Re: NATLANG: Phonotactics

2008/11/24 Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>

> ObConLang; Whose and which conlangs have what syllable-structures?
>
The languages I'm working on right now:
Sar: (N)(C)(j,w)V(N)(C)(r,l)(C)(C)(C)(C)... (Well, it's hard to say where a
syllable ends, if there's a never-ending string of consonants following. If
one considers suffixes as separate syllables, then it ends after (r,l), but
this is only arguably so.)
Kv: (F)(C)(v)V(C) (the most complicated clusters are onsets like stv
(fricative+plosive+v-type) or like sT (two-fricative-type)

(a) "Action-at-a-distance".  Greenberg's article seems to indicate that
> there's
> little interaction between non-consecutive sounds, _except_ when they're
> all
> part of the same _root_ morpheme.  He says many languages don't allow, or
> at
> least disprefer, certain pairs of highly-similar phonemes to both occur in
> the
> same root, even if they're not consecutive, and even if they do occur
> consecutively within words otherwise than within the same root.  Examples
> he
> gives include; a language none of whose roots contain both a /s/ and a /S/;
> and Semitic languages which disprefer homorganic consonants in the same
> root, even though homorganic pairs are common elsewhere.
>
> Is that all true?
>
> Is the "liquid counter-harmony" in Spanish an example?  Spanish seems to
> follow a "rule" (well, mostly) that two liquids in a root can't both be
> rhotics and
> can't both be "lambdics" (lateral liquids).  (Or am I all wet there?)

Well, vowel harmony is pretty common, and that's a phenomenon going even
over root boundaries and often stretching to cover all of a word. When it
comes to consonants, I believe it is much less common, with counter-harmony
being the rule. I have once read that Rwandese has sibilant harmony, meaning
that all sibilants in a word must be of the same type, and South-African
languages like Xhosa have click harmony, with all clicks having the same POA
(except in some proper nouns, if I remember well). But that's all I have
ever encountered of that.


> (c) Greenberg says that if C1C2 occurs as an onset cluster, then either C1
> or
> C2 must occur as a single-consonant onset; if C1C2C3 occurs as an onset
> cluster, then either C1C2 or C2C3 must occur as a two-consonant onset
> clustere; if C1C2C3C4 occurs as an onset-cluster, then either C1C2C3 or
> C2C3C4 must occur as a three-consonant onset-cluster; etc.  And, similarly
> for codas.
>
> Is that true?

Certainly sounds logical to me. If you have the complicated stuff, it can be
expected to find the easier stuff as well.


> (g',h') What consonants are likeliest to be allowed in clusters but not to
> be
> single-consonant syllable-margins?  Is the answer different depending on
> whether they're onsets or codas?
>
I have remarked that the sound /N/ is often restricted to this kind of
things, like in Kirundi being allowed in /Ng/, but not on its own. Hmong has
similar stuff for all nasals except for n and m. They are both onset-only
languages (with Hmong allowing /N/ as a coda, but this is often interpreted
as nasalisation of the vowel), and I can't think of a language doing
something similar in codas.

Greets
David


--
Idustvok va yentelkvil gifpir, puk gifpir, ivan kitil.