The Next Step (was Vulcan in Vulcan) Saul Epstein Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:33:45 -0500 From: Rob Zook Date: Monday, October 20, 1997 3:16 PM > So now all we need to do is to establish some phonomes, establish some > morphological rules of word formation, by which I mean establish what > kind of consonent vowel arraingement one finds in vulcan words. Right. We have a phonemic inventory -- that being a list of the classes of sounds recognized as distinct by speakers of Vulcan. This is half-way between phonetics, which is concerned with the sounds independent of speaker-recognition, and phonology, which is concerned with speaker-recognition and the patterns of allophone distribution -- allophones being the different forms a phoneme can take while still being "heard" as the "same" sound. So, given the phonemic inventory and the lexicon, we should probably next determine the rest of the phonology: what rules govern permissible sequences of two sounds, whether consonant-vowel, vowel-consonant, consonant cluster, or diphthong. Then we can move on to the rules on top of those that govern syllable formation -- which sort of bridge phonology and morphology > Alternatively maybe we should simply catalogue the various examples in > the Zvelebil Corpus and use them as the working set of rules. I think this is the best approach, as I said in another message, with one modification: whatever appears to be true regarding phoneme frequencies in the lexicon, we should skew the results to favor some of the more "unusual" sounds to help ensure that the larger vocabulary we eventually end up with sounds appropriately "different." I'd be happy to help do the tally. Maybe we should come up with a way to divide the lexicon amongst those wanting to help -- unless Rob's gotten industrious and done it already! Once it's done, we can go through it looking for rules. I have one other thing I'd like to mention. A while back I posted a modified transcription system, based on that given in the ZC. At the time I got one endorsement, one response which was pretty much an endorsement, and a response that wasn't an objection. ;-, So I'm going to append it here again. I'm not interested in pushing it on anybody, but if there isn't sufficient support I'd rather we all keep using the existing system rather than get splintered -- or at least confused. ------- I'd like to suggest the following alternative notation for the transcription of Vulcan, adapted from the ZC: VOWELS ii i u uu ee oo e o ^ ^^ aa a i pit (Brit English) ii mean (Brit English) u put (Brit English) uu prune (Brit English) e set (Brit English) ee prenez (French) o not (Brit English) oo fault (Brit English) ^ but (Brit English) ^^ sir (Brit English) a patte (French) aa ? ZC says "Nasalization is indicated by a tilde, e,g., e~." Let me say that I don't like the way working with ASCII requires that diacritical marks be put beside a symbol instead of above or below: that's why I'd like to write the so-called "long" vowels by doubling the corresponding "short" vowel. What I want to get at here, though, is that the current lexicon has no examples of nasalized vowels. So I'm wondering if they're phonemic or if each vowel has a nasalized allophone. If the latter is true I don't need to worry about having to write e~, etc. We're not given a sample for and since my understanding of French pronunciation is limited I can't guess what might contrast with . CONSONANTS p t k q ' b d g th (Th) dh f s c x v z j wh (H) h w l y whl r rr m n n~ ng ts, tc, dj, ks p put (English) c shoot (English) b but (English) j measure (English) f folk (English) y yolk (English) v veal (English) rr sparrow (Am English) wh white (English) n~ man~ana (Spanish), mignon (French) w wise (English) k cat (English) whl NA g go (English) m man (English) x loch (Scot Gaelic), bach (German) t top (English) ng hang (English) d door (English) q qur'an (Arabic) th ' qur'an (Arabic) dh h hut (English) s serum (English) z zero (English) ts tse-tse [English (sort of)] l logic (English) tc church (English) r perro (Spanish) dj jewel (English) n not (English) ks lax (English) whl: simultaneous voiceless bilabial and lateral fricative (wh + Welsh ll) In addition to disliking things like e: and e~, I'd like to avoid using h as parts of digraphs whenever possible. I actually have a good reason for this: is not to what is to , whether represents an aspirated stop or a fricative. The above arrangement avoids using h as a kind of miscellaneous diacritic except in two cases: and where it represents aspiration, and where it represents voicelessness. I'd like to settle on one or the other, preferably aspiration. If necessary I'm willing to pretend that is understood as an aspirated , even though it is pronounced as a voiceless . I invite any comments... -------- -- from Saul Epstein liberty uit net www johnco cc ks us sepstein "Surak ow'pha:per the's'hi the's'cha'; the's'pha:djar the's'hi surakecha'." -- K'dvarin Ursw~l'at