Rawàng Ata: Phonology

[Salmoneus]

I finally put together a draft discussion of phonology in my conlang: https://vacuouswastrel.files.wordpress. ... sketch.pdf

(pdf because the board will eat my formatting. which may not be brilliant formatting but is better than nothing...)

And yes, some bits are confusing because they rely on things not mentioned until later... it's hard to discuss phonology in a linear fashion...

...anyway... comments? questions? complaints?

[2+3 clusivity]

I wanted to give this one a bit of thought.

Structurally, I might add a separate phone inventory section to complement your phoneme inventory or add the marginal phonemes in within parentheses. Since you use ideophones with an extended inventory, you might add those in a similar manner.

Regarding your clipped vowels, I am a bit confused, is the clipping at the vowel or syllable level. You may wish to look at Sindhi and Kashmiri for a somewhat similar occurrence on the vowel level (I think). I have used these before off and on, so it is interesting to see that this is not an unusual conlanging idea.

Fricatives, /f, v; ʃ, ʒ/ but only /s/ is a little odd but reasonable. Any reason for the gap?

regarding affricates, given your phonotactics, you might as well add these as phonemes. It seems logical to add two phonemes rather than reformulate or add extremely specific exceptions to your phonotactics.

Your work on sandhi and suprasegmentals looks very well fleshed out. That's great to see.

[Salmoneus]

I wanted to give this one a bit of thought.

Thank you!

Structurally, I might add a separate phone inventory section to complement your phoneme inventory or add the marginal phonemes in within parentheses. Since you use ideophones with an extended inventory, you might add those in a similar manner.

Reasonable suggestion, yes.

Regarding your clipped vowels, I am a bit confused, is the clipping at the vowel or syllable level. You may wish to look at Sindhi and Kashmiri for a somewhat similar occurrence on the vowel level (I think). I have used these before off and on, so it is interesting to see that this is not an unusual conlanging idea.

I'm not sure what distinction you're making exactly. The vowels are short, and as a result the syllable is short (consonants are not lengthened to compensate - or they are, but not enough). However, the phonemic burden is not borne solely by vowel length (three different length grades being very unusual crosslinguistically) but also by vowel quality, phonation, lengthening of the following consonant, etc.

Diachronically, the phenomenon comes from fricative-stop, stop-nasal and sometimes stop-stop clusters that became preaspirated, and subsequently devoiced and shortened the preceding vowels.

Fricatives, /f, v; ʃ, ʒ/ but only /s/ is a little odd but reasonable. Any reason for the gap?

Well, the near-symmetry is actually ad hoc and coincidental. The apparent voicing pairs are not actually paired diachronically or synchronically, except in some sandhi processes. /v/ originates (mostly) from fronted /w/, while /Z/ originates from either /r/ or /s/ in different circumstances. /S/ comes from /sj/ or /hj/ clusters or from /h/ before front vowels. There just hasn't been any process producing /z/ (yet - although lenition of /d/ is providing it in some dialects).

Diachronically, the gap is ironic, as /s z/ used to be the only place voicing was distinguished in fricatives. However, perhaps because of this anomaly, /z/ became /r/ long ago (or /Z/ in some circumstances).

regarding affricates, given your phonotactics, you might as well add these as phonemes. It seems logical to add two phonemes rather than reformulate or add extremely specific exceptions to your phonotactics.

That is a good point. I suppose I'm reluctant because they don't contrast, and because they have a fairly limited distribution (initial, and in a few places that were initial before prefixes and reduplication or onomatopoeia came along). However, you're probably right...
[maybe my real resistance is because this started off as a small-inventory language, and it seems to have grown and grown...]

Your work on sandhi and suprasegmentals looks very well fleshed out. That's great to see.

Thank you!