tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 07 11:17:08 1996
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Re: Cannon for Multiple Consonants
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>Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 08:53:37 -0700
>From: [email protected] (Sa' qIQwI')
>Wrote Ford:
>>ghItlh Sa' qIQwI':
>>>> -y' and -w' are also consonant clusters.
>>> Are not. TKD lists y and w as vowels as far as I can recall.
>Give me one example where -y' or -w' would appear
>after a consonant. If you can't then they appear
>only after a vowel, thus they are vowels. If w in
>-w' is a vowel then -w' can't be consonant cluster.
Wait, so things that can only occur after vowels must be vowels? Does that
make "ng" a vowel in English?
>example: Qaw' Q aw '
> c v c
>>> y = diphthong forming I
>>> w = diphthong forming u
>Sorry, I meant diphthong-forming to be an adjective
Ah... Well, that's a legitimate way to look at it; I remember once before
someone (maybe you) was proposing that instead of saying Klingon syllables
are CV[C] ot CVG' or CVrgh, that we consider "VG" (G=glide, and modified by
restrictions already mentioned) to be a diphthong and then it's just CV[C]
where V can be a vowel or diphthong... and then you have to restrict the
final C to be ' after diphthongs, and stuff with -rgh... Maybe not as neat
as I thought it would be.
>>I would truly like that to be true. Best example: Try spelling "Ice Cream"
>>using the Klingon alphabet:
>>
>>'ayS QIym
>>
>>'Twould be good if y were a dipthong,
>Let me rephrase: w and y form diphthong with the
>vowel they are following. aw and ay are diphthongs
>aren't they?
Ah. but I would disagree with the examples Ford(?) cited here. Even if you
consider "ay" and "aw" to be diphthongs and not vowel-consonant
combinations, the STILL only seem to occur with ' as the following
consonant in the syllable (not counting syllables that end in -w or -y with
no '). So "*'ayS" remains unattested in Klingon, as does "*QIym". If "ay"
were a "true" unrestricted vowel, we might expect more possible following
consonants. Then again, there are some restrictions even on "pure" vowels
if you consider "w" a consonant, since it can't follow o or u. But that is
much less restrictive than "only ' may follow the diphthongs Vw/Vy".
>>but most people unfortunately consider it a vowel,
>??? - but I said it's a vowel, diphthongs are vowels aren't
>they? A sound where two vowels form one phoneme, right?
>Or does Finnish differ from English here? ...anyway it's
>Klingon I'm interested in...
Dare I say that many linguistics texts refer to w and y as semivowels? :)
>>which renders the above spelling illegal [unless MO says otherwise]
>If a diphthong is a phoneme then they are cvc, thus do not
>violate spelling rules. After all, there are quite a few
>words with a diphthong between the consonants.
>Well, are diphthongs phonemes or not?
I think a lot of this is word-games. From what we've seen in Klingon, the
facts are these:
1) All syllables begin with a single Kronstint (with the exception of the
suffix -oy), where Kronstints are b,ch,D,gh,H,j,l,m,ng,p,q,Q,r,S,t,tlh,
v,w,y,'.
2) all syllables have exactly one vooble, where voobles are defined as
a,e,I,o,u, which follows the Kronstint.
3) A syllable may end with:
a) nothing after the vooble
b) a single Kronstint after the vooble (provided that if the vooble is u
or o, the closing Kronstint can't be w)
c) the structure "-rgh" (call it a cluster, a phoneme, whatever) after
the vooble
d) structures "-y'" or "-w'" after the vooble (provided that if the
vooble is u or o, the structure can't be -w')
Now, that's what we know about the syllable structure. Note that much of
it isn't spelled out, but only known from inspection of the lexicon. Lest
you think that's taking too many liberties, I point out that it is only
through inspection of the lexicon that we come to the conclusion that
initial consonant cluster are fobidden, and I think most of us will agree
to that, given the lengths to which Okrand has gone to avoid them. So if
you will say that the above is not complete because it was never explcitly
explicitly stated to be so, you must also permit words like "*jqIm" and
"*mmapq".
Given the above, it sounds like a lot of the fighting is over what to call
things. You could come up with a set of rules that produced exactly the
same set of syllables by dividing things up differently, saying instead
that after the consonant (which I called a Kronstint above to use made-up
words that I could define as I wanted), there must come a vowel or a
diphthong, with appropriate definitions and then restrictions on the end
(only ' may follow a diphthong, rgh has its own exception, etc). And
that's as valid a description as this. Because that's all these are:
DESCRIPTIONS. Emphasis on the DE-. They are not PRESCRIPTIONS. Do we
know for *sure* that you can't have another consonant after -ay aside
from '? No more than we know you can't have initial clusters. All this is
presumed from what we have and lack evidence for.
So I'm not all that concerned with what you call things. Call them voobles
and Kronstints for all I care.
~mark
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