Re: Phonomological Analysis of Vulcan Utterances
Saul Epstein 
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 00:08:05 -0600

From: Rob Zook 
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 1997 9:03 PM

> I'm pretty sure that all the ones with the letters "oy"  
> probably should be spelled "oi", given that's the way that 
> "kroykah" sounded in _Amok Time_. We should probably do the 
> same with any "<V>y" combination. Except for a few specific 
> instances the rest of the "y" occurances below probably act as 
> a consonent.

<kroy> is, ironically enough, the one exception I would grant to
this. Because the reduplicated form of <kroy> is <krokroy>, I suggest
that it should be <kroy'> rather than <kroi>. This lets the syllable
structure be kro-y', so that kro is the reduplicated syllable. But
everywhere else I think your interpretations work.

> The one that really bugs me is what the heck should "kh" sound
> like? An aspirated "k" or a fricative "k"? My personal 
> preference is the fricative. 

I think in most cases it is the fricative (or <x>) -- though I do
think Vulcan probably allows stop-/h/ consonant clusters...

> One more thing which suggests itself - the excessive use of "h"
> with a vowel probably indicates a short vowel rather than an 
> extra breathy syllable. This seems to appear in words from
> the ST Novels more than anywhere else.

Yes. Except "ah" tends not to be used to represent a short a, and
there are a number of those. I've been turning them into <aa>s, to
boost their frequency if nothing else. But it would help to no what
the "real" difference is between <a> and <aa>.

> I have extracted a few words from the dictionary which will
> prove troublesome to the analysis program, and a suggested 
> alterate spelling:
> 
> Dictionary Version            Some guesses
> ------------------            -------------

	[snip]

> p'pil'lay                     p'pil'la'ai?

Mmm. Probably just p'pil'lai.

> shroy                         shroi?

or croi

> Comments?/Questions?

Looks good.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper the'shi the'stca'; the'sphaadjar the'shi
suraketca'."
							-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at