Zompist Bboard Again

I have added more to my beginnings of a grammar, including a good number of example sentences.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:42 pm I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

(Or, if you want palatalization to be perseverative rather than anticipatory, after close vowels.)

….

It might not matter what I think makes more sense.

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:34 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:42 pm I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

I don't think so. Palatalization before front vowels is very much a thing; I don't know any language that palatalizes before close vowels. You may be thinking of the RUKI rule in Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, which backs (not palatalizes; the outcomes in Indo-Aryan are retroflex, and in Slavic, velar) /s/ after close vowels, velar stops and /r/.

Japanese palatalizes before high vowels, right?

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 6:04 am Japanese palatalizes before high vowels, right?

You're thinking of the realization of /t/ as [ts] before /ɯ/, which is distinct from the palatalization before /i/ and /iː/ or, historically, /e/ and /eː/* in Japanese.

Edit: * before Early Modern Japanese, present-day /se/ and /ze/ were palatalized, presumably as [ɕe] and [ʑe].

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:34 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:42 pm I have collected what I have written about Rihalle Kaafi into the beginnings of a basic grammar.

Wouldn’t it make better sense to have palatalized allophones before close vowels, instead of before front vowels ?

(Or, if you want palatalization to be perseverative rather than anticipatory, after close vowels.)

….

It might not matter what I think makes more sense.

Palatalization before front vowels as a class is very common crosslinguistically. It happened in Romance, Slavic, Anglo-Frisian, and Japanese (even though it has since been reversed before /e/ and /eː/) to give a few examples off the top of my head.

All the two-consonant CC onsets are accounted for; only the triconsonantal onsets are left. We're in the home stretch now.

I have added more example sentences to my Rihalle Kaafi grammar.

I might go back to make alternate/multiple phonetic radicals for some of the onsets later, but other than that…Common Caber has a full set of phonetic radicals (407 or so).