Thank you, Dirk, that helps significantly. So I think I will try
working with this scheme. However since Aeu has no consonants and no
dipthongs, I am not quite sure how tiers would come into play. A vowel
and a syllable are synonymous in this lang. Adam

On 4/24/12, Dirk Elzinga <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The question you need to ask yourself is whether it is really the vowel
> that serves as a distinctive unit. In this case, I would say no. The
> distinctive units in your system are whatever properties or features you
> assign to distinguish one vowel quality from another. In your scheme as
> described you have the following features: 1) vowel height, with 3 values,
> 2) vowel fronting, with 3 values, 3) rounding, with 2 values, 4) length,
> with 3 (or 4) values, 5) phonation, with 5 values, and 6) tone, with 11
> values.[1] This constitutes a 6-dimensional space within which vowels vary
> from one another. A vowel segment in this system is simply the intersection
> of feature values specified for a particular vowel slot. The notion of
> 'segment' really isn't useful anymore, except as a shorthand for this
> intersection of properties. The term 'phoneme' probably isn't helpful at
> this point, either.
>
> As for whether there are any advantages to this sort of description, I
> would say there definitely are. Don't discount concision and elegance as
> defensible criteria for choosing one description over another. I would much
> prefer to see a concise, elegant description in terms of intersecting
> features or properties over one that obtusely clings to segmental
> representations.
>
> Dirk
>
> [1] Most phonologists now agree that tone is actually a property of the
> syllable or mora, rather than of the vowel. This opens up the possibility
> that other properties of yours might also be syllable-level properties
> (phonation is a good candidate for this sort of thing). Phonological
> description and analysis becomes a lot more challenging (and fun!) when you
> can assign features to different tiers of representation.
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 7:39 PM, Adam Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 8:33 PM, MorphemeAddict <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> >  On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 9:28 PM, Adam Walker <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Or should I say Aeu has 9 vowel phonemes, 2 rounding phonemes, 3 or 4
>> > > length phonemes, 5 voicing phonemes and 11 tonal phonemes and every
>> > > syllable requires exactly one phoneme from each category such that
>> eveery
>> > > syllable is 5 phonemes.
>> > >
>> >
>> > I don't have an answer, but I prefer the latter. It's a lot more
>> > concise,
>> > maybe 'efficient', even elegant.
>> >
>> > stevo
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> It is undeniably more concise.  The first description is a monstrosity.  I
>> just don't know if the concise description is defensible on any other
>> grounds than concision and elegance.  But then, that alone may be enough.
>> I will wait to hear from Dirk and any other RL phonologists before making
>> any further attempt at describing this lang.
>>
>> Adam
>>
>