Re: Fave conlangs and essentialist explanations

Roger Mills wrote:
>
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>(snips)
> >Kalini Sapak is essentially Arab spoken by a Swede who doesn't know Arab.
> >
> >>PS _Kalini Sapuk ginda Irba Sapak, lik Sawud, wa nayn-lusawu Irba Sapak,
> >supaku sait." Pronunciation islargely as you'd expect, but note _Sawud_
>['sQwUd] and _nayn-lusawu_ [ne:n'lusQwU].
>
>
>Is that because of the ...awu... sequence? so "supaku" is [supaku] or
>somesuch?
>Nice.
Well, the semivowels _y_ and _w_ "colours" preceeding vowels, and in
addition differently if the vowel belongs to the same syllable or not.

So, to chartify (dot marks syllable boundary):

/aw/  is [o:]
/a.w/ is [Q.w]
/ay/  is [e:]
/a.y/ is [E.j]
/iw/  is [y:]
/i.w/ is [y.w]
/iy/  is [i:]
/i.y/ is [i.j]
/uw/  is [u:]
/u.w/ is [u.w]
/uy/  is [y:]
/u.y/ is [y.j]

This with stressed vowels - with unstressed you also get some reductions
like [u]>[U].

In /supaku/ you don't get any "colouring" or other assimilatiosn, so it's
simply ['supakU].

                                                      Andreas

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