Musical language phonology
|From:||Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>|
|Date:||Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 14:22|
The recent discussion of musical conlangs led me to think about a musical
language that can also be spoken. The language (let's call it X-4 for the
moment) has seven phonemes transcribed a, b, c, d, e, f, g; these can be
realized as the seven steps of the diatonic scale, but also pronounced as
the sounds [a], [b], [c], [d], [e], [f], [g]. There are thus two vowels
/a/ and /e/, and five consonants /b/, /c/, /d/, /f/, /g/. This is a tiny,
unnatural, but perfectly workable phoneme inventory for a spoken language;
by the same time, the letters have the usual muscial note values such that
the language can be sung or played on just about any musical instrument.
A syllable in X-4 consists of maximally a consonant followed by a vowel
and another consonant (e.g., /baf/). The consonants may be missing, such
that /ed/, /da/ or /e/ are valid syllables, too. There is one constraint:
a zero-onset syllable may not follow a closed syllable, e.g. /dacad/ can
only be syllabified /da-cad/, not **/dac-ad/.
This is all I have so far. Comments welcome.
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