Re: Messy orthography (Re: Sound change rules for erosion)

Isidora Zamora wrote:
> How long would it take for the -en, -an, -on, and -un to all merge into -in
> after the word-final short vowels were lost?  Would the separate plural
> endings persist for a long time or a short time?  (I guess my question is
> whether we're talking about a couple of generations or a couple of
> centuries.)  There is written language at this point, but I don't know how
> high the literacy rate is, though even the modern literacy rate is not
> above 30%.
It can last as long as you want.  :-)  And keep in mind that it'd
probably be case by case.  Even long after most -an/-en/-on/-un words
had merged to -in, there'd probably be a few common words (like man,
woman, child, etc) that remained -an/-en/-on/-un.

Classical Uatakassi was in the process of merging all its long vowel
groups into type I.  There were three types which, in the plural, were
noted by:
Class I: VV -> Vki (i.e., aa -> aki, ii -> iki, uu -> uki)
Class II: VV -> Vi (aa -> ai, ii -> ii, uu -> ui)
Class III: VV -> Vi
(Classes III and II differ with some of the case suffixes)

Class I, from the beginning, was more common.  It was also the simplest
one, II and III both have extra complications with some case suffixes.
However, in the Classical period, there were still a lot of II and III.

The ancestor language's plural was very simple, -li.  The Classical
language had slightly complicated it, by certain assimilations, while
the descendant Ivetsian had a practically unpredictable plural.
Probably dozens of possible pluralizations.

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