What is the most optimal phonological spread possible?

[HolyKnowing]

After much thought and deliberation, the following is perhaps the most optimal usage of human phonological space possible. There are 57 (who are Alexander Grothendieck and Hermann Weyl?) phonemes, dividing into 39 consonant phonemes and 18 vowel phonemes.

Consonants:

m̥ m n̥ n ŋ̊ ŋ
pʰ p' b tʰ t' d t͡sʰ t͡s' d͡z t͡ʃʰ t͡ʃ' d͡ʒ kʰ g k'
f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ħ h
l l̥
r r̥
j  j̊
w w̥

Some remarks:

* The convention that the liquids (m, n, r, l, j, w) have voicing is extremely ancient. It originated from the fact that all of these consonants could equally function as syllable nuclei. But because humanity collectively judged that only vowels should roleplay as syllable nuclei, there's no reason anymore for these to have voicing. Therefore their voiceless counterparts are equals.

Also Stevie Wonder titled his love song "As" because if you try to write non-judgmentally without the verb "to be", you will find that you will overuse the preposition "as". The system of English prepositions needs rebuild. Also "as" as a preposition has complications in Special Relativity.

* Learning the phoneme inventory is a one-time up-front payment, because you do it once and it never needs to be added, augmented, or repeated. Therefore there's a strong bias to have as many phonemes as possible. Therefore the plosives come in trinary (which is more optimal than the binary system found in Standard Average European, and the quaternary system found in Sanskrit, because 3 is closer to e than either 2 or 4). Bravo to bradrn for finding out the correct way to spread a trinary plosive subsystem.

* The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible. x/ɣ sound ugly so they were replaced by the prettier ħ/h.

Vowels:

i • y ɯ • u iː • yː ɯː • uː
e • ø o eː • øː oː
æ ɑ æː ɑː

The logic for choosing the vowel system was much simpler: of all the vowels, these are the only strong-sounding ones. Also vowel length doubles the inventory for free, once you train your hear to hear it.

[foxcatdog]

yup its nooblanging + philosophical introspection + i didn't read all that + vowel inventory is way to large + none of this makes sense

[HolyKnowing]

i didn't read all that

The Universe is bigger than yourself you tapeworm. Also not capitalizing "i" causes you to come across ignorant like Luke Skywalker.

[Darren]

Where's the clicks?

[bradrn]

m̥ m n̥ n ŋ̊ ŋ
pʰ p' b tʰ t' d t͡sʰ t͡s' d͡z t͡ʃʰ t͡ʃ' d͡ʒ kʰ g k'
f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ħ h
l l̥
r r̥
j  j̊
w w̥

Reformatted as a table for you (since phpBB gobbles spaces):

m̥ m		n̥ n			ŋ̊ ŋ
pʰ p' b		tʰ t' d	t͡sʰ t͡s' d͡z	t͡ʃʰ t͡ʃ' d͡ʒ	kʰ g k'
f v	θ ð	s z		ʃ ʒ	ħ h
		l l̥
		r r̥		j  j̊	w w̥

* The convention that the liquids (m, n, r, l, j, w) have voicing is extremely ancient. It originated from the fact that all of these consonants could equally function as syllable nuclei.

What precisely do you mean by ‘extremely ancient’ here? We don’t actually know anything about, say, Proto-World (if it even existed). The oldest language families we know of with any confidence (Afroasiatic, Trans–New Guinea, Sino–Tibetan, Dene–Yeniseian) show no signs of a voicing contrast in liquids.

But because humanity collectively judged that only vowels should roleplay as syllable nuclei, there's no reason anymore for these to have voicing.

‘Collectively judged’? How so? There are plenty of languages where liquids can be syllable nuclei — including most English dialects! Not to mention German, Danish, most if not all of the Slavic, Berber, Chinese, Salishan, Wakashan and Chimakuan languages, Miyako… the list goes on.

Bravo to bradrn for finding out the correct way to spread a trinary plosive subsystem.

I make no such claim to finding the ‘correct’ anything. There are plenty of ways to have three series of plosives, including:

• Aspirated, ejective, voiced (as in your system, as well as Amharic and Xinca)
• Aspirated, ejective, tenuis (as in Cuzco Quechua and Navajo)
• Aspirated, voiceless, voiced (as in Thai and Armenian)
• Voiced, voiceless, implosive (as in Paumarí)
• Voiced, voiceless, ejective/implosive (as in Hausa and Yucatec Mayan)
• Voiceless, voiced, prenasalised (as in Sango)
• Strongly aspirated, weakly aspirated/tenuis, ‘tensed’ (as in Korean)
• Probably others I’m forgetting.

There is absolutely no reason to consider any one of these ‘best’ or ‘more correct’. What would it even mean for a language to be ‘incorrect’, anyway?

* The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible. x/ɣ sound ugly so they were replaced by the prettier ħ/h.

Ugliness is subjective. Personally, I have a great fondness for /ɣ/.

