[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On 5 Dec 2014 05:20, "pkroser57@hidden.email [engelang]" <engelang@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> ---In engelang@yahoogroups.com, <and.rosta@...> wrote :
>
> On 3 Dec 2014 02:44, "pkroser57@... [engelang]" <engelang@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
>
> The best example I can think of would be Demiin/Damin, the ritual vocabulary of the Lardil - only about 300 words or so, using Lardil morphology, but the core phonology is famously unlike any Australian language, or any language anywhere. Damin phonology has been one of the inspirations for my own conlanging. Wikipedia's article gives a the majority of the phonemes - I'd met Ken Hale some 20+ years back at a linguistics conference when I was in grad school, and he mentioned they'd identified an additional phone, a uvular affricate /qX/, though the article on which Wikipedia based theirs had been written prior to that discovery.
I meant what's the limit on the number and type of phonetic contrasts and hence on the size of the phonological segment inventory -- for a lg spoken only nonnatively. The Speedtalky IAL should be close to but within that limit. Maybe this is what you propose to address with your Crimbo lucubrations? I look forward to seeing the results in the new year...
--And.