Re: CHAT: Another NatLang i like

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Sally Caves wrote:

> What do either of you mean, exactly, about wrong words getting into
> the lexicon?  I'm curious.  I know that vowel harmony in Turkish
> requires
> that vowels in a previous syllable match the following syllable, or
> something like that, but how would that situation (more than any other
> morphology) affect your problem with "wrong words"?
>
> Sally
>
Well, I usually work out the sounds for a new word from taking the
sounds of a few other, semantically related, words, That helps getting
reasonable allofams - but when I do that for a vowel harmony language,
as soon as I've assembled - discovered - uncovered - subconciously
arranged (whatever - I don't think I've the right word for that, it
holds the middle ground between intuition, imagination of artifice,
a nice triangle), it turns out to have the wrong kind of vowels all
jumped together. What exacerbates the situation is that I really like
disyllabic roots. Johns analysis was absolutely correct!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt