Re: CHAT: Another NatLang i like

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"?
I take it to mean that vowel harmony is not internalized, and therefore,
when making up words, Nick and Boudewijn find themselves introducing
polysyllabic vocabulary items which violate the announced vowel-harmony
rules.  (I have similar problems with the restrictive Piat phonology.)
International vocab also plays hell with vowel harmony,
as most of it comes from un-harmonizing languages.

Qyrgyz (Kirghiz) is perhaps the most difficult sort of vowel harmony
known: every vowel in a given word must agree on both front/back and
rounded/unrounded scales, and there are 8 vowels, i e =FC =F6 y a u o.
So if the first vowel is either =FC or =F6, *all* the other vowels
must be either =FC or =F6.  Ditto for y and a, u and o, i and e.
Note that y is not /y/ but barred-i.

-- =

John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
   Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heilig=
er Schau,
   Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                        -- Coleridge / Politzer