Re: Yes, another sketch for a new conlang! [very very long!]

        Wow! What a long and instructive mail! Well, I'll try to answer as good as
possible :) .

At 09:14 13/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Christophe:
>
>I tried to find out what consonants and clusters are allowed in the
>beginning of a sentence (and therefore, of an isolated word).
>
>To make the references to your rules easier, I marked them with numbers as
>follows:
>
>#0 (the list of deep phonemes):
>>V: a /a/, e /e/, o /o/
>>L: n /n/, l /l/, r /r/, i /j/, u /w/ all voiced
>>C: p /p/, t /t/, c /k/, ' /?/ stops (t is alveolar) all unvoiced
>>   f /P/, s /s/, x /x/, h /h/ corresponding fricatives all unvoiced
>-- NB: absence of /m/
>
        Yes, it's an allophone of /n/. As said Rob, the unvoiced consonnants
should be voiceless.

>>             kj -> [kC] xj -> [C]
        A typo here: kj is [k_C], an affricate, not a consonnant cluster. [C] is a
voiceless palatal fricative (c-cedilla in IPA).

>#5' >QUESTION: What are the PoA of the vowels a, e and o? I need them to
>>know how to pronounce the n. Can I say for instance that o is labial, e
>>alvolar and a velar, or something else?
>
        I have to ask it again, nobody answered. Does anyone know what are the PoA
of the vowels a, e and o?

>#6 >CV# -> C# (V disappears) except if CV#C (next word begins by a
>>consonnant).
>-- The alternative can be only CV#L or CV#L_O (which emerge from #4a, #4b).
>>As it follows from #9, L_O are not considered C here.
>
        There is also CV#V, as the glottal stop can disappear. The rules were not
ordered at all unfortunately, because I still was not sure of their right
order. Indeed, L, L_O are never considered consonnants, even if they have a
consonnantal behaviour.

>- - - - - - - - - - -
>
>Indeed, I have some questions about the rules (actually I should probably
>wait for your answers before proceeding, but I was not that patient...):
>
>#0': What about CLVL? CiL and CuL (with syllabic i, u)?
        I wanted to keep a parallel between V and L. If I had accepted things like
CLVL, I would have had to have also syllables like CVVV, which I didn't
want. CiL and CuL with syllabic i and u are not possible simply because I
don't want them to have a different behaviour from the other L's, and I
just cannot see how to pronounce Cl=l differently from Cl=. So I just said
that CLL= was possible, and not CL=L, whatever L may be.

>#2: Does this also apply to iC, uC?
        Yes, all liquids have the same voicing effect. That's why I didn't put the
syllabic versions of i and u [i, u] with the vowels, which have no voicing
effect.

>#3: Same question about Ci, Cu (with syllabic i, u).
        Same answer, yes.

>#4c, #5: Did you mean something like pm-, tn-, kng-?
        Yes. Anyway, a "p" with a real nasal release is p_m in my opinion. p_n
looks more like a cluster pn.

>#4e: What are the voiced (by #3') correspondences of kC and C? (I guess
>C stands for some palatal srirant here)
>
        Yep. The voiced version of k_C is g_J, and the voiced version of C is J
(voiced palatal fricative). I'm not sure if the convention I use is used in
any ASCII-IPA I know, but it seems best for me.

>- - - - - - - - - -
>
>Now, what happens to initial consonants.
>
>#0: It seems that all deep obstruents may stay intact on the surface level:
>p, t, c, ', f, s, x, h
>
        Yes. They can all stay after a pause (it's also the only place where an
initial ' is pronounced).

>#4a adds n, l, r, j, w.
>
        Yes.

>#4b adds unvoiced hn, hl, hr, hj (different from C in #4e?), hw.
>
        They are still considered liquids, like L, not consonnants.

>#4c (and #5): p_n, t_n, k_n, f_n, s_n, x_n
>
        Indeed.

>#4e: p_j, t_S, kC, f_j, S, C.
>
        Sorry for that typo, it's k_C.

>#4f: p_w, t_w, k_w, f_w, s_w, x_w.
>
        Yep.

>#5' + #7': It seems that these rules add new nasals which I cannot account
>for. I guess /m/ (not in a cluster) first appears here.
>
        Yes indeed. I think that it would be one of the last rules that change the
deep level to the surface level. Maybe even the last one.

>#6 and #8-9 (if applied *after* #4a-f) yield, in theory, combinations of all
>new obstruents with all deep liquids. The results are far from obvious for
>C_w/C_j + w/j, C_n/C_l/Cr + l/n/r (with n already "colored" by #5/5'?).
>Further treatment of these may produce a set of totally new phonemes and
>fill in the gaps in the system of sentence-initial phonemes and clusters
>(i. e., add palatalised/labialized counterparts of C_n, C_l, L_O, Cr).
>
        They would all apply *before* #4a-f. As I told you, the order I gave is
not the actual order between the different rules. I just didn't know how to
order them exactly. Now, with your help, it gets clearer and clearer.

>#3/3' produces voiced counterparts for all obstruents, but they appear only
>before L=.
>
        And after L and L= too.

>- - - - - - - - - - -
>
>Remarks:
>
>1. Voiced obstruents appear only in combinations with L(=) and are not
>opposed to voiceless ones, unless some additional rules are involved like
>e. g.:
>
>##'n=C -> ##C_v (sentence-initial voiced)
>L(=)'VC -> L(=)C (with voiceless obstruent preserved)
>
        That was my will to have voiced obstruents only as allophones of voiceless
ones. In the phonemic level, there is only one series of obstruents (just
like in Hawaian for instance).

>2. kC (#4e) seems to remain the only permitted sentence-initial cluster of
>two obstruents.
>
        You are mistaken, but it's my fault. I'll try not to make the typo again
:( . kC is supposed to be k_C, affricate and not cluster (k is thus more
advanced than when it's not as the first part of the affricate, just as t
alone is alveolar whereas t_S has a post-alveolar attack in t).

>3. The cycle in #12 is dangerous, as any cyclic rule. For example, #6+#8+#4,
>if applied cyclically, can produce unpronounceable clusters, while
        Here again, it's a problem coming from the fact that I was unable to
explain correctly what I meant. When I said that the rules have to apply
cyclically, it was only as long as there were deep level phonemes still
able to be changed in the surface level. In fact, by putting the rules that
destroy the word frontiers before the rules of actual sound changes, I
think I can abandon this idea of cycle, which came only from the fact that
I couldn't order the rules correctly.

>#5/5'+#7'+#5/5' may make the distribution of nasals wholly complementary. So
>I guess some restrictions or additional operations were meant here.
>
        I want to have only one phonemic nasal with a lot of phonetic
realisations. So it's normal that all the nasals be in complementary
distribution, unless you mean it in another sense than me. And of course, I
forgot a few restrictions. But I never meant to be exhaustive. This
language is still in its first step of birth, so I still have work to do to
order my ideas. That's why I put it there on the list, to be helped for
that, as you did :) .

>- - - - - - - - - - -
>
>Comments?
>
        Thank you very much for all those comments and questions. They helped me a
lot to order my ideas. That's what I needed. My next mail about that
language will be much more mature (I'm talking about the language, not me
:) ) I think. I will add also things about the tones. Thanks a lot!

>Best,
>Basilius
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org