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on 2/27/02 1:31 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> >> on 2/27/02 6:19 AM, Ray Bergmann at rayber@hidden.email wrote: >> >> Rex >> 1) permissible consonant clusters >> >> I've been going by instinct so far. All voiced or all >> unvoiced, or unvoiced >> prededing voiced. Worst clusters I've come up with is >> Bdomen (abdomen) and >> Kfey (coffee) >> >> Ray >> In Unish a schwa is understood to separate several >> consonants together so "bdomn" would be pronounced >> [b`dom`n] if it were Unish. But actually the Unish words >> for "abdomen, belly, venter" and "coffee" are "BELI" and >> "KOFI". >> >> In Tx as well I'm expecting schwa-buffering. Another reason why I >> opted not to have a schwa phoneme. > > This is where my question about a "native accent" comes in. People who > have a problem with certain consonant clusters will end up with more > of a "foreign" accent than those who don't. It seems to me that you > are on the road to making the language more appealing to a smaller > sub-set of speakers than is absolutely necessary. If you permit words > like /mekdanaldz/ (MacDonalds), you're going to have Japanese wanting > to say it as /mekkudanarudozu/. (The Japanese name for the chain is > Makkudonarudo.) The Japanese language, like many others, doesn't have > a real schwa, so I wouldn't expect schwa-buffering from them. > > I bet lots of Spanish speakers would tend to say "Txiq estu" for "Txiq > stu", too. > > My advice would be to stick with (C)V or, at worst, (C)V(C) syllable > shapes, and to constrain vocabulary selection accordingly. Ray's > examples of <beli> and <kofi> are so-o-o much more appealing, even to > me, than monstrosities (no offense) like <bdomen> and <kfey>. Well, as it stands the word shape is nCnN ? One or more consonants followed by one or more non-consonants (including vowels and weaks). That gives an effectively infinite number of possible words. But if we can't have any consonant clusters we'd have something pretty Hawaiian-looking. How about using Italian as a model? If it seems unpronounceable to an italian, we consider it unpronounceable in Ceqli. > > Since all Txeqli words are loan words, I see no reason not to make it > a principle that they should be forced to fit the Txeqli phonology, > including word-internal syllable stress patterns, whatever those are > designed to be. So, if the native stress pattern for a three-syllable > word is designed to be medium-light-heavy, then <banana> should be > /"ba na 'na/, not /"ba 'na na/, following English /"b@ 'n& n@/. > > To me, lack of regularity in this area is no more appealing (and no > less confusing) than lack of regularity in syntax. I see frequent > mention of computer parsing, and this would be much easier with a > fully regular prosody. Good. What would (you know a lot more aobut this than I do) be a good rule or set of rules? My instincts call for penultimate accent to begin with. -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/