How to design a non-European phonology

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ObsequiousNewt
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by ObsequiousNewt »

kanejam wrote:
ObsequiousNewt wrote:A vowel POA is a unique comination of frontness and height. You have ten POAs (or 13 if roundedness counts, which I think it doesn't), seven of which are phonemic: a, ɛ/œ, ɔ, e/ø, o, i/y, u, ɪ, ɵ, ɐ.
Hmmm, the last three aren't phonemic though, so maybe I need to add some extra vowels. Maybe ɪ ʊ ɐ are all phonemic vowels now and change the unstressed vowels: front vowels reduce to ɘ, back vowels reduce to ɵ and high vowels reduce to ə.
I don't know if it's necessary; the question doesn't say "9 or more phonemic vowel POAs", and I'm not sure whether roundedness counts.


Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by kanejam »

Well in any case, I think this also works and is a little bit weirder than your average European phonology.

Code: Select all

m    n  ɳ
p pf t   k
b bv d   g
     θ ʂ x
β v  ð ʐ
    ɹ r l  

æ a ɑ ɐ ɛ ɔ e o ɪ ʏ ʊ i y u 
au ɔu ai ɛi œy
(FCCL)V(LNCC) syllable structure
Phonemic stress, no harmony, vowels reduce to ɪ ɵ ɐ in unstressed syllables
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by cromulant »

ObsequiousNewt wrote:
kanejam wrote:
ObsequiousNewt wrote:A vowel POA is a unique comination of frontness and height. You have ten POAs (or 13 if roundedness counts, which I think it doesn't), seven of which are phonemic: a, ɛ/œ, ɔ, e/ø, o, i/y, u, ɪ, ɵ, ɐ.
Hmmm, the last three aren't phonemic though, so maybe I need to add some extra vowels. Maybe ɪ ʊ ɐ are all phonemic vowels now and change the unstressed vowels: front vowels reduce to ɘ, back vowels reduce to ɵ and high vowels reduce to ə.
I don't know if it's necessary; the question doesn't say "9 or more phonemic vowel POAs", and I'm not sure whether roundedness counts.
1. Vowel qualities do need to be phonemic.

2. Roundedness does count.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by ObsequiousNewt »

So there you go, you do in fact have 13.


Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by R.Rusanov »

wasn't there a bit about fricatives having to be coronal? if not, there's a good question to add for the next revision of the test. europe has pretty much only ts and tʃ whereas pf or tɬ might be observed elsewhere
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Drydic »

R.Rusanov wrote:fricatives
Rusanov wrote:ts and tʃ
Might want to try again.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by R.Rusanov »

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Drydic »

YEP
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by ObsequiousNewt »

Several European languages have /ʨ/ or the like. Palatal is not coronal.


Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by kanejam »

/tK/ is sort of protected by the one rule stating only one lateral, but that's sort only a single rule so you can get all sorts of weird things happening. But maybe there should be a rule saying 'only coronal affricates'. Besides, /ts\/ is palato-alveolar, rather than just palatal, so I would say that it's covered. I would also count retro flex consonants under that.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by ObsequiousNewt »

kanejam wrote:/tK/ is sort of protected by the one rule stating only one lateral, but that's sort only a single rule so you can get all sorts of weird things happening. But maybe there should be a rule saying 'only coronal affricates'. Besides, /ts\/ is palato-alveolar, rather than just palatal, so I would say that it's covered. I would also count retro flex consonants under that.
Hmm, you're right... wait, doesn't German have /p͜f/?


Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Nortaneous »

It is debatable whether German has affricates.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Hallow XIII »

Standard German can be analyzed as only having consonant clusters if you are willing to take advantage of the fact that there are loanwords with Cf clusters. It is very unequivocally the case in those dialects of Swiss German with kx), as there is no other Cx cluster; not even across morpheme boundaries.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Drydic »

ObsequiousNewt wrote:Several European languages have /ʨ/ or the like. Palatal is not coronal.
And ʨ straddles the boundary between the dentalveolar complex and palatal. And I've heard several times before (and checking wikipedia confirms this) that alveopalatal consonants are frequently seen as coronal.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Plusquamperfekt »

Nortaneous wrote:It is debatable whether German has affricates.
Excuse me for interfering in your discussion, but as I am a native speaker of German with pretty good skills in Polish, I can assure you that "ts", "tsch", "dsch" and "pf" are affricates and no consonant clusters. The reason is that in Polish there is a distinction between consonant clusters like "trz" [tS] and true affricates like "cz" [t_S]:

"trzy" - three
"czy" - if

The difference is that in true affricates you don't release the stop before the articulation of the fricative,, in consonant clusters that's exactly what you do. However, German "tsch" is very close to Polish "cz" and pretty far away from Polish "trz", so in my opinion there should be no doubt at all that German does have affricates.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Hallow XIII »

a) I'm a native speaker of German. Two dialects, in fact.
b) Nort has German skills.
c) That is irrelevant, as speaking it does not make you an expert on the language.
d) What a cluster (or any consonant really) is realized as is absolutely irrelevant in the context of phonology. If a phoneme that patters with a palatal nasal is realized as t͡ʃ that still means that in the context of its phonology it is treatable as a "palatal stop". Et cetera.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Plusquamperfekt »

Well, it is really not my Intention at all to seem arrogant and you're right that being a native speaker does not automatically mean that you're an expert on the language, but: As I am an active member of this forum, it's obviously quite likely that I tend to know more about language than average native speakers. So please do not make any assumptions about me without even knowing me.

