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Re: Strong Plurals?

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 4, 2003, 5:24
Joseph Fatula wrote:

> More or less accidentally, I derived a language from one of my conlangs
that
> has some interesting plural formations.
Very interesting. Are there other, more regular(?) or "weak" plurals?? As you've stated it, these appear irregular and I suppose one just has to learn them (like pax: pacis, nox:noctis etc). But it's fertile ground for "internal reconstruction"-- For example:
> atsa - asto, temu - tendo-- drop the final V, add /do/ with various
expected adjustments/assimilations. It could be /to/, but I suspect it's somehow related to the next---
> chemu - chenda, kaza - kazda, kodu - kodra > ngide - ngidra, daja - dazhda, tachi - tashta, qrat - qrada-- same V-drop,
add /da/. Apparently a voiceless fricative/affricate devoices the /d/, (atsa above, tachi here) a voiceless stop doesn't (qrat). /d+d/ > dr omeiyh - onggha, qule - qulga, tume - tungga -- similar, /ga/, but I can't figure out what's happening in omeiyh (but see below* for 2nd thoughts) kaigu - kaigu, egash - egzhu-- I suspect /gu/ with, probably, some constraint on successive identical syllables, or on two /g/s...so **kaigu-gu, **eg0sh-gu > **egzh-gu > egzhu. I'd suspect /ga/ and /gu/ are somehow related, just as /do/,/da/ *(2nd thoughts) Perhaps omeiyh is behaving like egash, both are VaCVbC forms where Vb drops (assuming -eiy- is functioning as a single V); then omeiyh > **om-0-h-ga with metathesis of the h-g sequence and nasal assim. > onggha elghi - elghbo -- this stands alone. Dissimilation of /do/ for some inexplicable reason?? Since you know how these developed, I suppose you can account for them (??) :-))

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Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>