From conlang@diku.dk Mon Feb 13 01:49:56 1995 Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 07:49:45 +0100 Message-Id: <01HMZ79YJTLE8WWAJC@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU> Comment: Issues related to constructed languages Originator: conlang@diku.dk Errors-To: thorinn@diku.dk Version: 5.5 -- Copyright (c) 1991/92, Anastasios Kotsikonas From: Dirk Elzinga Subject: Morpheme Self-Segementation Strategy Hello, CONLANGers. On Sat, 11.Feb 1995, Bob Michael wrote (among other things): >I chose to have morphemes end with vowels to avoid unexpected >or unpronounceable consonant clusters. I chose a, i, and u for initial >vowels because they are more differentiated from each other and would >normally be stressed. This is a very interesting idea. It is essentially the same idea that Roman Jakobson had in his essay Child Language, Aphasia, and Phonological Universals (if I remember the title correctly) with one important difference. Jakobson's proposal was that languages will create as much space as possible between elements of a system (in this case, vowels) to maximize the salient distinctions that need to be made. So if a language has only three vowels, they will most likely be {i,a,u}, since this is the set with the most space around each member. He also makes the claim that _unstressed_ vowels in a language will also tend to be maximally distinct in the same way since stress could not be used to give prominence to the vowels. Suppose that a language has five vowels: {i,e,a,o,u} in stressed syllables. Jakobson's assertion then, is that if any reduction occurs in the vowel system for unstressed syllables, this reduction will eliminate {e,o} and keep the vowels that are maximally distinct from each other, since other means of prominence have been denied them. Of course, there are bound to be counter-examples in the world's (natural) languages, but I think the idea is sound. As part of a scheme or strategy to make word-boundaries in a constructed language clear, I'm not sure that it's really important what vowel qualities are used, only that the distribution (stressed syllable, unstressed syllable) of the vowels is tightly controlled. Of course, if the scheme is grounded in some sort of (perceived) phonetic reality, it just makes it that much more satisfying to the language creator and the language learner. Dirk Elzinga