Re: If you were to design a language, how many vowels and consonants would you use?

On Dec 7, 6:47 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:
On Dec 7, 6:56 am, "H.K. Kingston-Smith" <HK...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:10:20 -0800, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 6, 8:40 pm, "H.K. Kingston-Smith" <HK...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am talking about vowel and consonant sounds, and I am
assuming
that the purpose of the language is communication between people with
different native languages.

This is a question for conlangers ("constructed language" hobbyists). If
you wanted to know what the smallest and largest vowel and consonant
inventories in known languages of the world are, you could enquire here.

No, I am actually interested in the reasons that experts would
have to make their choices in this respect.

Well, if you want your language to be phonologically as easy to learn
for as many people as possible, then it obviously should have as small
an inventory of sounds as possible, shouldn't it? Three vowels is the
usual minimum vowel inventory (although there are rumours that Abkhaz
would have less, but they seem to have been refuted - Abkhaz of course
has one of the most comprehensive consonant inventories there is). As
regards consonants - well, something like k, p, t. l, n (or rather,
one generic nasal with [n], [N], and [m] as allophones)...

You must be referring to Kuipers' analysis of Kabardian as having but
a single vowel. Kuipers withdrew his claim a few years later.

Quite a few languages are analyzed as having just two vowels, however.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated
    ... possible sound change, and as regards the initial e-, there is this ... thing called prosthetic vowel. ... observed sound change in all the known languages - do we have any ... the consonants, it's a little harder to show that any consonant could ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: reading arabic, vowel trouble
    ... are the word stems and the vowels the inflections, ... supply of derivational patterns, and they usually carry about as much ... purpose of "vowel reconstruction". ... Major Languages*, or Fischer's chapter in Hetzron, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Are Linguistic Changes Accelerated by...
    ... but this model predicts that all languages would finally come to ... >> requires extra articulatory effort (more extreme articulations, ... >> lots of vowels have to make use of the periphery of the vowel space ... 'Linguistic equilibrium' is obviously shorthand ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Tones: Evil incarnate? ;)
    ... >> if you change a vowel or a consonant of a syllable. ... Dmitri> that in EVERY language vowel and consonent differences ... Dmitri> have phonemic consequences, whereas tones do not. ... like tones to speakers of non-tonal languages. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated
    ... languages ... That's because discovery of regularity of sound change was not among ... Sanskrit has dialects now, with differences in pronunciation. ... The latter is like the terminal vowel in an Australian's pronunciation ...
    (sci.lang)