Re: No Vowels?

Joseph Fatula, On 30/06/2007 10:06:
> I'm working on a new project, and I may have stumbled across something
> bizarre.  This conlang doesn't seem to have any phonemic vowels at all.
> There are pronounced vowels, but [vowel phones] are in complementary
> distribution with [no vowel phones].  Let me give you some examples
> (slightly simplified):
>
>  phonemes > phonetic realization
>  /tdzn/ > [tadzana]
>  /ktds/ > [katdasa]
>  /hrt/ > [harta]
>
> The vowel phones are entirely predictable from knowing just the
> consonant phonemes, which leads me to think that the vowels themselves
> are not phonetic.  Am I analyzing this correctly?  It just seems too
> bizarre, and yet I can't think of a good reason to claim that vowels are
> phonetic in this language.
It's not that bizarre, and indeed such an analysis has been offered for some Caucasian lgs.

As for whether the analysis is correct, you haven't given enough data. Perhaps
the data might better suit an analysis in which there are vowel phonemes and
fewer consonant phonemes, with consonant allophony being heavily conditioned by
adjacent vowels. Or perhaps the basic emic units are syllables rather than
segments.

--And.