Re: Underused phonemes

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 07:13:38 -0500, John Vertical
<johnvertical@...> wrote:

>> It occurred to me yesterday that I don't know of any conlangs that have
>> [W] as a phoneme. I was wondering what other sounds people might think
>> worthy of more exposure.
>>
>> Pete
>
> As far as POAs are concerned, I haven't seen much linguolabials or
> epiglottals around. The same goes for the few natlang-unattested POAs
> from the extIPA (dentolabials, labioalveolars, bidentals) but that
> doesn't really surprize me. (I recall seeing 1 conlang with some
> bidentals, which is probably statistically enuff.)
> And I lately thought about the possibility of an extended velopharyngeal
> POA. After learning what it *is* in the first place (articulated between
> the velum and the pharyngeal wall - ie. "half-nasal"), I was able to
> produce a fricative, a tap and a trill with pretty minimal practice.
> Obviously this POA doesn't have stops, but anti-stops (= nasalization)
> instead.
>
> Other extIPA stuff I'd like to see sometimes are consonant difthongs and
> nareal fricatives.
>
> As far as "more normal" stuff goes, ATR/RTR, breathy/creaky/lax/etc.
> phonation, apical/laminal distinctions, pharyngealization, widespread
> palatalization/velarization (a la Russian / Scottic Gaelic),
> co-articulation and prenasalization all seem to some extent
> underrepresented. I don't think I've either seen anyone use flaps or
> taps besides /4/ - surprizingly not even /l\/, let alone other POAs.
A good selection of examples.

One other set of sounds that I think are reasonably unique are
prelateralized stops. I have tried to slip /ld)/ into a project or two,
and once /L\g)/, but as far as I know the whole range are possible for any
POA that it's possible to have a lateral approximant at (i.e. /Lc)/ and so
forth). The trick, as with prenasalized stops, is to make the cluster fast
enough to take up one consonant "beat" instead of the two taken up by
straight sequences like /ld/.

I looked into it very briefly, and could not find them attested in any
natlangs, but I'm far from ruling it out. I have a vague feeling they
occur in Native American languages.

I also *tried* to faithfully produce prerhoticized stops, but the closest
I could get was /r\4)/. A pleasing enough sound, but not the /r\d)/ I was
trying for.




Paul