Re: A few questions about linguistics concerning my new project

>It is working AND plausible?! I had not expected that at all!
Why not? A few holes will generally not wreck a phoneme inventory, especially
if it's a more marked sound that's missing. Just look at English to see how
far "plausible" can stretch. Or Swedish, as just posted.

AND your difthongs worked well together with the rest of the system - did you
really design them this way at the age of 11? A lot of beginners will end up
with either a perfectly regular or totally random system (I went with the
former back in my day) - but yours is in-between, and in a good way.


>To comment on
>your advice: I think describing /A O/ as /a o/ with [A O] in unstressed
>sylliables is actually more logical as you suggested in your text. But,
>maybe that messes up your system where you analyzed /u O/ as a 'pair',
>would that still work if I changed the phoneme to /o/?
Certainly; it might *look* more symmetrical if you called it /O/ (or /U/, for that
matter), but it does not really affect the system itself. And since there are
more front vowels than back, it's only expected that the latter might have
more variation in their realization. This being the case, then, using the "less
marked symbol" /o/ would make sense even if that weren't the most common
realization.

Also, /u O/ being a "pair" wouldn't depend on the current realization anyway,
since I meant "pair" only in a historical sense. CF English /aU V/ - these days,
just about the only thing hinting at a former long-short relationship are a few
odd spellings like "country".


>I'm glad you also approve of those diphthongs and the issues you pointed out
>are very logical. I think more allophones of the diphthongs ([E:], [AO], [EO]
>and [IO]) will make the whole thing more interesting. But I'll see how that
>works out.
>Nick Scholten
A falling [IO] sounds pretty neat. :) Having a single phonetic long vowel
however, and as an unstressed allophone even, might look a bit weird - but
then again, weirder things are kno'n to happen.

John Vertical