Re: Phonotactics of Velian I, or: Phonology of Velian II: The Wrath of John Vertical ;-)

In the last episode, (On Friday 06 July 2007 08:32:17), John Vertical wrote:

>
> Sure. A cluster analysis could fit better with initial preconsonantal
> nasals being phonetically syllabic however. (But phone_m_ically, ie when it
> comes to stress patterns etc, treating them as non-syllabic should be OK.)
I wondered about that - so you're saying it would be phonologically realistic
to have syllabic nasals initially, and consonantal elsewhere? My worry about
syllabics within the word is that it then makes it more complicated to
analyse the syllable - why, for example, would /am/ be acceptable, and /aim/,
but not /aui/ (three vocalic phonemes, in one syllable)?

I always thought that Bantu languages had syllabic nasals, but Wikipedia
always seems to nasal + plosive as instances of prenasalisation.

If I relaxed a bit on the one-consonant-at-the-endpoints issue, I suppose I
could also have words like "thakki" and "rapikh", and simultaneously avoid
the issue of whether and how to include aspirates in clusters (such as thk)
and how to represent aspirated plosive + consonant (e.g. /t_ww/ "patwwa"?
Eurgh!)

>
> BTW, on the subject of "sounding like Finnish but somehow not" one good
> solution might be to only allow coronals or homorganic nasals as the
> initial member of a cluster, EXCEPT for a few oddballs; Finnish has /ps ks/
> here, but you could have a different selection. Rechecking your phonology,
> /v\ L/ could be used for Hungarian-ish flavor; or some subset of /c k q ?/
> for appearing more exotic...
Sounds cool.
>
> >> 2) Completely lacking palatalized/labialized aspirates in a system this
> >> big is odd.
> >
> >I think that's one I'll leave!
>
> Well, that's a small pet peeve of mine. Aspiration is a *phonation*, not a
> POA adjustment; it should come orthogonal to those, not perpendicular.
> That's not really different from having a system of /p pj pw t tj tw k kj
> kw b d g/...
Sorry to bring your pet peeve up!
>
> However, you also mentioned taking inspiration from Bantu - and I think
> Swahili is an ANADEWism for exactly this, having aspiration only appearing
> as a marker of one of the noun classes, so it's not unacceptable. :)
;-)
>
> >I haven't yet worked out what happens with palatalised and labialised
> >consonants, but I suspect that palatalised consonants are default before
> >front, unrounded vowels, that labialised consonants are default before
> > back unrounded vowels, and that both contrast with plain consonants
> > before front rounded vowels. Or I could "go the Hungarian route" and have
> > plain, palatalised, and labialised consonants regardless of position
> > before vowels.
> >
> >Jeff
>
> Here is another interesting choice:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_language#Phonology
> Cw Cj before front vowels, Cw C Cj before /a/, and Cw only before back
> vowels... Front rounded might fit into this by having phonetically
> labiopalatalized consonants as a neutralization of the labialized /
> palatalized distinction.
>
> BTW, you do realize you could only allow aspirates before a small subset of
> the vowels, if you wanted to do something like this? Mwa ha ha haaa!*
Or even "Mbwa hya hya hya"! ;-)
>
Jeff

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