Re: Dipthongs and other things (was Re: Arrghhhh!!!! and a Summaryof What has Gone Before) Saul Epstein Fri, 28 Nov 1997 10:04:54 -0600 From: Rob Zook Date: Thursday, November 27, 1997 12:48 PM > At 11:36 PM 11/26/97 -0600, Saul wrote: > > [snip] > > > >> [approximate]+[tap]: > >> lr yr wr > > > >Yikes. How did those sneak in? > > Well, during my follow up to your analysis of initial word consonant > clusters I tossed all three of the following sets at the end. > > [fricative]+[approximate]: > vl zl jl xl > fl sl cl hl > > [nasal]+[tap]: > mr nr nyr ngr > > [approximate]+[tap]: > lr yr wr > > They received no comment the first time, so I thought I'd toss them in > here. I got just the reaction I hoped for. I take it "Yikes" means you > don't like the last set? Yes, and now I remember not liking them before. In fact, I remember saying something about them too: not only do the look impossible, they don't sound Vulcan. And when I say they look impossible, I mean from an articulatory perspective. I don't think they could be said without introducing a syllable. So we could end up with words written to look like this, but not pronounced like this. Except, if the etymology of whl'q'n is any guide, these might have apostraphes between them too. > >> Word Ending Consonant Clusters: > > > > [snip] > > > >> [approximate]+[lateral] > >> yl wl ywhl wwhl > >> > >> [fricative]+[lateral] > >> fl vl sl zl cl jl xl hl > >> fwhl vwhl swhl zwhl cwhl jwhl xwhl hwhl > > > >And these? I'm not looking forward to trying to pronounce any cluster > >with /whl/, in any position. > > I thought of these while typing all this up. One could class /whl/ > with the laterals, so I threw them in too. Honestly I think we've > made Vulcan entirely _too_ pronounceable at this point. Remember that > Vulcan is supposed to be hard for humans to pronounce. So is Klingon. I think I would class /whl/ as a lateral if it were described as "voiceless l with lips rounded," or something like that. And I think the most frightening thing about the possibilities above is that they consist of fricative + 2 simultaneous fricatives. At least have enough pity on us Terrans to limit such things to stop + 2 simultaneous fricatives. > >> [aspirated stop]+[stop] > >> khp khb kht khd khk khg khq > >> th thb tht thd thk thg thq > >> dh dhb dht dhd dhk dhg dhq > > > >These on the other hand, look better every time I see them. I mean, > >written they still give off this initial sense of impossibility, but > >spoken they sound very good, very Vulcan. We may want to impose a > >same-voicing rule on them, as for the fricative+stops. And I think > >they're probably permitted at the beginnings of words too. > > If we add them at the beginning of a word I think we should add a caveat > that they cannot participate in a more complex consonant cluster. Since we haven't looked at anything more complex than two, I was sort of implying a general rule like that until we do. > >and diphthongs, which we haven't touched. > > I did make a little mention of them, but I may have forgotten to post it > to the list. The Lexicon says that Vulcan has many diphthongs, but not > a great many appear in the Dictionary. Here are the ones which do: > > ie 3 0,12% ei 5 0,19% > ia 1 0,04% oi 5 0,19% > ae 2 0,08% ai 7 0,27% > io 2 0,08% iaa 1 0,04% > > Those percentages refer to percent occurrence among the diphthongs only. > The Lexicon does mention a few other diphthongs not in the dictionary: > au, eu, ou. I think /au/ does show up as . If memory serves -- and it may well not -- is pronounced /plaak tau/. The are also occurances of which could either be /au/ or /o/. > >Once that was > >taken care of, I got back to work on the web version of my morphemic > >analyses, which is very nearly done. You can check it out at > > > > http://www,uit,net/liberty/vulcan > > I like. Very much. Thank you. I'll like it when it's done... > HTML has much greater richness and variety than > just plain ASCII text. And I mean to take advantage of that where possible. I'll just need to make two versions of everything. -- from Saul Epstein liberty*uit,net www,johnco,cc,ks,us/~sepstein "Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at