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Mike: > On Sun, 26 May 2002 19:59:01 +0100, And Rosta <a-rosta@hidden.email> wrote: > >However, imagine a consonant inventory where for every place of > >articulation you have voiceless fricative, voiced fricative, > >nasal, breathy voiced stop, aspirated stop, unaspirated voiceless > >stop, plain voiced stop, ejective, and each of these can be > >palatalized. For each place of artic, that gives 8 * 2 = 16 > >phonemes. I would find a featural script far more satisfactory > >a written representation of such a language. That is, a > >script based on primitives for place, manner and palatalization > >would be more satisfactory than one with primitives for each > >phoneme, not because of sheer number of primitives but rather > >because the one better captures the underlying system to the > >phonology. > > Hmm. Assuming 3 places this means 48 phonemes. Assuming 4, 64. Yes. > I wrote a few paragraphs as to the script given such a phonology, > but I think it would make more sense to make sure I understand > your position before posting them. > > I guess the question that comes to my mind is, simply, why do you > feel it is important that the orthography capture the underlying > phonological system? In what way exactly would such a system > be more satisfactory? I can't think of a really good answer, which is why I've been mulling it over for a few days. Two reasons I can think of, though perhaps more lurk in my unconscious, are that such a writing system would include less arbitrariness and that it would be simpler, in that if it is a mere reflection of the phonology it would involve fewer rules specific to the orthography. I suppose that a further reason is that we have a general predilection for the structure of wholes to transparently reflect their constitution (so that e.g. a base-10 conlang would prefer the number 12 to based on ten (or one) and two, rather than be something opaque like 'twelve' or 'dozen'). --And.