Re: Polysynth Question

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 02:41:52 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
wrote:

>Hi!
>
>Jeffrey Jones writes:
>> Has anyone done a polysynthetic lang with a small phoneme inventory? I'd
>> like to see what you've done.
>
>I've got one in the pipeline, but not much yet.  It's going to be
>oligosynthetic with a phoneme inventory similar to Nahuatl, but
>simplified.  It's not exactly a minimal phoneme inventory, but it
>qualifies as 'small':
>
>Consonants:
>   CXS    Orth
>   p      p
>   t      t
>   k      c, qu
>   ts)    tz
>   tS)    ch
>   tK)    tl
>   s      s, c
>   S      x
>   l      l
>   n      n
>   m      m
>   j      y
>   w      u, hu
>
>Vowels:
>   a
>   i
>   o
Yes that qualifies. And it looks like Nahuatl.

>Example words would look something like:
>
>   finger      ts)almitK)ikwinowan      tzalmitlicuinohuan
>   predator    katK)ats)isokwatK)in     catlatzizocuatlin
>   east        ts)inapiSiwasan          tzinapixihuazan
>
>Sorry, no grammar yet.
>
>Do you have any special aspects in mind by which you wanted to have a
>look at a conlang of this kind?
>
>**Henrik
Aspects (special or not), mood, tense, personal agreement, including
adjectival and adverbial uses -- and how they interact with the phonology.

Jeff