Re: Hiksilipsi Consonant Phonology

Jesse Bangs wrote:
>Hiksilipsi contains three grades of phonemes: a radical grade, a y-grade,
>and a w-grade.  The y- and w- grade phonemes are formed by adding a y [j]
>or w [w] glide to the radical phonemes....
Interesting.  I played around with a system like that once.  What about the
vowels?  will they also have three grades?

My version had only 2 vowels, high/low, central i.e. /@ a/, with allophones
e.g.
    /p@/ [p@],    /py@/ [pi],  /pw@/ [pu]
    /pa/ [pa],  /pya/ [pe],  /pwa/ [po]
One could get quite baroque if one were so inclined.......

>There are a couple of odd things about this system....There are the
clusters [?j] and [?w], which I've never seen in a real language.

IIRC there's an article by Sapir (in his Collected Writings, ??) on a Native
American lang. with [?j], in fact I think it patterned with the ejective
system.  I also recall a single word (in the very complete dictionary) in
Sa'dan Toraja (South Celebes, Indonesia) with medial -?j- cluster, totally
anomalous for that language.


>Do these things seem reasonable to everyone?  Or is it hopelessly weird?
My though for the day:  Reasonableness in a language is abomination.  Very
little is weird.