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Re: [engelang] Re: The future of languages.

28.9.2012 17:13, Leonardo wrote:
 

--- In engelang@yahoogroups.com, Risto Kupsala <risto@...> wrote:
>

> Toki Pona is designed to be minimal and it doesn't really care for word
> recognition. The words came from natural languages but they were
> modified without mercy, like: box -> poki, bona -> pona. It's fun but I
> think that it should be more serious to convince all kinds of people.

I'm not convinced that eliminating voicing contrast is more severe than eliminating nasality, tone, aspiration or pharyngealization contrasts.


It depends on the source languages and what contrasts they feature. Pandunia sources something like top 40 languages of the world by number of speakers. In that group voicing contrast is definitely the most frequent one of the contrasts that you listed. Pandunia contrasts voiced unaspirated stops with voiceless aspirated stops in order to satisfy the two most important contrasts. (All is fine in theory, in practice it could be a different story.)


Isn't it a case of an Indo-European-centered point of view? I have already heard that most world languages do have tones, and WALS page says that

"About a third of the languages surveyed for this chapter (32.0%) have no voicing contrast in either plosives or fricatives, as this has been defined above."


Number of languages is a different thing than number of speakers. Tones are a common feature, but there are many different varieties: level and contour tones; syllabic, word and phrase tones; long and short tones; two, three or even up to ten tones.

I believe an auxlang could have two level tones (low and high), so that the stressed syllable would always bear the high tone. Technically Pandunia has that: the first syllable is stressed, which means that it is both louder and it has higher pitch than the rest of the syllables. But so far I haven't seen any good reason to make the stress/tone irregular or mobile. I think it would be a drawback.

I know that being Indo-European centered is not a sin, but I think that creating a "pan-Indo-European-friendly" auxlang is a little different from creating a "pan-world-friendly" auxlang. The first goal is undoubtely easier.


I speak natively Finnish, which is a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language. Finnish doesn't have the voicing contrast, and it differs from the Indo-European languages in many other ways, too, though it is their neighbour.

(The next is the same in Finnish for a taste of the language)
Minun äidinkieli on suomi, joka on uralilainen (suomalaisugrilainen) kieli. Suomessa ei ole soinnillisuusvaihtelua, ja se eroaa monella muullakin tavalla indoeurooppalaisista kielistä, vaikka se onkin niiden naapurissa.

-- Risto