Re: A phonology

Staving Thomas Wier:
>Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:
>
> > Here's a phonology I thought up in connection with my state-based language
> > idea (the one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which has only one part of
> > speech and one syntactical rule).
>
>[...]
>
> > Possible onset consonants consist of the nasals
> > m       n       ng
> > [m]     [n]     [N]
> > and the approximants
> > w       r       l       y       ll
> > [w]     [4]     [l]     [j]     [5]
> >
> > Vowels
> >
> > Vowels are
> > i       a       u
> > [i]     [&]     [u]
>
>Why [&] as the basic phone of /a/?  It's possible, but far more
>common would be to have basic [a] or [A] with conditioned alternation
>with [&].
I like [&]!

> > Coda consonants be any of the following stops
> > p       b       t       d       c       gc      k       g       q       qh
> > [p]     [b]     [t]     [d]     [c]     [J\]    [k]     [g]     [q]
> > Or any of the fricatives
> > ph      bh      þ       ð       sh      j       lh      x       gh      h
> > [p\]    [b\]    [T]     [D]     [S]     [Z]     [K]     [x]     [G]     [h]
>
>This is a very unnatural phonology.  Typically, any consonant
>phoneme in a natural language will surface in word/syllable-initial
>position (with a few exceptions, like /N/ in English), but only a
>subset of these phonemes will surface word/syllable-finally.
>What you have here is the inverse of that, almost -- save that
>nasals and approximates, strangely, do not surface at all as
>codas, precisely where you would expect them to do so.  My question
>is:  what is motivating all this?
>
>(Of course, you may want it that way.  Certainly, your proposal
>for morphosyntax is almost certainly without precedent, also.)
The single part of speech grammar that I came up with was so weird, that
the idea begged for a similarly weird phonology and morphology to go with
it. This seems to be developing into my "language of ultimate perversity"
project, with the emerging design goal being "how many universals can I
throw out of the window and get away with it?" Certainly, If I've managed
to defy anadewism, that's a major achievement for a early sketch.

Pete

(PS, I see from Richard Kennaway's site that Degaspregos is withdrawn. Why?)

Replies