Re: Introducing Dmēnna

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> 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
I'm aware of them, but I figured they weren't widespread enough in fonts
to use them just yet.  Either way, the ones you cited would be more
pleasing.

>
>>     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.
Where I'm from (in the USA) there are two separate phonemes from
historical /&/, but the broken or lengthened one is [Ea], not the other
way around.

>
> If you can make the [a] [A] distinction â [a:] ä [&] ā [A] a [@]
> would seem natural to me
That actually does have a very nice feel to it.  I can't go with it for
this project (as there are some other constraints), but I might use it
in the future.

>>
>> 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.
I'm not intending to use the same one - I know how Czech et al use them,
but I'm trying to use D with APOSTROPHE vs. S with HACEK.  The capital
form of my d' would be D'.

> I notice the absence of /tS/ and /dZ/.  Are c and j totally without
> a job in your transcription?
They don't really show up enough to warrant any kind of special
treatment.  I did have them in my original analysis, but I couldn't
really find any justification for keeping them as phonemes.

>
>>     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?
It originally comes from voicing between vowels, but the word-initial
vowel has dropped off.

>
>>
>> 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"?
Well, given the current orthography, there is sporadic use of
circumflexes...but you're absolutely right.

>>
>>
>>     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.
Not quite the way it's working in this language here.  There are some
nouns that seem to be inalienable, but they can use either possessive
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! :-)
Emphasizer sounds good, and it does let me refer to "emphatic" nouns.

>>
>> “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.
Hmm... I suppose it could be analyzed that way.  Now that you mention
it, I think I might be analyzing the verb forms a bit off.  The suffixes
on the "intended action" form might actually be some sort of auxiliary
verb, but the others are fine.

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