Re: Challenge to puzzle-lovers: Vampire dialogue from "Blade"

A very excellent analysis by Nik! It made me think
of the distribution of o/u in plural and genitive.
This is the material we have:

o-ranta      (pl)
o-rastu      (pl)
mab-o-chachi (pl)
um-porta     (pl)
um-panuwa    (pl)

prot-o      (gen)
lukchan-o   (gen)
yacht-u     (gen)
sizn-u      (gen)

My original hypothesis was vowel harmony, where the
distinction was high/low. u would go with high vowels
and o with low ones. This works fine with o, but there
are more exceptions than rules when it comes to u.

We would expect om-porta, om-panuwa and yacht-o. The
only word that goes with the hypothesis is sizn-u. So
that hypothesis is most likely wrong.

We might be able to explain away um-porta and um-panuwa
with the m-infix, even though this is stretching it too
far imho. This way however, we can explain the distribution
of the plural affixes. And assume that it is different
from the genitive.

Regarding yacht-u I'm lost. Maybe it's a front/back
distinction for the genitive where -u goes with front
(i+a) and -o goes with back (o+u). This would even explain
lukchan-o if we assume that it is the first vowel that
counts (this is _really_ stretching it... :)  Of course,
this is rather vowel disharmony, which I haven't heard of.

Can anyone think of another way of explaining this?

Another idea I have is that the plural prefix l- could
be developed from u > w > l(vel) > l. Not that it matters
much... I don't know if it can go in that direction either.
I've only heard of the other way around.

daniel

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