what she thinks.
> All these proposals are aimed at a schwa that stays central > under stress. |Y|, |ø| or |u| would be a bit weird for [{]. > Not impossible, though.
> If you insist on /8/ being realised as [{] under stress, you > might want to use |æ| (ae ligature) instead.
No, I didn't write [{]. I wrote [}], that is the central, close, rounded vowel. You know, like [u-]. Swedish "u".
> Hmmm. I tend to abstain from diacritics as far as possible, since > they make the written text so messy. Why not just write /ja/ as > |ja| or |ya| or even |ia|?
Well, I think she likes those diacritics, but perhaps she could use some other transliteration system, like |ya| in e-mail. I admit that |ä| is a bit odd for /ja/. I want to pronounce it /&/, and I'm sure you want something similar, (like /E/ :).
> As for stress marking: As long as you don't want a stressed /8/, > you're fine, just use acutes. You could even keep | | for pre- > palatalisation and define | %| + | | =: |^|.
Yes, that's what I was thinking.
> Otherwise, you'd have to improvise. If you use |y| for /8/, you > could denote stress with the diaeresis, since it can be placed on > |y|: |ÿ|. I hear PCs can also put acutes onto |y|, but Macs can't. > Finally, you can put acutes and hats onto just about all of the > above-mentioned symbols with Unicode, but be advised that it doesn't > turn out nice on all platforms.
All good ideas. I'll have to check them with her and see what she thinks.
> Yet another possibility would be to use digraphs for stressed > letters, e.g. |Conii|.
Ah. Neat. That's what I do in Piata. Long phonemes are doubled. I'm not sure if that fits Coni though. I think she's quite fond of those diacritics. But as I said, we'll see. I'll get back on this as soon as possible. NotSoObNatlang: How come "ASAP" sounds like "right away, right this minute", while "as soon as possible" sounds more like "when I get the time, which very well might be tomorrow"? Daniel Andreasson