Vowel-Related Uncertainties Saul Epstein Thu, 9 Apr 1998 16:56:41 -0500 Quotes from: MDriest Date: Tuesday, April 07, 1998 5:38 PM >I have to questions: - what are the unresolved questions in (vowel) >phonology? 1. How many vowel phonemes does the ZC dialect distinguish? The most generous interpretation of the source documents would give us a grand total of 24. i,e,^,a,o,u represent six; the same letters followed by a colon represent six more; the same letters followed by a tilde represent six more, specifically nasalized versions of the first set; and the same set of letters followed by both a colon and a tilde represent six more, specifically nasalized versions of the second set. The least generous interpretation of the source documents would give us a total of 5: i,e,a,o,u. Some of these phonemes have more than one allophone -- that is, they are pronounced differently in different contexts. Other interpretations that seem to leap out would give us 18, 15, 12, or 7. I know that until recently, I was operating by an interpretation that yields 12, while Rob tended to prefer one that yields 15, which is based on a literal reading of the source. And I know now that Marketa favors a system of either 5 or 6. >Vowels are important, as anyone who read the Bulletin from >Pralakhute Ngox knows. It is a sound system (both meanings) >but I take exception to one thing. > >The vowels are a,e,o,u,i. This sounds pretty much like most >Western languages to me. Dutch and English both use those >five although the pronounciation differs. Dutch has an >additional vowel ü as well. Why not have eight vowels? Why >not totally different vowels. Something in the middle >between a and i? A Russian 'y'? These five letters are in extremely common use because of the number of writing systems derived from the Latin alphabet. As you note, however, the pronunciations differ. The shared symbols makes it look as if many languages share vowels that actually don't. The differences aren't entirely random though. There are similarities between the ways different languages use the letter , for instance, and all the others. This is partly a historical matter of attempting to fit one language's writing to another's sounds. But the fact is that making a similar set of 5 to 7 broad vowel distinctions is a very common pattern throughout Terran languages. This pattern is shaped by the range of motion of the tongue in the mouth, and the capacity of the ear-brain "listening" system to make fine distinctions. As vowel sounds are made with the tongue higher in the mouth, there's more room to position the tongue in different locations from front to back. As they're made with the tongue lower in the mouth, there's less room. There are, of course, an infinite number of ways to divide up the space, but you get the maximum distinctness by dividing it up into roughly equal pieces. So it's easy across many languages to hear occurances of a maximally high-front vowel and represent it with , or of a maximally high-back vowel and represent it with (especially if it is accompanied by lip-rounding), and so on. The distribution tends to be roughly triangular or trapezoidal, with the narrow end at the bottom. >I realise one should have a system to the vowels and Vulcan >ZC does this flawlessly. We have, however, little reason to >suspect that Vulcans would obey human lingual laws. Even >Terran languages are sometimes a bit unbalanced in their >vowel systems. Actually, there's no need for a language's phonology to be systematic in the sense that a chart drawn of it would be perfectly symmetrical, with every intersection of column and row occupied by a phoneme. Most Terran languages aren't that way, and I don't see any reason for Vulcan's to be that way. And while there should be many differences between Vulcan languages and Terran in many respects, as far as sound goes I think the general rules and tendencies will be very similar. We know, after all, that Vulcans and Terrans can, with practice, speak at least some of each others languages. We know that Vulcans speak with roughly the same number, shape, size, and arrangement of speech organs as Terrans do. It's important that a Vulcan language sound alien, of course. But the aliens in question are known to be humanoid just as Terrans are. I'm more concerned that the kinds of ideas a Vulcan language communicates most easily be bizarre and difficult for Terrans than that the sounds with which they speak be so. In any case, some of the consonants and clusters will be sufficiently alien to most of us, and it is those which have always been thought of as characteristic of Vulcan. >I might, of course, be totally wrong. Fact is that I don't >know how the ground work for this language was done. I have >the grammar and word list by Marketa and therefore much is >an accomplished fact to me. Knowing more about that, things >could be different. You know as much as any of us, except Marketa. That's the same situation we're in, too. 2. How does the ZC dialect handle sequences of vowels? I can say much less with regard to the second question. In the source, it is explicitly stated that a primary function of the <'> sign is to indicate when a sequence of consonants is not a cluster, and when a sequence of vowels is not a diphthong. (The sign is also said to represent a glottal "catch.") Among what is unclear is whether a sequence of vowels not separated by <'> is always a diphthong; and if so whether there are restrictions governing the constitution of diphthongs; and if so whether there is any point in including <'> between two vowels that cannot form a diphthong if <'> is not a full glottal stop but just whatever is necessary to separate whatever precedes and follows it. So... And of course, consonants are not without their uncertainties... -- from Saul Epstein locus*planetkc,com http://www,jccc,net/~sepstein "Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at