Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)

Xriçten Talman (Christian Thalmann) isnerq:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
>> Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
>> pleasing phonologies?  I find it awefully difficult.
>
> Not at all, I absolutely love making phonologies.  Disappointingly
> (?), I usually end up with rather simple vowel systems, and no
> hard-to-pronounce consonants.  But maybe that's just the recipe
> for pleasing phonologies?  It seems to work for Quenya, IMHO the
> hallmark of pleasing phonology.
I'm the quintessential phonology nerd.  Indeed my conlangs
seldom and only with an effort develop beyond a phonology.
For example the phonology of Kijeb and Sohlob -- both in the
sense of their synchronic phonologies and the historical
development leading from Kijeb to Sohlob -- has essentially
been stable since shortly after I started those languages
some six years ago.  I made some feeble and never satisfying
attempts at a grammar for Sohlob, with the general idea of
ergativity and the historically related ergative _-l_ and
instrumental _-r_ endings.  Then suddenly 4 1/2 months ago
the main traits of Kijeb grammar were revealed to me, with
the consequence that most of what I thought I knew of Sohlob
grammar evaporated -- except that the Kijeb instrumental is
_-ri_, which makes a derived _-rya_ which becomes _-l_
possible.

Now as for my phonological predilections I like somewhat
constrained phonotactics (look for  example at the sandhi
and root structure of Kijeb: <http://wiki.frath.net/Kijeb?#Sound_system>.
I like various forms of vowel harmony too.  I definitely
*don't* find it interesting when almost any sequence of
sounds from the the phoneme inventory can be a valid word
or morpheme.  I also like sibilants a lot, including
affricates and what I call anti-affricates: [st zd St Zd]
etc., and I definitely am fond of [K] too.  Of course I
have to guard myself against repetition, though, so maybe
it's time for a language devoid of fricatives!

I think one has to distinguish between a phonology -- or any
aspect of a language or anything else for that matter! :-) --
being pleas*ing*, pleas*ant* and mellifluous, since they
may not coincide: if you *want* a harsh-sounding language
then [XR=S] is a pleasing, if unpleasant, sound, and too
much mellifluency may be unpleasant (both qualitatively
and quantitatively: I once tried a language without
obstruents, but it turned out neither pleasing nor pleasant! :-)

What about the *other* meaning of 'phonology'?(*) how many
of us enjoy making up historical sound changes and groups
of interrelated languages.  I quite like the way a rather
limited arsenal of plausible sound changes applied in different
order and proportion can create quite diverse effects.

(*) I often find it expedient to distinguish between
(synchronic) phonemics and (historical) phonology.
While 'phonemics' as a term may have ties to a particular
theory of synchronic phonology the fact remains that
'phonology' as used by comparative philologists is not
only about phonemic, but also about purely phonetic
change.  Besides I like to write "pone*ic(s)" rather
than "phonetic and phonemic/phonological" or "phonetics
and phonemics/phonology" -- at least informally! :-)

Kate skrev:
 >
 > I do, although for me it's more about how the language looks than how
 > it actually sounds. Since I create most of my languages for stories,
 > how the language looks in transliteration is important to me. (And I'm
 > picky about the transliteration not being too inaccurate or ambiguous,
 > too.) I probably spend more time trying to balance what I consider
 > interesting and pleasing with what's sensible and pleasing in
 > transliteration.
 >
 > What I wonder, is does anyone have the same problem when it comes to
 > morphology, syntax, etc? Sometimes I end up tossing a whole language
 > because I don't think it's elegant enough, enough though there are at
 > least ten different reasons that doing that is silly.
 >

Oh yes!  I often find myself ending up with too elegant (i.e. too
regular) morphology and syntax, or even worse with what IMNSHO are
too bland phonology and syntax (i.e. too Standard Average European.)
This is clearly related to the general difficulty I feel in coming
up with morphology and syntax, and I want my languages to be
'naturalistically plausible'.

Like you I'm picky about transcription/transliteration/Romanization.
I have some ingrained peeves, of which "|h| digraphs should preferably
be used only to indicate aspiration and/or voiceless sonorants, and
*not* as a fricativizer, even less as a palatalizer and *absolutely
not* as a random modifier" is the chief one.  I also tend to prefer
diacritics over digraphs or IPA for practical transcription -- the
latter because IPA is hard to write by hand and lack capitals(*)

(* Note to wouldbe nitpickers: I do know about the African
orthographies' IPA capitals.  They are mostly even worse!)

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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