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On 3 Dec 2014 02:44, "pkroser57@hidden.email [engelang]" <engelang@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> Aside from Toaq Dzu, Guaspi, Livagian and Solresol, I can't think of too many non-artlangs that employ tones
Also Ithkuil, which, like Livagian, has tonic consonants as well as vowels.
I think a loglang with IALish aspirations to acquire many users should probably eschew tone, even if that is only because of pandering to tonophobia. For an ideal language, I guess the testimony of Livagian (which aspires to be one...) is that the ideal number of tones is two. (Livagian has two phonetic tones and two phonological tones, which don't neatly correspond to each other.) Again for Livagian, I've considered having a section of the language for discourse markers and interjections and the like that has its own phonology, making use of a much larger range of phonetic contrasts (phonation types, more tones), in a way a bit like clicks in English or ingressive airstream in Swedish: I reckon that in a limited and circumscribed area of lexis, a greater range of phonetic contrasts could be viable. (This, remember, for a language that nobody speaks natively and probably never could (because native acquisition would transmogrify it, I conjecture).)
For a language spoken only non-natively, what do you think are the limits on viable phonology? Assume we want to maximize robust paradigmatic contrast.
--And.