Re: Received Wisdom on Waponi (LONG)

Chollie wrote:

>    Well, I've managed to establish a series of sound changes which
>establish the lexicon of the language, and am looking for a few good
>suggestions on the name.  Here are a few words that might evoke the Waponi:
>
>vuwkano (where v = RM's w1 and w = RM's w2) "vulcano"
>fofuwu "people"
>isuwa "island"
>isuwa fawa ku vuwkano nano "Waponi Woo" ie. Little Island with a Big
Volcano
>[insula parva cum vulcanum magnum].
My thought was that w2 would blend with neighboring rounded vowels,  so
"vukano", "fofu" or "fofuu" (long V are OK, in fact they often originate in
PN from C-loss.)  A long V might tend to shift the accent, fofúu, unless we
want to preserve Latin antepenult accent--  in at least some cases?

A revision, which it seems you've already done:  Let /d/ > /t/.  That
business of d>r>l(>w), while it reiterates the phonolgical history of PN,
was a little far-fetched. I mean, sure, there are "persistent rules", but
after 1500 years or so......?

>The
>letter w appears all throughout the lexicon, often ending syllables or
>following stops without an intermediate vowel (NB vuwkano above, or kwaceu
>/kwatseu/ "sword" [gladius]) Is this permissable within the phonological
>constraints of our language?>
    Yes, if we say so ;-); it's probably more "PN" than having C+r/l
clusters, especially if post-C w2 comes out as an unstressed [u].  Given the
frequency of r/l in Latin, there are going to be lots of these w's.

>    A second question - when vowels occur in hiatus (as in kwaceu), should
>we leave them be, eliminate one of the vowels through some strategy (as
I've
>done with Afer) or insert a glide (or stop) to break them up (another
>strategy from Afer).  That would give us kwaceu, *kwacu, *kwaceju, or
>*kwace?u - which one suits our purposes best?
My thought was to eliminate the last of 2 unstressed final V-- *gratia >
gráti > kwatsi > kwátse;   gladiu(m) > glati > kwatsi > kwátse (Oops.
Actually the _aCi> aCe_ rule appears to be sporadic in many PN langs. so the
se two words wouldn't HAVE to be homonyms) (You use /s/ for what I'm writing
/ts/, no matter)  Maybe a slightly different set of rules, which would work
nicely at least in case of -t(d)iV:  Let the entire sequence -tsi- reduce to
/ts~s/:  gratia > kwatsia > kwatsa/kwasa;  gladiu(m) > kwatso/kwaso.  My
goal would be to reduce everything to bisyllables, as much as possible.
The problem of other C+iV# remains.  Are there many such
forms, -(cg)iV, -(pb)iV?  (I had pluvium the other day, > **pwuvi > puvi.
Can't think of others offhand, my vocab. is rather spotty.)

>    A final query - we now have a basic vocabulary for this language, based
>on Latin.  What are some Greek, Aramaic, Celtic, and Hebrew terms that
might
>survive in this language?
Yes, Please, somebody........