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Re: Tones to make up for lack of phonemes

From:Campbell Nilsen <cactus95@...>
Date:Saturday, December 27, 2008, 15:04
The problem is that you can only distinguish so many tones. Most of your words
would be very, very long. Why not /p/, /b/, /m/ and /a/, /i/, /u/,
and distinguish your vowels not just by tone but also by length?
 
"Define 'cynical'."-M. Mudd
 
 




________________________________
From: Matthew Turnbull <ave.jor@...>
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 11:55:43 PM
Subject: Re: Tones to make up for lack of phonemes

I would think that any thing that had a throat could do a glottal
stop, or some sort of equivalent "hiatus" phoneme. Also, you don't
even need vocal cords to generate tones, if you have never
investigated the vocal physiology of avians, I highly suggest doing
so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrinx_(biology)

On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 6:29 PM, Vincent Pistelli <pva003@...> wrote:
> I was going to include 2 vowels: a & i      I was only talking about the > consonants of the language. > > On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 8:16 PM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>wrote: > >> SolReSol was a musical language based on the Western scale. >> Presumably that would fit the bill.  Also, why not just a vowel >> for your phoneme?  Not all creatures can make a [b]; just about >> all of them can cry. >> >> -David >> ******************************************************************* >> "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a." >> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." >> >> -Jim Morrison >> >> http://dedalvs.free.fr/ >> >> On Dec 26, 2008, at 6∞12 PM, Vincent Pistelli wrote: >> >>  I want to make a language that has just the bare minimum of phonemes, >>> preferably ones that anything with vocal cords can pronounce.  I was >>> thinking just bilabial stops with a bunch of tones to make up for major >>> lack >>> of phonemes, but that would require a really good ear. Do any of you know >>> any other phonemes that could theoretically be pronounced by anything with >>> a >>> mouth, vocal cords, and a capacity speak and understand language? >>> >> >