Re: THEORY: on the teleology of conlanging (was: RE: terminaldialect?)

Joshua Shinavier wrote:
> initial r's are pronounced [hr] and r's which precede stops (any stops, not
> only voiceless ones) and nasals are devoiced (e.g. karn [k&rn] -- is there
> an ASCII IPA symbol for a devoiced [r]?)
The symbol is just the voiceless diacritic, in most SAMPA, [_0] under
the [r], thus [r_0] ([r] with a circle underneath in regular IPA).

That said, that's an improbable environment.  If it were preceding
VOICELESS stops, that would be likely, but for a voiced sound to become
devoiced when adjacent to other VOICED sounds is unlikely.  [Kurt] -->
[k&r_0t] is reasonable, but [k&rn] --> [k&r_0n] is extremely
improbable.  [k&tra] --> [k&tr_0a] is also probable, since there it
follows a voiceless sound.

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