Re: Kyrgyz was Re: Zetowvu / Ezotwuv (new conlang)

En réponse à Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>:

> Emaelivpar Peter Clark:
> >From what I can make of it, Kyrgyz has the following vowels:
> >
> >i y  1   u
> > e 2    o
> >  E
> >   &
> >    a
>
> Wow, that's really front-heavy.  Is that as unusal in natlangs as it
> seems,
> or does it actually happen quite often?
Well, here's the oral vowel inventory of my French idiolect (which is no
different actually from the dialect spoken by most people in the region of
Rouen):

i y      u
 e 2    o
  E 9

    a

And the nasal inventory:

E~ 9~    O~

   a~

As you see, it's largely as front-heavy as Peter's system and yet perfectly
natural and stable (actually, it used to have a third back vowel: /A/, but lost
it, and thus became even more front-heavy than it used to be).

  What driving forces are there
> that
> affect a language's vowel distribution, in either the imbalanaced or
> symmetric direction?
>
The actual mouth geometry is an important driving force in a vowel
distribution. Basically, there's much more place in the front than in the back
to articulate vowels, and thus languages tend to have as many or more front
vowels than back vowels, but only rarely more back vowels than front vowels.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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