Alright, will do.


Okay, just wanted to make sure before I went ahead.


Hmm, what I mean is: I'm applying epethetic/prothetic to my conlang -- skal -- so "sk/CC" could be possible with my syllable structure. But does the *reno skal option conflict with that? Because if its alone -- skal -- by using "Ø→o/C___#sC" it would be incompatible with my syllable structure again [which is (C)V(C)], right?

*I'm sorry I was confusing.*



I have read and understood some Wikipedia articles, but a lot of the time I can't follow what they are saying. I do try reading the articles a couple hundred times before I ask people on forums though. I'll read up on the articles some more next time before thinking about asking people/on forums.

No need to be sorry.

Right now your possible syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C) because you're allowing /sk/ as an onset. If you use a possible syllable structure of (C)V(C) you couldn't use /sk/ as an onset at all. But (and I think this may be where the epenthesis talk came from) you could put a prothetic vowel there. That way, you wouldn't have a one syllable word structured CCVC because that violates (C)V(C). Instead, the prothetic vowel would make it a two syllable word structured VC.CVC --which is allowed by your syllable structure (C)V(C). (I think this is what linguoboy and dan were saying before...I probably should've read closer haha)

Ah ok. Well, nbd. Forums are a great place to learn. If you're already reading them there's no need to read them more before asking. Like I said, I LOVE explaining this stuff

Oh, I must have gotten something crossed a bit back then. I thought I read that an empathetic vowel would make *skal compatible with (C)V(C) as well as prothetic. D:

So a prothetic vowel would work with my syllable structure, but not empathetic..?


I even look at my collection (around 120) encyclopedias -- very old though -- before I look at wikipedia and then if it doesn't help, I resort to forums and asking people.

*I hope I can get to a stage where I can help people. I would love it as well. *

Prothesis is a kind of epenthesis so they would both work (epenthesis is just the general term for adding a sound to a word, while prothesis is specifically putting a vowel at the beginning of a word). I just got confused earlier. The thing to know is if you choose to have (C)V(C) as your syllable structure, then *skal cannot be a word but *askal could.

*skal = CCVC (not allowed)
*askal = VC.CVC (allowed)

Not necessarily. As I said, it also depends on frequency. For instance, if /o/ is twice as common in your language as any other vowel, then it might could be described as "least marked" even though it is rounded.



By "adjoining vowel" I mean the vowel nearest to cluster, regardless of how many consonants intervene.

For /ren/ + /skal/, I imagine the rules would be the same as for /skal/ alone. /a/ would be the "adjoining vowel" in this case.


I'm not sure where you learned this convention, but when I took phonology, we were taught to use a vertical line here, not a backslash (i.e. X→Y | _). This is what I see in modern academic sources. Perhaps some people substitute slash (/) or backslash (\) where the vertical line isn't an option, but what I've seen more commonly (and what I use myself) is the pipe, (i.e. X→Y | _).

That's how it was taught at University of Oregon. That's also the convention used in Introducing Phonology by David Odden (the textbook we used for my phonology class). Oddly, I think I've onyl seen the vertical line used a few times (not to be contrary or anything ). The only other I could think of would be to avoid confusion between /l/ and the pipe (especially when handwriten).

To each his own, I suppose.

I just realized my last post is filled with typos. Sorry about that. My bad.

@ the rule writing:

So they are both used to write the rules out?

@spanick:



Okay, to know if my confusion on the matter totally got me thinking about this wrong, a prothetic or empathetic vowel rule with my (C)V(C) can still make *skal possible? *I got confused with the last page, I'm sorry! >.>*

Or switching my syllable structure to CVCVC would make *a/skal possible.

I'm probably the cause of all the confusion.

@linguoboy:



Oh, I haven't gotten into word building or anything else yet so I don't know which vowel is used the most or will be used the most. *Well, besides the example words which I built off of. lol*


Oh, being smashed by between consonants won't interfere with it? I think I get it!

I'm glad you still remember what allophones etc etc are. It was a while ago and you only read it once. I thought you suggested an ablaut feature to the language?

If you need more references than wikipedia or your encyclopedias (because yours are so...different), I have some encyclopedias my grandfather gave to me after he took a break from NASA. I could find the parts you need and scan them in and send them or write them in an email, if it would help...?(I don't want you feeling as if I pushed you into this, so just say the word if you want to stop.)

P.S
(You have officially contributed more to the language than me Emma! You don't need to work this hard if you don't want to. Remember to take breaks and stuff. Ben hasn't even started his conlang yet, so you have time to relax. Also, sorry I haven't been on lately, you know school, chores and work. lol Its like I abandoned my baby at your door! )

Oh, also! Thanks for helping out Emma guys!

You still seem confused about syllable structure. CVCVC isn't one syllable, it's two. There are two sonority peaks ("V"), two onsets, but only one coda. So they both fit the pattern of (C)V(C).

The confusion seems to be one of levels. You have an underlying form which is /skal/ and a surface form which is /Vskal/. In between, there is an adjustment rule which is motivated by a desire to have surface forms conform to a (C)V(C) syllable structure.

Why have two levels? Because it should make writing morphological rules easier down the road. Say you have an inflectional prefix |e-| and you want to add it to oskal and get eskal rather than *eoskal (or whatever) even though that's not how it works with other vowel-initial words. In that case, you just order your rules so epenthesis applies at the very end, after all the prefixes and suffixes have been added.


That's ultimately up to you. As I mentioned before, you could have different epenthetic vowels in different circumstances. Maybe you have progressive vowel harmony so adding /ren/ to /skal/ gives you /reneskel/. Maybe the link vowel is determined by the inflectional class of /ren/.