Calípone
a euphonic conlang concept
2004 by Christian Thalmann
Introduction
The
American Heritage Dictionary of English
describes euphony as "agreeable sound, especially in the phonetic
quality of words". Some languages feature rules that govern and
rearrange the sounds in words and phrases so as to harmonize with or
contrast each other in non-trivial ways, with no other apparent
function than to make the flow of the language more pleasing to the
aesthetic taste of the speakers.
With this invented language project,
I am making my first steps into the world of euphonic languages. Since
the focus is mainly on the phonology and morphology, I doubt this
language will ever reach a satisfactory level of completion and
functionality like Jovian and Obrenje did. Then again, who knows?
Jovian started out as playful experimentation with Latin phonology
too...
The phoneme inventory and grammar are loosely inspired by ancient and modern Greek. The working name of the project, Calípone, is a naïvely hopeful reference to Greek kalli- "beautiful" and phônê
"sound, tone". Whilst beauty is in the ear of the listener even for
euphonic languages, I do hope that the reader will share that sentiment
to some degree.
All sounds and words in Calípone will be written in
boldface,
phonetic transcriptions in [brackets], direct glosses in {braces} and
smooth translations in "quotation marks". All phonetic transcription
will use the
X-SAMPA ASCII transliteration of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
1 Phonology
1.1 Vowels and Diphthongs
Both the vowels and consonants of Calípone are few and simple. They
will have to do, since the beauty is intended to rise from the rhythm
and flow of the language rather than from each element.
The five most basic cardinal vowels are used:
Vowels
|
Front
|
Center
|
Back
|
High
|
i [i]
|
|
u [u]
|
Middle
|
e [e]
|
|
o [o]
|
Low
|
|
a [a]
|
|
The [a] is either perfectly central or more to the front, but certainly
not the back [A]. All vowels are spoken equally short by default.
Readers unfamiliar with the IPA can think of [i] as in "machine", [u] as in "food", [a] as in Italian "panna", French "papa", Spanish "salsa" or German "Mantel", [e] as in French "résumé" or Italian "penne", and [o] as in French "mauve" or Italian "soprano". Linguistically challenged speakers of English can use [A] as in "father" for [a], [E] as in "bet" for [e] and [O] as in "born" without doing much damage to the sound of the language.
The following combinations of vowels are regarded as diphthongs, and occupy a single syllable: ai [aj], ei [ej], oi [oj], au [aw], ou [ow]. All other adjacent vowels imply a syllable break in between: eo [e.o].
If an i starts a word and is followed by another vowel, or stands between two vowels, it acts as the glide [j], i.e. as in "young". This overrides the diphthong rule above wherever applicable: aia is syllabified as [a.ja] rather than [aj.a].
1.2 Consonants
The consonant inventory is hardly any more difficult:
Consonants
|
Alveolar
|
Labial |
Velar
|
Voiceless Stops
|
t [t]
|
p [p]
|
c [k]
|
Voiced Stops
|
d [d]
|
b [b]
|
g [g]
|
Voiceless Fricatives
|
s [s]
|
|
h [h]
|
Nasals
|
n [n]
|
m [m]
|
|
Tap
|
r [4]
|
|
|
Liquid
|
l [l]
|
|
|
The voiceless stops are unaspired by default, as in French, Italian or Spanish; their aspired versions are written th, ph, ch. Do not pronounce those as fricatives! The phoneme h is often realized as [x] or [C] at the end of a syllable, thus its treatment as a velar fricative is justified. The phoneme n
has an allophone [N] (velar nasal) before velar consonants. For the
sake of simplicity, [x] and [C] will be written as [h] and [4] as [r]
in this document.
Readers unfamiliar with the IPA can treat most letters as if they were English. S is always sharp as in "sing" rather than soft as in "pleasing", and c is always hard as in "cause" rather than soft as in "cease". H is never mute, even at the end of a syllable, where it is never pronounced in English. L is clear as in French, German, Italian and Spanish rather than dark as in English. Most importantly, r is rolled as in Spanish and Italian — the English, French and German "r" will destroy the beauty of Calípone!
