Re: new(?) phoneme discovered

On 3/10/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
>
> Interesting thought: Is there a terminological distinction possible and/or needed
> between natphonemes and conphonemes? I'm sure several of us have odd phones
> that do not occur (or at least do not occur contrastively) in any known
> natlang. For instance, I have toyed with a click-like epiglottal implosive
> more than once, and I had one phonology sketch with two degrees of creaky
> voice.
>
> Actually, this begs the question: How many other weird and wonderful sounds can be
> found among our conlangs?
Despite being a professional phonologist, I'm really not interested in
funny mouth noises for their own sakes, and most phonetics discussions
leave me cold.

> For bonus points: What's your proudest moment in phonology / phonological system design?
Now this is where it's at, as far as I'm concerned. That is, if what
you mean by phonology is a collection of statements which describe the
interaction of the sounds of your language and not simply an inventory
of sounds. A sample phonological sketch of mine can be found at
http://www.langmaker.com/featured/tepaphon.htm . This is for Tepa, the
precursor to Miapimoquitch. Some of the features of the
(morpho)phonology have been replaced, but the general outlines are
there. I am generally fascinated by large surface inventories emerging
as the result of relatively small underlying inventories, and I
designed Tepa/Miapimoquitch with this in mind.

Dirk