Re: Why Consonants?

On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 07:46:12PM -0500, Alex Fink wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:27:14 -0800, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 09:56:56AM +1100, T. A. McLeay wrote:
> >> With a vowel, you have to more carefully position your tongue lest
> >> you say /e/ instead of /ɪ/ or whatever close pair your language
> >> has. Also, a stream of vowels with a few consonants added in is a
> >> lot more comfortable to say that a stream of consonants with a few
> >> vowels...  try saying a sentence-worth of words like [ptps@k@n] :)
> >
> >Try telling that to, e.g., a Czech speaker... ;-)
>
> Hah, never mind a speaker of Berber (/tftktstt/ 'you sprained it'), or
> Salishan (/xKp_>X_wKtK)pKKs/ 'he had had in his possession a
> bunchberry plant').
Whoa, that's ... incredible.

(Heh, and *I* was the one who wanted to make a conlang with only
consonants... Guess I haven't realized the full import of that yet!)


> I can't think of any natlang that goes to these lengths with all-vowel
> words longer than about four or five.  So is the situation reversed at
> the extremes?
Classical Greek has some pretty long vowel sequences, although they are
rare. I can't think of an example off my head, though. Maybe Ray Brown
can give an actual example. They are basically multiple diphthongs
coming together.


[...]
> >> This came up on the list some time ago, and someone observed that
> >> the opposite is true for Spanish: Vowels are (apparently)
> >> pronounced quite consistently between dialects, which are
> >> distinguished largely on the basis of consonants (pronounciation of
> >> frex ll, j, z, -s).
> >[...]
> >
> >Interesting, I didn't know this before. I wonder what causes some
> >languages to change vowels faster than consonants, or vice versa.
>
> I'd imagine that has something to do with the fact that Spanish has a
> nice stable cross-linguistically favored five vowel system, whereas
> the English system has crammed in entirely too many vowels for its own
> good.
[...]

But if that is the case, then why has it not simplified over time toward
a more "stable" vowel system? Instead, what we see is that it's going
all over the map, with different regional dialects diverging in
different ways. Or perhaps it's just in the middle of sorting things
out.


T

--
People tell me I'm stubborn, but I refuse to accept it!

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