Using "disordered speech sounds" as phonemes in my conlang
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 8:49 am
I've recently started thinking about creating conlings for the world that I'm building. One of the languages is the languages of a race of sentient humanoid rodents. In thinking of ways to make this language very different from any human language I started thinking of using some sounds normally associated with disordered speech as normal phonemes in the language. (There is an IPA chart showing official speech pathology symbols at https://www.internationalphoneticassoci ... A_2016.pdf)
A few sounds that I have been thinking of using as phonemes are:
1. The bidental percussive (This has the IPA symbol of [ʭ]). This is essentially the sound of teeth gnashing. I figured that this would make sense for a race of intelligent rodents. However, thinking about it, I'm not really sure if it would be perceptible enough to be used as a phoneme. Usually a sound has be fairly salient to be a phoneme. Even given the fact that I propose that the rodent race has superior hearing to humans in terms of both decibel and frequency range, I'm still not sure that a bidental percussive could be prominent enough for feature as part of the language.
2. The bidental fricative (IPA symbol of [h̪͆]). This is made be putting your front teeth together and making the /h/ sound. This sound, although rare, is actually used in some languages. According to Wikipedia, it is used as an allophone of [x] in a dialect of Adyghe. Therefore, I can see this as an actual phoneme in the language.
What are your thoughts. It would interesting to here from someone with experience in acoustics or speech pathology.
A few sounds that I have been thinking of using as phonemes are:
1. The bidental percussive (This has the IPA symbol of [ʭ]). This is essentially the sound of teeth gnashing. I figured that this would make sense for a race of intelligent rodents. However, thinking about it, I'm not really sure if it would be perceptible enough to be used as a phoneme. Usually a sound has be fairly salient to be a phoneme. Even given the fact that I propose that the rodent race has superior hearing to humans in terms of both decibel and frequency range, I'm still not sure that a bidental percussive could be prominent enough for feature as part of the language.
2. The bidental fricative (IPA symbol of [h̪͆]). This is made be putting your front teeth together and making the /h/ sound. This sound, although rare, is actually used in some languages. According to Wikipedia, it is used as an allophone of [x] in a dialect of Adyghe. Therefore, I can see this as an actual phoneme in the language.
What are your thoughts. It would interesting to here from someone with experience in acoustics or speech pathology.