Re: Tonal inflection?

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:15:48 -0400, Dana Nutter <deinx.nxtxr@...> wrote:

>Now for consonants.  I could have maybe four articulations points:
>labial, alveolar, velar, and uvular.  Each will have a stops,
>fricatives, implosives, clicks.   Then figure in voicing, aspiration
>and palatization just for a start.   Given enough options, I could
>pack a lot into a syllable.
In that framework the possibilities that I'd find problematic are

* clicks.  Copy-pasting from a recent off-list conversation:

  The thing about clicks is that, in I think every language that
  has them except for a few Bantu ones where they're borrowed, they vary
  along two dimensions, point of articulation at the front and what sort
  of release is going on at the back.  To take an extreme example, !Xoo
  allows each of labial, dental, lateral, alveolar, and palatal clicks
  coarticulated with each of [k_h k k?) g kx) N_0 N_0_<_h N ?N) q q_>
  G\] and clusters [gk_h gkx) k_>q_> gq_> G\x].

(well, Damin's another exception, but then it might as well be a conlang.)

So you could have labial and alveolar clicks (i.e. click releases in the
front), and velar and uvular click accompaniments (i.e. coarticulations in
the back), but not all of these of a single kind.  You'd be better off, I
think, conceiving of clicks as (as many as) four extra POAs (or more?),
namely labial+velar, labial+uvular, alveolar+velar, alveolar+uvular.

* aspiration.  Aspiration's really rare on things that aren't stops.
Occasionally one finds aspirated fricatives, but I've never heard of
aspirated implosives, and on resonants I've never seen aspiration and
devoicing contrasted -- more often they're regarded as two descriptions of
the same thing.  For that matter, the orthogonality suggests you mean to
have voiced aspirates; Indic terminology aside, these are better thought of
as breathy voiced consonants (though of course nothing's stopping you from
having them).

On the other hand, neither voiceless approximants or voiceless nasals give
me any difficulty.

Incidentally, which of these features do you mean to be allowed in stems?
They can't _all_ have purely morphological function (can they?)

Alex

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