Vowels:

i • y ɯ • u iː • yː ɯː • uː
e • ø o eː • øː oː
æ ɑ æː ɑː

Again, a table for you (ignoring length because it’s systematic):

i y	ɯ u
e ø	o
æ	ɑ

The logic for choosing the vowel system was much simpler: of all the vowels, these are the only strong-sounding ones.

What exactly is ‘strong-sounding’ supposed to mean?

[quinterbeck]

Therefore the plosives come in trinary (which is more optimal than the binary system found in Standard Average European, and the quaternary system found in Sanskrit, because 3 is closer to e than either 2 or 4). Bravo to bradrn for finding out the correct way to spread a trinary plosive subsystem.

New challenge: plosive inventory with an e-way VOT distinction

[bradrn]

Therefore the plosives come in trinary (which is more optimal than the binary system found in Standard Average European, and the quaternary system found in Sanskrit, because 3 is closer to e than either 2 or 4). Bravo to bradrn for finding out the correct way to spread a trinary plosive subsystem.

New challenge: plosive inventory with an e-way VOT distinction

Aargh… why are you forcing me to look at the crankery again…

Anyway, does English count? Phonetically it uses three series (voiced, tenuis, aspirated), but they’re merged in various ways to form two series of phonemes. There’s probably some way of fiddling with numbers which gves you a value close to e.

[masako]

Learning the phoneme inventory is a one-time up-front payment, because you do it once and it never needs to be added, augmented, or repeated.

seems completely legit...no notes, keep going

[bradrn]

Learning the phoneme inventory is a one-time up-front payment, because you do it once and it never needs to be added, augmented, or repeated.

seems completely legit...no notes, keep going

I’m not sure if this is meant to be sarcastic or not.

[quinterbeck]

Aargh… why are you forcing me to look at the crankery again…

Sorry friend! It's mostly a joke challenge, though I could imagine someone here proposing a compelling solution

Anyway, does English count? Phonetically it uses three series (voiced, tenuis, aspirated), but they’re merged in various ways to form two series of phonemes. There’s probably some way of fiddling with numbers which gves you a value close to e.

That's the kind of interpetation I had imagined, but hadn't thought of looking so close to home for it! English plosives collapse into two series quite nicely - for my money, I'd want to see something that would spark contention among linguists about whether there are two or three phonemic plosive series. I haven't yet had a flash of inspiration though.

[bradrn]

[…] for my money, I'd want to see something that would spark contention among linguists about whether there are two or three phonemic plosive series.

In that case I’d suggest voiced/voiceless/prenasalised, with just enough uncertainty about whether the prenasalised sounds are single phonemes or clusters.

[masako]

Learning the phoneme inventory is a one-time up-front payment, because you do it once and it never needs to be added, augmented, or repeated.

seems completely legit...no notes, keep going

I’m not sure if this is meant to be sarcastic or not.

then I have failed to properly impress you in my conlanging

[Travis B.]

Anyway, does English count? Phonetically it uses three series (voiced, tenuis, aspirated), but they’re merged in various ways to form two series of phonemes.

In many varieties of English there are arguably four phonetic series (voiced, tenuis, glottalized/ejective, and aspirated).

[bradrn]

Anyway, does English count? Phonetically it uses three series (voiced, tenuis, aspirated), but they’re merged in various ways to form two series of phonemes.

In many varieties of English there are arguably four phonetic series (voiced, tenuis, glottalized/ejective, and aspirated).

True!

[Richard W]

* The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible.

Rare, but not impossible. Doesn't an aspiration contrast on affricates argue that an aspiration contrast on fricatives is possible?

[bradrn]

* The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible.

Rare, but not impossible. Doesn't an aspiration contrast on affricates argue that an aspiration contrast on fricatives is possible?

The more convincing argument, of course, is simply that it’s attested in many languages (e.g. Burmese).

[Nortaneous]

The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible.

PHOIBLE
Index Phonemica
Wikipedia
A panchronic study of aspirated fricatives, with new evidence from Pumi (Jacques 2011)
A contrastive typology of aspirated fricatives (Craioveanu 2013)
The production of aspirated fricatives in Sgaw Karen (Salgado, Slavic & Ye 2013)

[Torco]

optimal for what though. no, seriously.

[HolyKnowing]

optimal for what though. no, seriously.

The most spread usage of the phonological space of human language, in such a way so that the number of discernable phonemes is maximized... but without doing something crazy like including affricates, click consonants or rare articulations that make no logical sense.

Is that intuitive?

[HolyKnowing]

The fricative series are organized by fortis/lenis because aspirated fricatives are impossible.

PHOIBLE
Index Phonemica
Wikipedia
A panchronic study of aspirated fricatives, with new evidence from Pumi (Jacques 2011)
A contrastive typology of aspirated fricatives (Craioveanu 2013)
The production of aspirated fricatives in Sgaw Karen (Salgado, Slavic & Ye 2013)

I saw numerous phonological inventories on Wikipedia--literally every one for every major world language--and with the exception of Burmese discerning the difference between /s/ and /sʰ/ literally nobody discerns aspirated fricatives. Especially not as a series.

And academia articles are designed for avant-garde, state-of-the-art, and intellectual illegitimacy. They're not intended for discerning the Truth. Just boosting the academics clout.