Telona's grandish entrance

Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
>>>
Jonathan Knibb wrote:
2. mushroom (edible)
ketide - edible or otherwise  but defined by appearance, not by strict
mycological criteria :)
3. I often go searching for mushrooms in the forest.
Ha con rei k+AOk-li cynasae m+AOg-taisa webi ewetide.
et al., snipped.....
Has an interesting sound to it.  But have I missed some explanation of the
phonology?  What determines whether +AF8-ketide+AF8- vs. +AF8-ewetide+AF8-?
a neat alternation-- I hope not a typo +ADs--)
<<<

It certainly isn't!  And thanks for asking.

The syntactic part of the answer to this is that there are three 'operators'
as I call them (I think Telona syntax is sufficiently unlike any natlang
syntax for me to have to invent my own terms for these things!).  Between
each pair of adjacent words in a sentence, there lies one of these
operators.  The consonant alternations occur as part of the realisation of
two of the operators (the third appearing as a zero morpheme).

The phonological side is that there are regular alternations between two
series of consonants, called 'hard' and 'soft' for want of better names.
They go like this (hard >< soft):

p >< m          t >< l
c >< n          k >< w
b >< f          d >< s
r >< ch         0 >< h

The phonetic values are the same in X-SAMPA as in the orthography for [p t c
k b d s m n l h].  Otherwise, f = [f\], r = [4], ch = [x], and most
relevantly to your question, w = [M\], i.e. a voiced velar approximant with
lip-spreading.  I'm aware that the alternations are a little unorthodox, but
hey, it's my language and it doesn't have to look naturalistic if I don't
want it to :))

With this in mind, the actual answer to your question is that 'ewetide' is
morphologically '+ketide'.  A word beginning with a hard consonant and
preceded by the + operator gets a harmonising vowel prefix and the consonant
softens.  The point of the + operator in the phrase 'webi ewetide' is to
allow 'webi' (look for) to semantically govern 'ketide' (mushroom).  'Webi
ketide' would mean 'a mushroom looking for something'.

Does that make sense?  Thanks again for your interest.

Jonathan.

'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'