Re: Sirmave part I: phonology

En réponse à Mangiat <mangiat@...>:

>
> Vowels:
>
> There are 15 vowel sounds (6 simple vowels + 5 allophones and 5 nasal
> vowels); native linguists still don't agree whether nasal vowels are
> independent phonemes or allophones of normal vowels appearing before the
> phoneme [n] + another consonant. (Could *you* help me to grasp this
> problem?)
>
Well, in French nasal vowels were originally allophones of oral vowels before
nasal consonnants /n/ or /m/. Now the nasals that provoked this nasalisation
disappeared (except in writing) and sequences vowel+nasal don't trigger a
nasalisation of the vowel anymore, so I don't think you can call the French
nasals allophones of the oral vowels. The vowel in bon /bO~/ is really
different from the vowel in bonne /bOn/. So maybe the phenomenon in Sirmave is
the same as in French...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr