Re: II Silindion Returns! (Longish)

Christophe Wrote:

> Difficult. Maybe as voiced consonant+glottal stop
> clusters?
Eh...maybe then this is only a voiceless thing, it
seems easier.

> > ------------------------
> > Western Developments:
> >          Initial   Final (Medial):
> > Regular
> > t  d       t  D      d  D
> > p  b       p  B      b  B
> > k  g       k  G      g  G
> >
>
> Why the (Medial) in parentheses? Also, I find the
> change of final voiceless
> stops into final voiced stops quite strange. In
> general, final stops tend to be
> *devoiced* rather than voiced. I'd rather expect
> something like : voiceless
> stops stay voiceless, except medially where they are
> voiced, and voiced stops
> stay voiced in initial position (or become
> fricatives), become fricatives in
> medial position and stay as they are or are devoiced
> in final position.
Done and done :) I like that better, and yes it does
make more sense.

> > Asipirate:
> > th  dh    th  dh     t  dh
> > ph  bh    ph  bh     p  bh
> > kh  gh    kh  h      k  h
> >
>
> I'd expect all the voiced aspirates to become
> fricatives like gh did, maybe
> with devoicing, which would mean dh > T and bh > p\.
> That would introduce
> voiceless equivalents to some of the voiced
> fricatives you showed above and
> would put more balance in the system.
One question then, would it make sense for T and p\ to
become revoiced and defricativized at anytime? There
has to be a /d/ and a /b/ in later stages of the
language, and the /d/ from /t?/ is rather
unstable...tending toward /l/ in certain environments.


> > Labial:
> > tw  dw    pw  nw     dw  nw
> > pw  bw    pw  w      bw  w
> > kw  gw    kw  w      gw  w
Mabye:
  tw  > kw    dw > nw
  pw  > kw    bw > mw
  kw  > kw    gw > Nw

later on changing in other nefarious ways. The thing
is, there needs to be a medial /nw/ somewhere down the
line but then again there's no /mw/ or /Nw/ medially,
so those would have had to change... I suppose /nw/
could be a cluster rather than a unit...which would
help things.

> > Glottal:
> > t?          d         d
> > p?          b         b
> > k?          g         g
> >
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Pre-Nasal:
> > nt  nd      t    nd     n   n
> > mp  mb      p    b      m   m
> > Nk  Ng      Nk   Ng     Nk  Ng
> >
>
> Not sure about it here. You prenasals seem to behave
> a bit independently from
> each other, which is quite unlikely. As I already
> said, sound changes prefer to
> apply to groups of sounds rather than differently to
> each sound. Also, in final
> position I'd expect Ng and Nk to become N if all the
> others lose the stop too.
Could it be that prenasals weren't a class of sounds
then? Since I only really need /nd/, /Nk/ and /Ng/ in
Silinestic, maybe they were just clusters?

> > Initially:      Finally:
> > d > l (or d)     d
>
> When does it become l and when does it stay d?
Ah, that's still something that needs working
on....I'm not sure. I'm toying with the idea of
dialectal variation.

> > Everywhere:
> > dh > d
> > bh > bh
> > h  > -
> >
>
> I doubt such a rare type as a voiced aspirate would
> stay only for *one*
> consonant. Voiced aspirates are rare, and no system
> is known to have voiced
> aspirates without the voiceless ones (PIE is an
> exception but since it's a
> reconstruction it doesn't count as we don't know if
> the reconstructed voiced
> aspirates were indeed voiced aspirates or something
> else), and even less to
> have a single voiced aspirate. If you have dh > d,
> automatically you'd have bh
> > b
It makes sense...and there's no daughter language of
Silinestic which doesn't treat /bh/ and /b/
differently anyways, so.... /bh/ goes to /b/ done. :)


Do the proposed answers to your questions work better?
Elliott


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