Re: oh no, not Tech phonology again

>From: Kenji Schwarz <schwarz@...>
>This is very nice work, but I have to say I'm a little concerned by the
>obvious inadequacy of this phonemic inventory!  Quite frankly, I can't see
>how you expect to construct a sufficient stock of words with this woefully
>simple set of sounds.  I heartily encourage you to add, say, tonality --
>perhaps a combination of level and contoured tones across your basic
>five register of pitch.  This could expand your vowel palette by ten to
>fifty-odd times (depending on how robust you want to make it), and at
>least allow a _minimal_ amount of variety in Tech sounds.  Otherwise, it's
>just not very realistic-feeling.
>
>
>Concerned,
>
>(and both joking and awed, of course)
Ha, I was confused for a minute there.  Seriously, I came up with this large
phonology because I'm taking a protolanguage which itself has more than a
few consonants, and mixed it with Celtic mutation, German umlaut, you name
it.  The result was obvious overkill.

Believe it or not, I didn't just throw everything in the IPA book out;
there's a regular system of how it all worked out:

Stop/affricate in three classes: plain aspirate ejective/glottalized.
Fortition (voiceless) and lenition (usually voiced, but it varies depending
on factors), then spirantization and nasalization added.  Pretty much the
same four mutation types as in Welsh, actually.  Soft/neutral/hard (or
palatal/neutral/labiovelarized) result from vowels in proto-language, but
vowels change in sundry ways to indicate various grammatical stuff, like IE
ablaut and Arabic "broken plurals" and "verb classes".  Three becomes six
becomes twelve becomes thirty-six *per articulatory location*.

Everything fell apart from then on.

Danny
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