Re: Conlang puzzles (Was: Re: New monster word in Maggel ;))))

En réponse à Christophe Grandsire
>> > [m@'gE:l] It features again the "lengthening g" :)) . And |a| is
>> reduced to
>> > [@] like in many unstressed cases.
>>
>> Is the "lengthening g" a purely orthographic convention?
>>
>
>Synchronically yes. It's one of the ways to lengthen vowels (another is adding
>a |o| *after* the vowel), and the only way lengthened diphtongues are marked.
>Diachronically things may have been different in the past, although I frankly
>don't know what diachronic process could have led to such a strange convention
>(or maybe it was just a pure invention of some scribes to make their texts more
>ornamented. In the uncial-based alphabet used to write Maggel (which is still
>used nowadays, the speakers of Maggel seems not to like very much the plain
>fundamental style :)) ), the |g| is indeed a letter easy to transform into a
>piece of art :))) .
>
Well, I was just wondering if a you could not imagine that it turned to a voiced
velar fricative (no problem here)then either to a voiced velar approximant or
spirant (or even spirant > approximant) or to a uvular fricative (to me, it
seems phonetically possible ) and then voiced uvular spirant. Whichever way you
choose, I think it's easy to get a voiced uvular spirant close to french turned
R (the voiced velar fricative/spirant/approximant can become uvular). Then it
is really easy to make it disappear and get a compensatory lengthening. For
example, the sound can become underspecified from the point of view of its
articulatory properties, so it would be close to (voiced) h (I'm sorry I'm here
under windows and my brackets don't work with this mailer :( ), just like
french s became h, then schwa and then lengthening effect on the preceeding
vowel (hostel > hôtel). But I think there are plenty of ways to explain this
mutation, the only problem I see is that it should be m!
otivated, I mean that it should happen in a given set of contexts (only before another
consonant for example), and ideally under the pressure of another sound ( for
instance a uvular G turning to g could push off g to a spirant).
I don't know if it will be helpful.

Julien