Re: ¿Naro cel ei nau cepoa sia? ['naru,gil enQ,gibua'Za]

Christian:

I like your efforts to include "non-trivial" phonology in your conlang; it has a
vaguely Numic feel to it. After looking at the website I had a few comments.

1. The transcription scheme you provide seems needlessly complex; I would suggest
that you stick to X-SAMPA (or your favorite ASCII-IPA scheme) for a discussion
of the phonology. Only after this discussion should you introduce your
practical orthography. That way the focus in the phonology section is on the
alternations at hand, and the reader's attention won't be diverted from them by
trying to decipher the transcription. (BTW, the practical orthography really
has the character of a transliteration from a native script, with its
complexities being due to the original orthographic conventions; I like it!
just not as a tool to introduce phonological alternations.)

2. Be very clear and specific about the kinds of alternations that segments enter
into. I found reference to Palatalization before you explained what triggers it
or what the effects were. Also, in your chart of clusters, you organize them as
[initial - medial - final] without explaining the significance of these terms.
It may be possible for the reader to make a guess at what you mean, but the
reader's guess could be wrong. Only later in the section on phrasal sandhi do
you explain more (but still not as much as I'd like to see!).

 3. Nasalization: are there examples of tautomorphemic clusters of N + C that
are not pronounced at the same place of articulation? If not, then Nasalization
can't be considered a strictly phrasal phenomenon, but the extention to the
phrase of a generalization which operates between any two syllables. The other
sandhi alternations seem to have this character as well.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson