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Phonology

 

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Phonology   Advanced
For a phonological feature to be included in Kali-sise, it must be present in roughly 19 out of 20 languages (92.5%, rounding up 18.5 to 19).

Vowels
Every language profiled in UPSID has three or more vowels, and 94% of the languages in the UPSID survey have four or more vowels.


   i   u

     a

Languages with this system include Aleut, Classical Arabic, Greenlandic and Quechua.  

The vowels are pronounced as in the Classical Latin system of five vowels (surviving in many Romance languages and used in many other languages, including Serbo-Croat, Hebrew, Swahili, Maori, Hausa and Basque).  The Kali-sise vowel system is the four-vowel system of Malagasy, lacking an /o/ sound.  When borrowing words that have an /o/ sound, Kali-sise borrows the /o/ as /u/

   i           u
      e
         a

Kali-sise systematically modifies consonants based on whether they are followed by front vowels (/i/ and /e/) or back vowels (/u/ and /a/).


Consonants
Stops - Over 99% of UPSID languages have bilabial, dental/alveolar and velar stops. Since voiceless segments outnumber voiced segments (92% vs 67%), we will adopt /p/, /t/, /k/ as our stops.

Fricatives - Since 93% of the UPSID languages have at least one fricative, we will have a fricative. About 83% of the languages have some form of /s/, so we will adopt /s/ as our single fricative.

Nasals - 97% of the languages have at least one nasal, and in 96% of these cases it is voiced /n/. So /n/ is our single nasal.

Liquids -- While 96% of languages have at least one liquid, only 72% have more than one, so again we will confine ourselves to one example. Since /l/ =is somewhat more common than /r/ (and since /l/ is less likely to change over time than /r/ is), /l/ will be our liquid.

Others - Approximants (/j/ and /w/) occur in fewer than 95% of languages and so will be excluded from Kali-sise. Glottalics are also too rare to be included.

Voiceless
Voiced
Stops

p - as in pot
t - as in tot
k - as in cot
Fricative
s - as in sought
Liquid
l - as in lap
Nasal

n - as in nap


Front Vowel
Back Vowel
Stops

p - as in pot
t - as in tot
k - as in cot
b - as in bought
d - as in dot
g - as in got
Fricative
s - as in sought
z - as in zit
Liquid
r - as in rot
l - as in lot
Nasal
n - as in not
m - as in mutt


Syllable Pattern
No syllable pattern is universal.
The CV syllable pattern is the most common, though some languages require it to be pronounced with a tone (note that Mandarin Chinese does not require a tone).  This pattern allows 24 (C*V=6*4) types of syllables. It may seem limiting, but in fact there are over 331,000 possible four-syllable words.
The V pattern is at best estimate not found in 95% of languages.  It appears that more than 8% of languages require an onset.
The CVN pattern, where N is a nasal, is very common (Chinese, for example, allows it), but fewer than 95% of languages support it, so it is excluded.

Hundreds of natural languages, such as Cantonese, don't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Stress
Stress indicates morphological boundaries


Orthography
The vowel of the final syllable is omitted, since the final vowel can always be predicted by the final consonant.

ba
da
ga
za
la
ma

pe
ke
te
se
re
ne

lun /lu-NE/
lunsetin /lu-NE-se--ti-NE/ lunar rock

sisetkelam /si-se-TE-ke-la-MA/ system(atic) communication

Masinkelam /ma-si-NE-ke-la-MA/
Du-kelam
Du-kelam

Make du & ni three letters long?
Determine case markers
12 two-letter postpositions/pronouns if you let the first letter be unique
re
re
Kannada <i>n?r</i>, Kota <i>n?r</i>, Malayalam <i>n?r</i>, Toda <i>n?r</i>
collapse "we, I"
collapse "you"



Conclusion

Based on this design, clearly, if ease of pronunciation is the number one goal of any IAL, and that goal is defined as only having features common to 92.5% or more natural languages, it is achievable with Kali-sise.

The nickname Pitakesulina is a mnemonic that exhaustively exhibits all the sounds and vowels of the language.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
Conlang Profiles at Langmaker.com © 1996-2005 Jeffrey Henning.

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