Vallelz Noun Class Word Search Solution

provided by the SpecGram Puzzle Elves™

Once again we have been sorely disappointed by our readers, who we had taken to be lazy, shiftless slackers unable and unwilling to undertake any even remotely demanding task. Alas, several readers have actually managed to solve the Vallelz Noun Class Word Search from the May 2010 issue. The puzzlemeisters below have done so, and will be rewarded appropriately:

The table below lays out the semantic noun classes, definite affixes, and inflected definite forms of the Vallelz nouns from the puzzle:

Several of the puzzlemeisters who submitted their solutions also made decent guesses as to the semantic classes of the nouns above. Some of the more interesting choices included: “interesting” vs “boring” languages, languages with and without “an imperialistic past”, “white meat” animals, “animals one would be ill-advised to kick”, “ruminants (cats are included for their hairballs)”, animals that “can balance on one pair of both forelimbs and hind limbs unaided”, animals that “can balance only on one pair of hind limbs unaided”, “Thanksgiving must-eats”, and items “of limited entertainment value in a night-club”. Interestingly, only vu-Blank-ɦā got all of the semantic classes exactly right.

There are a few simple phonological rules that affect the words after affixation. Consonants and vowels are divided into several classes. When two vowels or consonants of the same class are adjacent, the second assimilates to the first. In the cases where this results in more than two identical phonemes in a row, they are reduced to only two. The consonant and vowel classes are:

t d n r l ɹ s z	p b m ʙ ɸ β	ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ	θ ð ʃ ʒ		i y ʏ ɪ ɨ ʉ ʊ ɯ u	e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o
ʈ ɖ ɳ ɽ ʂ ʐ ɻ ɭ	c ɟ ɲ ç ʝ j ʎ	ɱ f v ʋ	ʔ h ɦ		ȳ ā ē ǣ ī ō ū	ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ
k g ŋ x ɣ ɰ ʟ	q ɢ ɴ ʀ χ ʁ	ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ	ħ ʕ	ə	æ ɶ a ɐ ɑ ɒ	ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ ỹ

For those who want to know the specific locations of the definite forms of the various nouns in the original word search, the solution is shown below.

	Out-of-this-World Fieldwork Puzzle #1—Pecha Kucha
	SpecGram Vol CLIX, No 3 Contents