Re: OT: What makes a good conlang? (was Re: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT)

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

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