Re: Introducing Dmēnna

Joseph Fatula skrev:
>     Hi, everyone!  I’d like to introduce you to Dmēnna, a language I’ve
> been working on for a little while now.  It’s sort of a side project, so
> it’s not as fleshed out as some of my other conlangs, but it has a
> pretty good vocabulary at this point.
>
>     Dmēnna is kind of an eclectic language, borrowing from many
> different languages, including some Semitic ones.  I’ve been rather
> interested in Amharic for a few years, and you might see some of that in
> this language.  The consonant clusters can be a bit tricky for English
> speakers, almost Caucasian at times, but I’ve actually managed to teach
> a few people some of the basics (in an earlier version, as this one’s a
> bit harder to work with).
>
> PHONOLOGY
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>     Dmēnna has a fairly rich system of 10 vowels (18 including length
> distinctions) and 22 consonants.  For those of you familiar with
> Sanskrit, you’ll probably notice the similarities between this sound
> system and that of Sanskrit, which is what led me to use the orthography
> I did.
I'm sorry, but apart from a = /@/ it doesn't seem very Sanskritesque
to me.  I guess the presence of short ĕ and ŏ /E/ and /O/ all ruins
it for me.

>
> VOWELS
>     Most vowels can change for length, so we’ll show the long vowel
> first, then the short vowel.  Length is shown with a macron, except in
> the case of long ä, where a macron would generally be impractical, so
> here I’m using â for long ä.
There are actually precomposed characters for ä-macron
\u01DE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON
\u01DF LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON

>     ī /i:/     i /I/
>     ē /e:/     e /E/
>     â /aE/     ä /{/
Is [aE] one of those realizations of /&/ in lengthening environments
which actually occur in American English?  Unless there actually is
an ANADEW for /&:/ = [aE] I'd rather expect [&@], [E@] or [&E].
I actually have [Ee] for /E:/ and [e3] for /e:/ in my own
Swedish accent.

If you can make the [a] [A] distinction â [a:] ä [&] ā [A] a [@]
would seem natural to me

>     ū /u:/     u /U/
>     ō /o:/     o /O/
>     ā /a:/     a /@/
>     yā /ja/     ya /j@/
>     ļ /l=/
>     ŗ /r=/
>     ņ /n=/
>
> CONSONANTS
>     Most of the consonants have their IPA values.  The ones that are
> pronounced otherwise are |ť| /T/, |š| /S/, |ď| /D/, |ž| /Z/, and |y| /j/.
Using the same diacritic for palatalization in /S/ and /Z/ and for
fricativization in /T/ and /D/ somehow rubs me the wrong way.
\u0110 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE
\u0111 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE
\u0166 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH STROKE
\u0167 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH STROKE
always looked kind of cool to me, though I must say I'm partial
to good ol' þ and ð.

>     p t k
>     b d g
>     f ť s š h
>     v ď z ž
>     w r l y
>     m n ŋ
I notice the absence of /tS/ and /dZ/.  Are c and j totally without
a job in your transcription?

>     Very often, voiceless fricatives (and sometimes stops) will become
> voiced depending on their environment or grammatical function.  For
> example, the verbal prefix |s-| often assimilates to |z-|, or |fīg|
> “sadness” changes to |vīg| “be sad”.
Have you come up with any historical explanation for the grammatical
alternation?

>
> MORPHOLOGY
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>     Dmēnna morphology makes most of its changes with prefixes and
> suffixes, though there is some very sporadic use of circumflexes,
Surely you mean "circumfixes"?

> infixes, and even stem alteration.
>
> NOUNS
>     Nouns are reasonably straightforward to work with.  The most
> important inflections are for possession and “intensity”.  Most noun
> inflections are suffixes.
>
> Possession
>     Let’s look at the various forms of the word |mōha| “house”:
>     mōhyām - 1st person singular possession (“my house”)
>     mōhrōy - 2nd sg.
>     mōhzih - 3rd sg. masc.
>     mōhŗh - 3rd sg. fem.
>     mōhrā - 1st pl.
>     mōhzyāgŗy - 2nd pl.
>     mōhreď - 3rd pl.
>     mōha - generic unpossessed
>     mōhaď - specific unpossessed
>
>     There is an indirect possession form, where |nyāmva mōha| also
> means “my house”, but it deemphasizes the relationship between the
> possessor and the object possessed.
You could have some rule that some things are inalienably
or inherently possessed and can't use the indirect construction.

> “Intensity”
>     I’m not entirely sure what to call this prefix, as it generally
> “intensifies” or “upgrades” the meaning of a word.  In a possessive
> phrase, the possessor is intensified to indicate their role in the
> phrase.  Verbs can take this prefix as well, used when a non-participant
> in the conversation is the agent.  When a defined non-participant is the
> possessor of something, the object possessed drops any possession
> suffixes.  Nouns that don’t use a counting word can use the prefix to
> become plural, dropping any generic unpossessed suffix, which otherwise
> would keep them “demoted”.  The intensifying prefix is |s|, though it
> assimilates to |z| before voiced phonemes.
'focalizer', 'topicalizer', or plain old 'emphasizer'?
You could get to use 'emphatic' in a way which would
confuse Semiticists! :-)

> Counting Words
>     Many nouns take counting words to refer to specific quantities of
> them, and there are many more that can optionally take a counting word.
> Some of the most common counting words are as follows:
>     nērga - for tiny, roundish things
>     pāržda - for small amounts of liquids
>     deha - for counting livestock
>     lūksa - for fish
>     a keda - for flat things
>     a tesa / a dāla / a stāl - generic counting words
>     a syalsa / vadrāp - for sections of things
Aren't these called 'quantifiers' when occurring in Asian langs?

>     So if you’re going to refer to tree branches, for example, you
> could talk about |īršta vadrāp|, or for an amount of grain, |īlrāba
> nērga|, or for fish, |nimâsa lūksa|.
>
> VERBS
>     The verb system is rather complex (I usually like to focus my
> efforts on verbs), and I haven’t worked it all out yet, but here’s some
> of the important stuff.
>
> “Intensity”
>     In Dmēnna, discourse focuses on the relationships between the two
> participants in the speech act, the speaker and the listener.  It is
> assumed that one of the two participants, or some larger group (which
> may of course include one of the two), is always the agent of any verb.
> To make a non-participant the agent, the verb takes the “intensity”
> prefix.
That looks like a kind of inversion to me.


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot
                                 (Max Weinreich)

Replies