Re: Another weird idea!

I thought of something very similar the other day, actually. Since vowels
are usually bound to be much sparser than consonants, I decided to go for a
primarily 3-way split instead, with a slightly symbolic side. These 4
metaphonemes were among the first to turn up:
[?]<>[h]<>[@] ("neutral")
[d]<>[m]<>[a] ("soft")
[t]<>[s]<>[i] ("sharp")
[p]<>[l]<>[o] ("round")
They also refer to the numbers 0,1,2 and pi, ;) among other more abstract
things.

Morphemes would need have a base form: with the structure 20pipi0, you could
have eg. /tholh/ [t_hOK], /thol?/ [t_ho5k], /s@po?/ [s8'b8k] etc. But say
that the last one is a verb stem, and you want to use it as a consonant
stem: just re-arrange it to /s@pl@/ [s8'bl8].
You might even have /s@pl@/ exist as a verb stem, too; only *that* one is
realized as [s9'plE:].

Further chaos is easily added by very active as- and dissimilation. Say we
have the words 021, 1pi1, 222 (/@ti ala tsi/ [Eti &la tsi:]) and if you add
a suffix -01, they become [@tite apeti si:ki] (Note that since /tsi/ belongs
to declension class 6, the [-ti] suffix assimilates its vowel, dissimilates
its plosive, exagerrates the preceding vowel, and lenites the preceding
plosive, rather than the opposite, as usual.)

This thing is looking like a very promising mess so far. :)

Joihn Vertical

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