Basilius,

It did put a smile on my face, and I'm happy my question evoked the same 
response from you.

Reading everyone's responses to this topic, I can honestly say 
phonotactics has become immensely more confusing than I'd already 
considered it, and I wonder how I'm every to accomplish the goal I've 
set myself of mimicking the phonotatics of natlangs in my conlangs. 
What's more, I begin to wonder what the purpose of using a simple CV 
system is (which is what I've always been searching for for all of these 
languages--with of course such additional information as L for liquids 
or even m/n if a word *must* end in one of those letters, etc) if it is 
so rudimentary? Why does the CV system exist at all?

However, on the subject of Swahili, I have represented it (C)V only 
because I assumed the common "mt" (as in mtu) is actually one 
sound/phoneme, though it's represented as two consonants in the Latin 
alphabet (m and t). Thus, I figured (C)V still allowed for "mtu," with 
that in mind.

Thank you again, for the thoughtful response. All the best.

Sincerely,
J. M. DeSantis
Writer - Illustrator

Website: jmdesantis.com <http://www.jmdesantis.com>
Figmunds: figmunds.com <http://www.figmunds.com>
Game-Flush (A Humorous Video Game Site): game-flush.com 
<http://www.game-flush.com>

On 5/24/2012 3:59 PM, Basilius wrote:
> Hi J. M.,
>
> I feel somewhat guilty for having given no feedback to your request. This message of mine won't be particularly helpful, it's just like a lengthy apology of sorts...
>
> First off, your question provoked no irritation on my part. It's quite natural that people ask questions about something new to them, knowing no keywords to be searched for on the net etc. And I considered composing a thoughtful reply. After all, I do know enough about some langs listed in your message.
>
> Then I realized that I'll need to start with redefining something in your question. You seemed to be satisfied with replies like "CV" for Swahili; which indeed is mostly correct, but probably needs some elaboration for a language that has _mtu_ for 'person'. With this consideration in mind, I felt that it wouldn't be really instructive to say (e. g.) that in both German and Old English the permitted syllable structure is like "(CCC)V(something)"*; partly because this would camouflage the fact that neither permits a syllable onset like [jŋx-], despite the involved phonemes being available in both**, and partly because such formula won't show how different the structures of onset clusters in the two languages are in reality.
>
> So I tried to figure out what a real description of German phonotactics might look like (I've delved into the German material a bit attempting to use it as a protolanguage for my conlangs). All the positional restrictions that seem to exist for nearly every phoneme, and the different treatment of reduced syllables, and the behavior of voicing on syllable boundaries, etc. I thought how nice it would be to have some feedback from the native speakers on this list on some more obscure bits.
>
> Then I realized that it will look more like writing a monograph (or a chapter for a monograph at least), and I reminded myself that the question was somehow related to conlanging, and perhaps could be answered without entering such depths. Upon re-reading your message, I got the impression that what you actually wanted to know was how to generate names imitating the feel of the languages in question, and that an appropriate reply might look more like a piece of code for Awkwords, producing words that would look vaguely Bantuish or have an ancient Scandinavian feel to them.
>
> For some twenty minutes I was imagining various things about such code, and then I fell asleep with a happy smile on my face, for which I must thank you :)
>
> However, the next day happened to be a busy one, and I realized that I'll never compose a meaningful reply to your message.
>
> I understand that what I've written above isn't helpful at all, but I hope that the picture of what may go on around the other end of the wire when you ask an innocent question might entertain you.
>
> - Basilius
>
> -------
>
> * If you thought German disallowed vocalic onsets: this restriction does not work for unstressed vowels.
>
> ** For phonemicity of /ŋ/ in OE consider potential contrasts like /ŋk/ vs. /nk/ (I know it's a weak argument in some respects, but rejecting it would point to another set of problems quite relevant to the topic). For phonemicity of /x/ in either language, cf. the unnaturalness of lumping [ŋ] and [h] into one phoneme for MnE (which has been actually proposed in some analyses).
>
> On Wed, 23 May 2012 19:11:28 -0400, J. M. DeSantis wrote:
>
>> Conlang List,
>>
>> I'm not sure what the reason is, but I received no response to my latest
>> message (below) and feel as though I'm being ignored by the List as a
>> whole.
> [snip]
>
>
>