Calípone tolerates only a given closed set of consonant clusters
in a word. Special conditions apply and the beginning and end of the
word. Here, (parentheses) indicate a compulsory choice and [brackets]
an optional choice.
- Initial clusters: Any single consonant; i (in its role as the glide [j]); voiceless stop + (r, h, s); voiced stop + r; s + voiceless stop [+ r, h].
- Medial clusters: Any single consonant; any doubled (geminated) consonant except for d, b, g, h; i (in its role as the glide [j]); [n/m, r, l, s] + voiceless stop + [r, s, h]; [n/m, r, l] + voiced stop [+ r]; mn, rm, lm, dm, ht [+ r, s]. The combinations with three consonants may not contain the same consonant twice, e.g. sts and rbr are forbidden.
- Final clusters: Only t, n, m, r, l, s are allowed.
1.3 Syllabification
For the purpose of determining the location of stress accents, it is
vital to know where to draw the syllable boundaries within a word.
Count a gliding i as a consonant for this purpose. The rules are quite reasonable:
- Between two adjacent vowels that do not form a diphthong, there is always a syllable boundary. Example: iaoe [ja.o.e].
- A single consonant between two vowels is attributed to the following syllable. Example: anepoie [a.ne.po.je].
- A geminate consonant is split in the middle. Example: issattanna [is.sat.tan.na].
- A cluster without any stops is split in the middle. Example: inmehtelmo [in.meh.tel.mo].
- A cluster with one stop is split before the stop, except for dm. Example: atsandrispralgudmophe [a.tsan.dris.pral.gud.mo.phe]. Note that such an ugly word would never be allowed to exist by the
speakers of Calípone, despite its compliance with the rules. ;-)
A syllable is called light if it ends in a single vowel, and heavy if it ends in a diphthong or a consonant. A syllable may not comprise both a diphthong and a final consonant.
1.4 Stress
Each master word (noun, verb or
freestanding adverb) in Calípone has one phonemically placed
stress accent, marked with an acute accent in Latin letters. Unwritten
secondary stresses are then assigned to other syllables if required,
moving backwards and forwards from the main stress, according to the
following rules:
- Between two stressed syllables, there must be one or two unstressed syllables.
- Two adjacent syllables can only both be unstressed if the first one is light.
- If two unstressed syllables follow a stressed syllable, only one of these three may be heavy.
- It is preferable to have two rather than one unstressed syllables between stressed ones.
Examples: cálipone ['ka.li.po.'ne], calípone [ka.'li.po.ne], calipóne [ka.li.'po.ne], caliponé ['ka.li.po.'ne]; cáliponte ['ka.li.pon.'te], calíponte [ka.'li.pon.'te], calipónte [ka.li.'pon.te], caliponté ['ka.li.pon.'te]; cálliponte ['kal.li.'pon.te], callíponte [kal.'li.pon.'te], callipónte ['kal.li.'pon.te], calliponté [kal.'li.pon.'te].
Primary and secondary stresses sound identical in speech, so cálipone and caliponé can't be distinguished by ear.
A servant word (e.g. an article, vector, adjective or subordinate noun)
does not have a fixed stress placement. Instead, the assignment
of secondary stresses in the master word extends across the word
boundary as if the two words were joined into one. However, the last
rule is loosened in favor of having at least one stressed syllable in
every adjective or subordinate noun.
Example: o cálipone mathos [o.'ka.li.po.'ne.ma.'thos], o calípone mathos [o.ka.'li.po.ne.'ma.thos], o calipóne mathos ['o.ka.li.'po.ne.ma.'thos], o caliponé mathos [o.'ka.li.po.'ne.ma.'thos], where o is taken to be an article and mathos an adjective.
Calípone — a euphonic conlang concept
2004 by Christian Thalmann
