Re: Critique sought

Bryan Maloney wrote:
>
> I've put up some notes towards a conlang at
> http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/bjm10/Gloling/praxname.html
>
> I confess that it's not 100% original--it's based on the Glorantha
> setting.  Thus, I am somewhat constrained.  If I want to remain "true" to
> the "source" material, there is very little I can subtract.  A few things
> in particular bother me:
>
> The vowel structure seems lopsided.  Any suggestions on how to fix it?
> I think that I've made a goof in adding a labiodental nasal--the "source
> material", since it was written by a Californian game designer with zero
> linguistic background, uses a vary English implicit phonology (from what
> I've been able to gather).  Would a language be likely to differentiate
> between a bilabial and a labiodental nasal?
        About the vowel system, yes thr front place seems a little crowded, but
often languages have more front vowels than back vowels (think of
French, which has the rounded and unrounded versions of all front vowels
except /a/ - /i/ and /y/, /e/ and /2/, /E/ and /9/ - whereas it has only
the rounded versions of the back vowels - /u/, /o/ and /o/ -) so it is
not that unlikely. Moreoever, this language seems to be very fronting in
both his inventory of vowels and consonnants (only for back consonnants
compared to 15 front consonnants - I consider /j/ as central - and only
two back vowels compared to 5 front vowels) so even if exceptional
enough, it is quite self-consistent. Maybe simply adding /u/ to finish
the triangle of vowels (and maybe also /V/ to have more ground to the
tense/lax distinction). As for the consonnants, I think it is difficult
enough to differentiate between the labial and labiovelar nasals, but
not impossible, but I agree with I don't remember who said that that
maybe another more common nasal could be put in the inventory to make it
more likely (I vote for /N/). Again, the fact that the inventory of
sounds seems very fronting is in favor of the existence of this
labiodental nasal (but it's a weak argument).

> The "terminal glottal stop goes away sometimes" rule doesn't quite work
> for me--is it nonsensical?  (All the "combinatorial" rules are my own
> design).
>
        Maybe the rule should be more: "the glottal stop appears sometimes", or
maybe it's an allophone of /h/ and with both you could find a sensible
rule of disappearance.

> Anyway, I'd welcome the critique.  I've got more material, but this is
> all I have on the Web.
>
> Thanks.
--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
        5656 AA Eindhoven
        The Netherlands

        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com