Consonant Clusters at the Beginning of Words II
Rob Zook 
Tue, 11 Nov 1997 14:13:22 -0600

Well, 

Last time Saul had made a proposal or two involving consonant clusters
with stops and fricatives. To recap that:

#[stop]+[tap (r)]
#[stop]+[fricative] (as long as they have the same voice)
#[stop]+[approximate] (but he only implied this one as probable)

I would like to keep the approximates, including /qy/ because 
a)the Lexicon specifies that Vulcan is rich in consonant clusters -
so we should try to keep as many as we can; and b) a couple of
times in the series Spock or his family has mentioned how difficult
(or impossible) it is for Terrans to pronounce. In _Journey to Babel_
even Amanda who has lived on Vulcan for umpteen decades can only
pronounce it "after a fashion".

That would give us these:

py   by   ty   dy   ky   gy   qy
pl   bl   tl   dl   kl   gl   ql
pr   br   tr   dr   kr   gr   qr

but probably not [stop]+[w], since we have /k'wawje/ and /k'war'ma'khon/.

so #[stop]+[approximate(but not /w/)]

We still have a few more possibilities for consonant clusters. We have
these possibilities in the Dictionary:

br  tc  dr  kn  lhm  mn  pl  sb  tr  vr  wh
            kr           pr  sk  tv 
            kj               sp 

The above two rules would cover all of them except for kn, lhm, mn, 
vr, and wh. kn, lhm, mn all involve nasals but in three different ways. 
kn represents a stop and a nasal. lhm is a compound cluster combining a
lateral approximate with a fricative and a nasal. While mn combines
two nasals.

English used to have a sound like kn, it was spelled "kn" anyhow,
in those words which come from Anglo-Saxon. However, I think they
actually pronounced such words as k*'n-. For example, knight was
pronounced k*'nAit (to use Saul's ASCII IPA notation for the vowel 
sounds). Which means kn probably does not cut it as a consonant 
cluster and should probably be k'n at the beginning of a word.

Laterals with fricatives would be this set:

lv   lz   lj   lx     (voiced+voiced)
lf   ls   lc   lh*    (voiced+voiceless)

Any of the voiced versions end up sounding like *lv, *lz, or *lj
when I try and pronounce them. The lower set, [l]+[voiceless fricative]
run into the same problem as [stop]+[voiceless fricative], that as
Saul mentioned the voiced component turns to a voiceless one. That
seems to happen here as well. I can only say it as either *lf (totally
voiceless) or as *l'f. So a lateral + any fricative probably wont work as
consonant clusters.

On the other hand a fricative and a nasal seems quite feasible:

vm   zm   jm   xm
fm   sm   cm   hm
vn   zn   jn   xn
fn   sn   cn   hn

Nor do they seem to have the same problem as a voiced stop/lateral
and a voiceless fricative, where the voice must change. So these might
work as initial consonant clusters. In the lexicon we have the word
lhm'ta, the author probably meant l'hm'ta.

That leaves us with mn, a voiced bilabial nasal + a voiced alveolar 
nasal. mn does appear in Greek as a word initial consonant cluster
if I'm not mistaken, so it does sound possible. If we generalize
that to a rule, [any nasal]+[any nasal] we could get:

mn   mny   mng 
nm   nym   ngm

I know from past conversations that Saul at least dislikes nm as
a possible consonant cluster. Personally I think it feasible at least.
However I think mn, mny and mng seem like definite possibilities.

That leaves with vr, and wh. I will leave wh for Marketa to solve,
since it appears in wh'ltri which I think is a word of her construction.
vr appears in the Dictionary word "vrekact" which lists as Old Vulcan.
Whether or not it's used in modern Vulcan, I know not, but "vr" seems
like another good possibility for a rule:

[any fricative]+[any tap]

vr   zr   jr   xr   
fr   sr   cr   hr

To sum up:

1. [any fricative]+[any nasal] 
2. m+[any other nasal]
3. [any fricative]+[any tap]

A couple other possibilities for word initial consonant clusters but
ones we don't have examples come to mind also:

[any fricative]+[any approximate]:
vl   zl   jl   xl
fl   sl   cl   hl

[any nasal]+[any tap]:
mr   nr   nyr  ngr

[any approximate]+[any tap]:
lr    yr   wr

BTW, Marketa, what sound did you intend for the initial <wh> in wh'ltri? 
Was it supposed to be the English "breathy" /hw/ sound or a consonant
cluster of /w/ bilabial approximate, plus /h/ a glottal fricative?

Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
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