Re: Thagojian sample text

>Would it be too much of a stretch to go in the direction of using
>{k'}, {t'} and {p'} instead of {ky}, {ty} and {py}?
It depends on how much you dislike apostrophes and how much you like
Slavicisms.  There is plenty of precedent for using an apostrophe to
indicate a palatalized consonant.  If you feel that you really need to free
up the <y> character for other uses, the apostrophe might be a good
idea.  The other argument in favor of the apostrophe over Cy sequence, is
that C + apostrophe, unlike Cy, cannot be confused with a C + [y] sequence
(as opposed to a true palatalized consonant.)  C' generally indicates
either an ejective consonant or a palatalized one.

>Also, it strikes me that a disproportionately large fraction of the
>lexicon that I've been deriving has used "front" harmony (vowels {i e
>é ï ë a}), as opposed to "back" harmony (vowels {u o ó ï ë a}). I was
>hoping to make it about a 50-50 split, but it's turning out more like
>70-30 or even 80-20. I'm dissatisfied with that.
The only advice I can give is that you'll have to work harder when you
create vocabulary.  I have a language that has been through an historical,
but no longer truly productive, vowel harmonization process where *i and *e
harmonized with each other as did *u and *o.  The process left the language
with a lot of words with identical vowel pairs (or trios) in them.  But you
will notice that *a wasn't involved in the harmonization rule.  Therefore,
as I create vocabulary, I need to keep down the proportion of words with
/a/'s in adjacent syllables because, unlike with the other four vowels, no
additional words of this form were created by phonological processes; all
the /a/ pairs had to come from the protolanguage.  (Of course, if I derive
from the proto-language, I will have much less chance of getting a
disproportionate number of paired /a/'s.) The other thing that I noticed
just the other day is that I have had a tendency towards prefering /e/
pairs over other vowels.  I am just  going to have to watch myself very
carefully and balance out the harmonized vowel sets in the right
proportions.  I think that it is just a matter of thinking very carefully
as you create vocab.  But if they do end up disproportionate, that's
probably ok, too, because some natural languages have a tendedcy to prefer
certain sounds over certain other sounds.

Isidora