Re: A BrSc a?

At 4:26 pm +0000 26/4/02, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Ray wrote:
[snip]
>>
>>While the CV pattern may be IAL-friendly (and all incarnations of BrSc have
>>had this pattern), I am not persuaded that all the consonants and the
>>'unwritten' vowel would be 'IAL-friendly' - What will you do with the usual
>>'rogues' {c}, {q} and {x}?  One person on this list has argued strongly in
>>the past that the glottal stop is not "IAL-friendly".
>
>How universal does a sound have to be to be considered "IAL-friendly".
That's a matter I & others have discussed many, many times in the past on
this list and others.  There is no single definitive set of sounds that
everyone will agree with.  Most will accept the five cardinal vowels, the
consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /m/, /n/ and /l/ which would emcompass  the
Japanese /r/, but not trilled /r/ or the uvular varieties; most (but not
all!) would reject clicks, ejectives, front rounded vowels, back unrounded
vowels, diphthongs like [uj] and [iw] etc.

But when it comes to /b/, /d/, /g/ in opposition to the voiceless plosives,
other fricatives besides /s/, and affricates there is much diagreement.  In
the end its a personal decision (and I don't want to enter into yet another
inconclusive discussion on 'the most IAL-friendly phoneme set').

In practice, languages like English, French and Arabic are widely used as
IALs despite their containing "non-IAL-friendly" sounds.

>A
>good majority of all languages I know something about (a quite small
>percentage of the total, of course) has some sort of "ishoid" sound like [S
>s` C c\] - frequently several of them. And as you pointed out yourself some
>days ago, [x] isn't exactly uncommon either, esp'ly if you include [G X] etc
>as valid variants. That'd solve {c} and {x}. Possibly [N] for {q}?
The trouble with [G] is that it tends to become zero, or [j] before front
vowels.  Many people, including myself, really do find it difficult to
pronounce [N] as a syllabic initial; I count it as non-IAL-friendly in this
position.

But thanks for the thoughts, anyway.

Ray.



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