Re: "Roumant", or whatever it will be called. PART I

En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> > é: /e/
>
> How do you mark stressed /e/?
>
> > ò: /O/
>
> How do you mark stressed /O/?
>
> And is there any way of marking stressed nasalized vowels, or do those
> not exist?
>
I will answer to the three questions at the same time. I suppose you meant
everywhere "UNstressed" :) . Well, I may not have been clear. I said that
accented vowels and diphtongs are "generally stressed". It means that they are
often stressed, but they can also be unstressed. One simple case is when there
are two or more accented vowels and/or diphtongues in the same word. In this
case, only one can be stressed, and there is no way to know which one through
the orthography. But even when the accented vowel or the diphtongue is alone in
the word, it can still be unstressed, but generally those occurences are
predictable. For instance, the ending for the 3rd person plural present of the
1st conjugation of verbs '-am' /a~/ is never stressed, but that's because stress
position depends on conjugation, and not on the actual orthography. Another
example is the ordinal numbers in "-ésime" /e'zim/ (like "vigésime" /viZe'zim/:
twentieth) which are not stressed on the "é", but it's perfectly predictable.
Finally it can also be unpredictable, like in the word "trêdice" /trE'dis/:
thirteen, which is stressed on the last syllable despite the "ê". I told you
that stress position was only partially predictable from the orthography :) .
As for /e/, as its only marks are "ae" (rare) and "é", "é" is quite often used
even in unstressed position. For /O/, it can be marked by a simple "o" followed
by two consonnants or more (or one consonnant at the end of a word), which in
this case is often unstressed. Finally, as for nasalized vowels, when they
appear unstressed there's generally another accented letter or another
diphtongue in the word which catches the stress.

> > ou followed by another vowel (or o when followed by a or i): /w/
>
> Do you mean that <oua> and <oui> never occur?
>
No, they can occur. I just meant that when "o" is followed by "a" or "i", it is
pronounced /w/.

> > cu: /k/ in front of e, i
>
> Interesting.
>
I got the idea from Italian, which uses 'ch' in front of e and i to mark /k/.
But I wanted to use "u" instead of "h", to make a parallel with "gu" as in
French and Spanish.

> > qu: /k/ in front of e, i (equivalent of 'cu')
>
> What determines whether <cu> or <qu> is used?
>
Etymology :) . Some words use "cu", others use "qu". The only place where it is
consistent is for interrogative adverbs and pronouns/adjectives, when they are
identical to relative or subjunctive words. In this case, the interrogative is
written with "qu", while the conjunction is written with "cu". For instance,
"when" is /ka~/, written "quend" as an interrogative adverb, and "cuend" as a
conjunction. In the same way, "who" is /k9~/, written "queum" as an
interrogative pronoun and "cueum" as a relative pronoun. This kind of alternance
is like the use of the acute accent on Spanish adverbs and pronouns, when they
are used interrogatively (like ¿cómo?: how? vs. como: like).

> > sh: /S/, rare
>
> Is it used in any native words, or only in loan words?
>
Only loanwords I think. But as I still don't have any word containing this
digraph, I cannot be completely sure.

> > masculine singular: e /@/
> > feminine singular: a /a/
> > masculine plural: ès /E/
> > feminine plural: as /a/
> > There is also the neuter article o: /o/, used to use adjectives or
> verbs as
> > nouns, or in other cases where English would use a demonstrative.
> > In front of a vowel or h + vowel, e, a and o become l' /l/
>
> Oooh, I like that, synchronically opaque alternation e/l', a/l', o/l'.
> :-)
>
I like it too :) .

> > masculine singular: um /9~/
> > feminine singular: une /yn/
> > masculine plural: ums /9~/
> > feminine plural: unes /yn/
>
> And how are singular and plurals distinguished in speach?
>
By liaison, which works as in French, and has the "-s" pronounced in some
circumstances (in this case it's pronounced /z/).

> > masculine: ne /n@/
> > feminine: na /na/
>
> What's the origin of these?  _en e_ or something like that?
>
exactly! They are identical to the contracted forms of _em e_, _em a_, or _im
e_, _im a_ (from which they come from is unclear, both "em" and "im" have the
same contracted forms with the articles).

Christophe.