Re: Too Many Too Little Possible Roots!!!

Kristian Jensen wrote:
> It seems to me that if a conlanger wants to create a naturalistic
> conlang, s/he should be careful not to create a phonology and/or
> root structure that's complicated.
Well, there are some languages with over 100 phonemes.  !Xu~ (IIRC) has
92 *consonants*, and a bunch of vowels, the record for consonants.  So,
it's hard to think of a conlang that could have *more* than that (altho,
IIRC, some of the phonemes are only used in inflections and/or
mutations)

> Basically, a
> language would strive to obtain/maintain an ideal number of possible
> roots. If such is the case, is there a recommended maximum/minimum
> to the number of possible roots such a conlang should have?
I don't know, but it would probably have a large variation.  Syllables
are definitely a huge variable, anywhere from 162 in Hawaiian (which
therefore has lots of 2- and 3-syllable roots) to tens of thousands in
others.

> But say Chinese developed into a language with polysyllables, then
> the tonal contrasts would not be necessary. In fact, Mandarin
> Chinese with only four contrastive tones has quite a few
> polysyllabic roots.
IINM, Mandarin *is* becoming polysyllabic, due to formerly independent
words being added together.  Many chinese languages use compounds of
synonyms or near-synonyms to clarify which meaning is intended, as in
the Chinese pidgin look-see (since borrowed by mainstream English).
Counters also help to disambiguate meanings.

> Vietnamese is now with more certainty considered a Mon-Khmer
> language. Mon-Khmer languages are non-tonal and polysyllabic. How
> then did Vietnamese become tonal and monosyllabic? Basically, under
> the influence of China (and perhaps Tai) it become monosyllabic and
> tones would have to arise to compensate for contrastive
> polysyllabicity.
Actually, I think it's more that it acquired tones under the influence
of Chinese, they may have used other methods of distinguishing
homophones, such as compounds.

> Well... ever wondered why English roots are predominantly
> monosyllabic? I'd reckon that its because of the extrememly complex
> syllable structure.
I'd say it's the other way around.  English lost sounds (especially
schwas), creating a more complex syllable-structure.  For instance, the
past tense marker was once always /@d/, thus one would say /hElp@d/, but
later that schwa was lost, creating /hElpt/, when two-stop codas became
permissible (actually, for a while both /@d/ and //d// were used, hence
variations like helped/help'd)

> If English were to developed a much more
> simplified syllable structure, then many things could happen; tones
> could develop, or the language becomes more polysyllabic, or new
> phonological segments would develop.
In one of my ideas for Yordian English (Yord is the planet where W. is
spoken, I've been trying to figure out a reasonable set of phonological
changes to English to allow for borrowings, without just taking it from
"pre-Exodus English"), the combination "sC" became voiceless
(unaspirated) consonants.  Thus, "stop" would become "'top", pronounced
/tap/ as opposed to "top", /t_hap/ (I'm undecided on vowel shifts, so
I'm using my vowels), and "slow" would be 'low (/l_ho/), as opposed to
low (/lo/).  Another change I've thought of is to phonemicize the length
contrast of English in words like [b&:d]/[b&t] by devoicing word-final
stops while retaining length, thus /b&:t/, /b&t/.  One change that was
definite is /hj/ --> /C/ (palatal fricative), hence borrowings like
"syu^man" ([Sju.m6~n] < [Cu.m@n]), or maybe that should be "syu^n"
([Sjo~n] < [Cum], with loss of [@n])?  (/m/ isn't allowed in
syllable-final position, thus /m/ --> /n/).

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