Re: Phonomological Analysis of Vulcan Utterances
Saul Epstein 
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 10:47:50 -0600

From: Rob Zook <rzook*informix,com>
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 9:00 AM
 
> At 12:08 AM 10/29/97 -0600, Saul wrote:
> >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.
> 
> That does not sound to disimilar to what it sounded like in _Amok
> Time_ so I have no objection to that, so kroy' and kroy'kah then?
> Should we also then change the other "oy" words to this syllable
> structure?

So many of the more "active" action/state words end in <oy> that it's
tempting to see a morpheme there, in which case there would be good
reason to keep them all the same. Unfortunately, intensified "imroy"
is "imimroy," "tixoy" is "titixoy", and so on. So, I don't know.

> >> 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...
> 
> But, I was thinking of "kh" as a voiceless velar fricative, and I
> thought /x/ represented a voiced glottal fricative?

According to what? For one thing, I don't think there ARE glottal
fricatives, really, though that's sometimes how /h/ is classified.
Friction at the glottis modifies the voicing of other sounds,
producing "creaky" and "breathy" voice.

> >> 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. 
> 
> What kind of sound is the "a" in father then?

It depends on the dialect. The "a" in my "father" is a low back
vowel, just like the "ah" in my "ah-hah." Doctors tell us to "say
'ah'" because we automatically put the backs of our tongues down.

> I was thinking the
> short a sound in English was a tense low front vowel, and that
> that was also the sound in patte. 

The English "short" a IS a low front vowel (in many dialects), the
sound of the "a" in English "pat." I don't know what French "patte"
sounds like.

> >> shroy                         shroi?
> >
> >or croi
> 
> or croy'?
> with a reduplicated crocroy'

It's certainly tempting...

--
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