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faqsphinx wrote: > Why do you allow such a comprehensive array of dipthongs? I see them as monosyllabic vowel clusters, and I like to have simple rules. That, and my goal to have a huge number of possible roots, which are also phonologically different from each other. All roots in Raikudu have the shape CV(V)CV(V). (Lirakdom is different.) > Why did you rule out polysemy? It is primary to make the morphology completely regular and productive: you should always know from two morphemes what their combination means. For that to be true I have to ditch polysemy. I am, however, fond of _hypernymy_. To take an example: Where English has different words for "fox", "dog" and "wolf", my language has a single word "sicram" (tentatively). > Why do you set up 24 consonants, and how did you choose them? I begun with 13 consonants or something like that. The phonology was supposed to be easy to pronounce for more or less everyone. Then, as time went by, I added consonants now and then based on aesthetic considerations to finally arrive at 25. I had as a criteria that every consonant should be cross-linguistically common enough and that I should be able to pronounce them, and that the resulting system should have a "natural symmetry". I am, nevertheless, not happy with the phoneme inventory of Raikudu. I have a new one for Lirakdom: http://veoler.googlepages.com/phonology.html For both Raikudu and Lirakdom I had the goal to have an average sized phoneme inventory, and 22 consonants and 6 vowels is about average. > 4.6.11 The Utilitative Case > Ithkuil distinguishes between Utilitative and Instrumentive cases. I find this > distinction is better marked by aspect based on my reading of Bernard Comrie. I > would like to hear your thoughts on this. How do you mean? I haven't read Bernard Comrie so I don't know. But the difference between the Utilitative and the Instrumental isn't aspectual, in the narrow sense of the word, as far as I understand it. In a grammar such as Latejami I find the case tag version of the verb "to use" the best choice for the Utilitative. For the Instrumental, on the other hand, I think to have it morphologically marked on the verb might make most sense, since it has a specific relation with the agent for the event in question. It is possible that this distinction is often expressed with a formal aspectual difference in natural languages, I don't know, but a crucial design criteria for my language is that the semantics should be correct, so it might be irrelevant. Could you elaborate on your thought? > Thanks again for an interesting conlang. Thanks. -- Veoler