I agree with you that a specific phonetic realization is not necessarily phonemic as well, but in this case I see no reason at all why German affricates should not be analyzed as affricates. Are there any plausible reasons that would suggest to consider the phonetic affricates clusters? I'm wating for objective arguments.

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Grunnen »

Plusquamperfekt wrote:Well, it is really not my Intention at all to seem arrogant and you're right that being a native speaker does not automatically mean that you're an expert on the language, but: As I am an active member of this forum, it's obviously quite likely that I tend to know more about language than average native speakers. So please do not make any assumptions about me without even knowing me.

I agree with you that a specific phonetic realization is not necessarily phonemic as well, but in this case I see no reason at all why German affricates should not be analyzed as affricates. Are there any plausible reasons that would suggest to consider the phonetic affricates clusters? I'm wating for objective arguments.
I won't claim knowledge of German, even though I'm living in (Swiss) German speaking Switserland right now. But in a sense every instance of an affricate is a cluster of a stop and a fricative. For that it doesn't matter when you release the stop. The question is simply if you want to analyse these sequences as being underlyingly one or two segments, in the phonology of the language at hand, or not. I think what people were probably hinting at, is that if you can explain an 'affricate' as a sequence of a stop and a fricative without having to make special statements on syllable structure to accomodate this, you will need addidtional arguments to establish it's a segment in its own right. Otherwise it's more economical (fewer segments) to not analyse them as affricates.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Morrígan »

I won't make claims to be especially knowledgeable on this subject, but I have never seen any analysis of German indicating that its "affricates" were really consonant clusters. Everything I've seen falls in line with HG having /pf/, /ts/, /tʃ/.

I'm really curious about the theoretical justifications for this if you could point me toward the paper, manuscript, or author. EDIT: is this Kohler?

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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Hallow XIII »

Plusquamperfekt wrote:Well, it is really not my Intention at all to seem arrogant and you're right that being a native speaker does not automatically mean that you're an expert on the language, but: As I am an active member of this forum, it's obviously quite likely that I tend to know more about language than average native speakers. So please do not make any assumptions about me without even knowing me.

I agree with you that a specific phonetic realization is not necessarily phonemic as well, but in this case I see no reason at all why German affricates should not be analyzed as affricates. Are there any plausible reasons that would suggest to consider the phonetic affricates clusters? I'm wating for objective arguments.
Make no mistake, I wasn't making assumptions about you (at least not to the effect of believing you have no idea of German) NOR am I defending Nort's viewpoint; I just felt I needed to point some things out. My own arguments for the affricate analysis may be found in my last post.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by WeepingElf »

Nortaneous is just insisting on his claim, which he has made several times before, that no natlang has non-coronal affricates, so he has to explain /p͡f/ away as a cluster ;)
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Aurora Rossa »

Has anyone ever made a thread or test for how much the grammar of your conlang follows European models along the lines of this thread?
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Nortaneous »

The argument goes the way Inversion said: there's no way to distinguish in phonotactics between affricates and stop+fricative clusters. Zahl /tsa:l/, but psychologie /psyxologi:/, and so on.

Then again I don't know if there are any voiced stop + fricative clusters other than /dZ/, and if you admit /dZ/ as an affricate you may as well admit the rest of them.

I don't think *no* natlangs have non-coronal affricates. What I've said is that 1) non-coronal affricates are very rare, and 2) in the vast majority of natlangs, affricates pattern more like a place of articulation than a method -- it is rare for there to be a stop and an affricate at the same place of articulation. It is certainly not the case that non-coronal affricates are *nonexistent* -- German and many of its dialects have them; Nama developed one from /k_h/; there is a dialect of Tsonga that apparently has two fully labiodental affricates /p_df b_dv/ [but even then, there is no labiodental stop!] -- and there are even some languages (like German and Nama, and I've seen a few that contrast /ʈ ʈ͡ʂ/) that *do* have stops and affricates at the same place of articulation. The point is that they are *rare*, and a common feature of conlangs made by people who do not know what they are doing at all. It is not the case that no natural languages have interdental fricatives, front rounded vowels, a light/dark l contrast, orthographic thorn, etc., but it *is* the case that noobs tend to have a vague knowledge of the same bits of the same three or four languages, one of which is German, and come to the same conclusions, like "hey wouldn't it be cool if I put in a full affricate series???", thus giving away that they do not know what they are doing and should read so much as a Wikipedia page about at least one language that... I guess I can't say "is not spoken in Europe" anymore thanks to the curious immigration policies of certain European countries so how about "was not spoken in Europe before 1900".
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by R.Rusanov »

Bulgarian has ts and t at the same PoA -

Code: Select all

          LABIAL    APICAL    LAMINAL   VELAR     PALATAL
NASAL     m                   n
STOP      b p                 d t       k g
AFFR.               (dʒ) tʃ   ts
FRIC.     v f       ʒ ʃ       z s       x
LIQUID              r         l         ɫ        j
Otherwise the other affricative (voiced or unvoiced) behaves like you would suppose. Old Slavonic had "dz" and no apical laminal distinction... but a palatal dental one which still had the effect of minimizing affricatives and stops at the same PoA.
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Re: How to design a non-European phonology

Post by Nortaneous »

is bulgarian [ts] dental or alveolar
is bulgarian [t] dental or alveolar
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