Re: On Phonological Constraints: The Long Vowel Rule

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 11:59:45 -0000, Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>
wrote:

>Don't let them discourage you from your euphonic rule.  Just
>because something is possible doesn't mean your language
>should allow it.  That's what phonotactics is all about, and
>it flavors your language.  Conlangs often look and sound like
>orc utterances to me -- I wish more people would enforce a
>sense of aesthetics in their langs...
>
>I like the rule, it sound similar to the ones I developed for
>my sketchlang Calipone.  Their purpose was no other than to
>make it sound more pleasant.  As a corollary, they caused a
>lot of trouble...  nouns shifting the stress placement in
>adjectives, or two nouns spawning an epenthetic *syllable* in
>between.  Isn't euphony fun?
>
>  http://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/calipone.html
>
>I made this up after my exposure to Modern Greek, but it
>never got off the ground.
>
>
>-- Christian Thalmann
___________________________________________________________________________

Thanks Christian! I had a a peek at Calipone and I must say I was very
impressed. It's also very nice to see a kindred aesthetic out there. Pity
it never worked out - I would have been really interested to see a more
comprehensive grammar. :(

Anyway, to every body else (particularly Ray) I can confrim that the
combination LV + C + SV + C + LV is indeed permissable (i.e. a:gati:m
(obj.)'boots'), though after pouring over the lexicon (so far some 200
words) I haven't managed to find any examples of a single morpheme
containg two long vowels.

I think that if I add an 'unstressed' pronunciation for each of the 5
vocalic phonemes (i.e. [a] -> [schwa] etc.), I can 'unclutter' the
creative space a little, as well as render the pronunciation of the entire
langauge a little more natural. I think my real problem lay with in rigid
nature of the rule, and my silly notion of the time that rules had to be
universal. I am far more interested in diversity and atypicality these
days.

I am afraid I have to reject the notion of two different inflects
(astutely suggested by Ray), on he grounds that in some circumstaces the
vowels length serves to show number and so on, though I certainly WOULD
now prefer to keep the root morpheme unaltered.

The whole thing needs a bit of an overhaul I'm afraid. :)

Nic