Re: yet another romance conlang

On Fri, 7 Jan 2000 16:10:52 +0100 Christophe Grandsire
<Christophe.Grandsire@...> writes:
>         Share it with us! This timeline seems very interesting. As
> someone said,
> it must have changed the face of the world :) . I'm back in
> Conculture, so you can share there I think.
.

Well, i would need to get back in Conculture, too, but i'm not sure how.
I tried going to the onelist.com website, but that didn't really help,
and i tried sending a message to the "subscription" email address they
had there, but i don't seem to be subscribed to it.

>         Interesting, it means that your 't' and 'd' are alveolar? I
> did the same
> for my new conlang (whose sketch I will show you soon :) ). I like
> it. I
> didn't know about the "beged-kefet" rules, and I find this kind of
> mutations very interesting (you will see in my new lang sketch that
> I did something like that too :) ).
.

What's unusual about making /t/ and /d/ alveolar?

>         Why are the stops softened after 'big' vowels? I would like
> to understand
> the reason of this because it's very interesting and I may steal it
> :) .
.

I have no idea.
After learning all about allophonic variations and binary features and
other phonology stuff in my intro to linguistics class, i tried to sketch
it out in a vowel trapezoid, but i couldn't figure out what features
distinguish the small and big vowels.  What makes it harder is that i
doubt anyone is really sure what the original vowel marks were meant to
convey, especially since the Tiberian-Masoretic system that is used today
isn't the only one that was in existence.
In general, the beged-kefet itself isn't what's important....it's just
the reaction to what should be looked at - it's not the big vowels that
spirantize consonants, it's the small vowels that geminate them.  It's
the lack of that hardening that leaves them vulnerable to weakening,
analogous (the way i see it) to the way that the second syllable of
Spanish "ciudad" is pronounced [DaD] and not [dad].
Here is what i think the Tiberian vowels might have been when the
beged-kefet system developed:
BIG:
/O/  -  qamatz
/e/  -  tzeireh
/i:/  -  hhiriq-malei
/ow/  -  hholam-malei
/o:/  -  hholam-hhaseir
/u:/  -  shuruq  (or /uw/ ?)
SMALL:
/a/  -  patahh
/E/  -  segol
/i/  -  hhiriq-hhaseir (or /I/ ?)
/o/  -  qomatz-qattan
/u/  -  qubutz
Or, possibly when the system developed (which was before the system for
recording it was finalized), it might have been that they were just long
and short versions of something like the vowels /a e i o u/.

> >{ v f } use doubled _vav_
> >{ j } uses doubled _yud_
> >{ i } uses _yud_ like { i: }
> >{ o u } use _vav_ like { o: u: }
> >word-final { a a: } use _alef_
> >word-final { e e: } use _hei_
>         I don't understand very well. Can you explain a little more,
> I'm lost here.
.

In Hebrew, there are what are called _imot qeri'a_ (matres lectionis,
"mothers of reading"), consonants which are used to mark where vowels
are.  In "full writing", _yud_ is used for hhiriq-malei, and _vav_ is
used for shuruq and hholam-malei.  In "defective writing", where no
vowels are marked, _yud_ is also used for hhiriq-hhaseir, and _vav_ is
used also for qubutz, and hholam-hhaseir.
Word-final qamatz, segol, tzeireh, and hholam-hhaseir in Hebrew are
marked with a _hei_.
In Aramaic, however, (which was the vernacular in Judea after Biblical
times) word-final qamatz (which is very common) is marked with an _alef_.

> >Conservation of the passive conjugations...
>         I did that too in Reman. They are so fun, I wonder why they
> disappeared in all the natural Romance languages...
.

I'm not sure, but the reason i kept them in Ju:dajca is because i assumed
that people who speak a Semitic language...well, Semitic language*s*,
would have no reason for abandoning a feature which would be so obvious
and indispensable for them.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "survival is insufficient."