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unnamed orthography, voiced only

 
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 8:00 am    Post subject: unnamed orthography, voiced only Reply with quote

I was looking into phonology constriction in language, and thought "let's make one that has no voiceless consonants Very Happy" (since m, d, b are all voiced and the first sounds babies make).

So here it is:

(IPA, then orthography)
consonants:
b b
d d
g g
h h
χ x (c?)
m m
n n
ŋ ń
ʒ (zz, ź)
(ʝ ɣ) ğ
ɹ r
(r ɾ) rr
v v
j y
z z
dʒ dź

vowels:
(a bit trickier - there's a system here:
basic sounds are /a e i o u/, and then one character for all of /ə ɜ ɐ ʌ/ (which is uncommon, I think).
unstressed (IPA is a breve) have a grave over the letter.
stressed (aspirated? geminated? other?) have a acute over the letter.
in dipthongs, one or both letters are accented (stressed dipthongs have both vowels accented, with the same accent on both letters [either grave or acute])

example I guess:
"Existence is existence as change, within a realm of possibility"
(Using Aert/Ylara vocab; this may turn into a descendant of these [dialects?]):
/vil gɛfliɪn diz anjerjɛnɪstʌ/ (original=Aert sounds)
Aert: Vhél geFléin, déz Anyáryenistų
Ylara: Vël Fàliÿn, cinà Anyáryens
new: Vil Vàlin, ginà Anyeryèns

I don't know what the language will eventually look like either... I'm not sure if I want to abandon either Aert or Ylara, but I don't have any specific new ideas for a grammar for this orthography, just the basic phonology.

So yeah, does anyone have an idea as to why a language would have no voiceless consonants? I'm not too worried about the vowel system, it's much simpler than most of my other ones, which are most similar to English (though not used the same).


Last edited by Aert on Sun Sep 13, 2009 6:33 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 4:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe the people are quite agressive and that shows in the language this way?
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Aeetlrcreejl



Joined: 08 Jun 2007
Posts: 839
Location: Over yonder

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 4:23 pm    Post subject: Re: unnamed orthography, voiced only Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
(since m, d, b are all voiced and the first sounds babies make)


Hmm, in my experience, babies make a sound that is best transcribed as /aːæːeːiːːː/.
_________________
Iwocwá ĵọṭãsák.
/iwotSwa_H d`Z`Ot`~asa_Hk/
[iocwa_H d`Z`Ot`_h~a_Hk]
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 5:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know of any reason why a language would not have voiceless consonants. I can think of several why it wouldn't have voiced (an aspiration contrast instead of a voice one), but not unvoiced. If you had an aspiration contrast anyway, it seems like after a while one side or the other would become unvoiced.
At the least, without having a really odd and tiny phonology, you should probably stick some sort of consonant contrast in there (maybe an ejectives series or something). Even still you'll probably end up with a lot of speakers pronouncing unvoiced allophones in some places.
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 6:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:

Hmm, in my experience, babies make a sound that is best transcribed as /aːæːeːiːːː/.

Okay, the first consonant sounds then Wink

@Tolkien_Freak: can you give some of the reasons for unvoiced consonants only?
I don't doubt that some of the normal conversation/etc would end up having some unvoiced consonants in there, but I don't think I'm too worried there. The thing is I don't know if I want an ejective or aspirated series - I want it to sound like it's kind of flowing or something, I guess I'll save the ejectives etc for a later lang.

I'm wondering though how voiced only would seem more aggressive? To me ejectives, uvulars, etc would sound more like that, even unvoiced consonants sometimes, as they are more (powerful?) plosives.
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 9:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Compare "tampaka" and "dambaga" Which one sounds softer? Which one sounds more agressive? See my drift?
Well, maybe it's just me Very Happy
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

personally, I think 'tampaka' sounds more harsh/expressed than 'dambaga.'

I can't remember who did it, but a linguist asked people which shape 'looked' more like a certain sound, eg. roundish were more fricatives and nasals, plosives were jagged. Personally, I find the voiceless ones (t, k, p, etc) more jagged and less fluid.

That may be just preference though...
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Tolkien_Freak



Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 11:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Voiced sounds in general are less 'pleasant' to me (I like /t/ more than /d/), but only slightly. Overall for me place of articulation is more important (I hate /p/ and /b/ effectively equally).
I guess for me a good comparison would be /b/ < /p/ <big gap< /g/ < /k/.
(If you can tell, I really have a good idea of which sounds I like and which I don't. Maybe I'm weird, but individual phonemes to me give off different feelings (like /t/ feels somehow 'strong', and /l/ feels like sitting under a tree and looking at sunlight shining down through the leaves). The closer they are to the front of a word, the more they affect the overall feeling of the word, and sometimes their visual representation has an effect also.)

@Aert: I guess the main reason for not having voiced is maintaining a separate contrast system, like aspirated vs not or ejective vs. not. I guess it seems like 'unvoiced unaspirated un-anything else' is the base for any contrast system, with contrasts being more of the presence of a characteristic vs its absence. So it would be weird to not have an absence to contrast with the presence of voicing.
I know Chinese maintains only aspirate vs not, but AFAIK if a lang has contrasts other than voiced/unvoiced it's more likely to have them in addition to voiced/unvoiced rather than replacing it (Ancient Greek has unvoiced unaspirated vs voiced unaspirated vs unvoiced aspirated), and often adds a whole extra dimension (Sanskrit has all four combinations (/k g k_h g_h/), and some Mayan language (I think K'iche) has aspiration replaced by ejective-ness).
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
personally, I think 'tampaka' sounds more harsh/expressed than 'dambaga.'

I can't remember who did it, but a linguist asked people which shape 'looked' more like a certain sound, eg. roundish were more fricatives and nasals, plosives were jagged. Personally, I find the voiceless ones (t, k, p, etc) more jagged and less fluid.

That may be just preference though...


Well then maybe it's just me Very Happy
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Baldash



Joined: 19 May 2009
Posts: 86
Location: Sweden

PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

/h/ and /χ/ are voiceless.

If I were to create a naturalistic voiced-only phoneme inventory, then it would be something like:

/b d g m n l r j w/
/a u i e\ o\/

Voiced only fricatives isn't very realistic.

and let's incoporate /ŋ ɹ/ since you like them (I guess).

/b d g m n ŋ l r ɹ j w/

Then, I would have the syllable structure (C)V(N), where N is any consonant except /b d g/. A more complex syllable structure would probably have voiceless allophones of at least /d g/.

Of course, if you don't care about naturalism, then you could do whatever you like, except that you need to remove /h/ and /χ/ to get a completely voiced inventory.

I agree that aspiration is a bad idea. You generally has aspiration on unvoiced plosives, and when the consonant is voiced it isn't strictly aspiration. My own conlang contrasts /p_h b t_h d k_h g/, the aspiration and the voicelessness is basically two sides of the same thing.
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