Re: language of the Mandai: phonology

At 04:50 PM 8/13/2002, you wrote:
>Quoting Tom Little <tom@...>:
>
> > VOWELS
> >
> > The vowels are a /A/, i /i/, e /V/, o /o/, ù /U/, and u /u/. The vowel /A/
> > forms both rising and falling diphthongs with both /i/ and /u/: ai, au, ia,
> > ua. In the early language, /A/ followed by any nasal consonant at the end
> > of a word came to be pronounced /A~/, which speakers hear as /An/.
>
>This is a somewhat unusual inventory -- it has a tense/lax distinction
>in back high vowels, but none in front vowels, and has a back mid vowel
>with no front counterpart (if I understand correctly that /V/ represents
>a central vowel).  Any particular reason for this asymmetry?
I suppose in perfect honesty it's just an esthetic choice. The "official"
rationale is that in my world, the physiological variations between
different peoples are much greater than in our own. The Mandai find it
difficult to achieve a great deal of precision in articulating front
vowels, so these are collapsed into really just one phoneme, /i/. My other
language, Iltârer, has a compelementary deficit - there are no back vowels
(and no velar consonants besides).



> > Stress usually, though
> > not always, depends on the vowel, a receiving the strongest stress,
> > followed by u, i, o and ù, with e receiving the weakest stress.
>
>What about the placement of stress?
I probably didn't express myself well. The relative "weights" of the
different vowels effectively determine the placement of stress...

m'arsel
mors'al
m'iregj''usol

etc.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Little                      tom@telp.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Telperion Productions           www.telp.com
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