Re: At last, an 'official' (but far from complete) page on Tech

From: "Henrik Theiling" <theiling@...>

> The feature list is quite funny. :-) I don't agree that advanced
> culture => complex grammar, but ok.  I like texts about conlangs
> containing sentences like 'A possible link to the hypothetical
> Nostratic superfamily has been suggested.' :-)))
I should've been a bit more precise about 'advanced culture' -
technologically, they're pretty primitive, as they're used to hiding in
mountains, forests, deserts and other remote places, but philosophically and
intellectually they're very advanced. Also, though the good (if not
mischevious) Techians who live like humans are a type of anarchist society,
those who serve (or are enslaved) by the evil king, a Satan-type being are
highly hierarchial.

> Are the alveolar and retroflex rhotics trills or approximants?
The alveolar rhotic is a trill /r/ when initial and doubled, a tap /4/ when
single and intervocal. A syllable-final single <r> might disappear and
'rhoticize' or pharyngealize (some sort of retraction anyway) the preceding
vowel; haven't decided yet.

The retroflex rhotic /r`/ is supposed to be something like Czech r-caron,
especially when palatized. It might end up being an approximant instead,
/r\`/. This consonant has no short-long distinction and never appears
initially.

> I also found two possible bugs:
>   - is a p' (bilabial ejectiv) really missing?
Yes it is. But it wasn't in early Tech. *p' is a pain in the bum to
pronounce for many including myself, and *p was already becoming /f/, so the
glottalized stop was deglottalized.

Also, the voiceless uvular stop is optionally ejective, but is not written
with an apostrophe.

>   - If it is X-Sampa, should \gamma \gamma not really be [G\R]
>     ([G] is a velar fricative, [G\] is a uvular plosive)
>     Or is it IPA and these are supposed to be smallcaps?
It's not X-SAMPA; it's a lame attempt to represent IPA with the Arial font.

>   - a with ring above is probably [o], right?
[Q] more precisely, analogous to Scandinavian a-ring. Again the fake IPA
usage. Another letter I could've used is Greek lowercase alpha.

> Can you pronounce that language fluently? :-)
I've practiced pronouncing all these exotic sounds a lot, but since the
language is still being developed, all I can do is pronounce meaningless
words, just to get some idea of what it might sound like.

> I'm looking forward to grammar.  Due to the totally different
> phonology compared to Inuit-Aleut, it will be interesting to compare
> how Tech builds up long words polysynthetically.  Kalaallisut has
> complex things going on when morphemes combine, but Tech with probably
> work totally different.
It'll just have shorter words than Inuit. A better comparison might be
Northwest Caucasian.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions, same goes for John Q. I'm just happy I
uploaded something on my webpage.

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