Re: OT: What makes a good conlang? (was Re: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT)
From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
Date: | Thursday, March 11, 2004, 19:17 |
On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 07:38:48PM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
> This has been an extremely interesting thread, though for various reasons I
> haven't put in my 2cents..... Anyhow, with ref. to Ebisedi----
>
> Teoh wrote:
[...]
> > Well, Ebisédian's system seems in retrospect obviously contrived:
> > G x N g k k_h
> > D T n d t t_h
> > Z S dZ tS tS_h
> > z s l r`
> > B P m b p p_h
> >
> > And also:
> > h H w
> >
> > plus other "smooth" onsets (I'm still unsure how to represent these in
> > IPA).
>
> OK-- the point of this reply. Your Sound system looks odd only in the way
> it is presented. If you put it into the more conventional format, it
> becomes quite ...._usual_---
>
> p t tS k (or p t c k )
> ph th tSh kh (ph th ch kh)
> b d dZ g (b d j g)
> m n N
> P T S x
> B D Z G
> w l r
> s h
> z H
OK, sure. :-)
> probably the only real oddity, in typological terms, is the lack of a
> palatal glide [j]; also I'm not sure what "H" represents, but from a later
> comment, I gather it's a voiced counterpart of /h/...........
I'm not sure if I'm using the right symbol for it, but it's the
labiopalatal approximant. Also, I should add that [j] indeed exists; I
missed it 'cos it only occurs as [ji], and [ji] is considered to be in the
same class as [Hy], [wu], and other "smooth" onsets.
> and I'm not sure where to put the "onsets" either-- isn't there a contrast
> in initial position between [?] and [smooth i.e. 0?]
Well, they get variously realized, e.g., smooth i is [ji], smooth u is
[wu], etc.. For open vowels, I'm not sure of the exact IPA representation;
I was under the impression smooth a was something like [a_^a], but it
might be some kind of uvular approximant (or something like that). Or
perhaps the velar approximant [M\].
T
--
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? -- Abraham Lincoln