Nine (was: Re: Back)

From: nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: Back


> Rob Nierse wrote:
> > I hope to be back on the list with a little experiment
> > I have done lately.
>
> Congratulations!  Have you worked on the Nine project at all (you said
> you were a while ago)?  I posted a Babel text in my version of it, I can
> resend it to you if you like.
>
> Nicole
Sorry for replying a little late.
You have a good memory, remembering I did something with Nine
I would like to see your Babel text, I missed it.

I was working on Nine indeed, but made it different.
At first I didn't read well and thought I could take
*any* nine phonemes, so I took p, t, k, q, ?, h, i, a, u.
After reading more carefully I saw I should do with
p, t, k, m, n, N, i, a, u. I thought I could do with even less:

p t k
  n
i a u
with the /n/ having allophones [m] before /p/ and [N] before /k/.

Then I got an idea I really liked: the vowels preceding the /n/ get
nasalised. So I got:
p t k
e a o (liked those better than i a o)
e~ a~ o~

with a rule saying: a~p > am  etc..

I really liked the sound and looks of this language with having
more vowels than consonants.
(I went over the top with adding breathy vowels causing
voiced stops and creaky vowels causing ejective stops, but that
was too much even for me).

After that I decided I would make a system that looked
Semitic, but was a three vowel system and not a three
consonant system.

So in the end I had p.e.:
(later I added /u/ and /i/, without nasal counterparts
and becoming [w] and [y] when colliding with other vowels)

VVV    singular noun    "ua~i"  [wa~y] house
VVtV   plural noun        "ua~ti" [wani] houses
VtVkV    genitive          "uta~ki" [utaNi] of the house
VtVktV                        "uta~kti" [utaNdi] of the houses
and so on.

I'm still working on it. I'm afraid I know too few of Semitic languages
to make the 3 vowel system complete.
Is there any material on three consonantsystem on the web (Steg?)

Rob