tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 25 22:57:43 2006

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Re: Klingon phonotactics (was Re: Klingon at the Thanksgiving table - A month la

Russ Perry Jr ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

At 10:38 AM +1000 1/26/06, QeS 'utlh wrote:
> ghItlhpu' Russ, ja':
>> Note that with {w'} and {y'}, if I remember correctly, the "w" and "y"
>> are actually part of the vowel (diphthong), not an actual consonant.

> I thought that TKD said that they were definitely clusters of
> consonants 

Not that I know of, but TKD 1.2 ("Vowels") mentions {aw}, {ay} etc, but
TKD 1.1 ("Consonants") makes no mentions of clusters that I can see on
a fast look.

> I tend to agree, since to postulate the diphthongs in syllables ending
> in {'} would lead to postulating diphthongs in syllables like {jaw}
> "lord", which I think is wrong

Hm, dunno.  All I can say is that TKD 1.2 makes no mention of the
diphthongs REQUIRING the {'} consonant afterward, which IMPLIES that
{jaw} would rhyme with "cow", approximately.

> (would it be {jawoy} "beloved Lord" or ??{jaw'oy}?). 

Uh...  I'm not familiar with ?{oy} or ?{'oy}, but you'd pronounce it
the way it was spelled.  Is there a suffic ?{oy} AND ?{'oy}?  If so,
then there might be possible confusion, but then again, there's no
word ?{jaw'} either (as far as I know).  I'm fact, the way the
language is set up, I'm not sure such confusion can even occur, but
I'm not particularly well-versed in Klingon, so maybe someone more
knowledgeable can comment.

> Anyway, it's simpler to say that a syllable may end in these
> biconsonantal codas than to say that a syllable may contain a
> diphthong only if it ends in a glottal stop.
>
> I suspect syllable-final {w'} and {y'} may be simplified or
> debuccalised forms of older consonants - maybe ejectives, I don't
> know. (The Abdzakh dialect of Adyghe has a palatalised glottal
> stop - the same phoneme written /y'/ in Hausa - that derives
> from an ejective form of the affricate written {ch} in Klingon.)

I think you're WELL beyond MY knowledge of linguistics at this
point, sorry.  :-)
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