> John Vertical wrote:
>
> > I read your previous explanation on how the harmony works, but I'm
> > still not sure if I follow. Is harmony marked on consonants or vowels?
> > Or both? In other words - taking a word like "tithina": would all the
> > consonant and vowel markers be alveolar, or would it be possible to
> > show etymology by using a, say, palatal fricative sign + the dental
> > form of i?
> >
> > John Vertical
>
> Hm.
>
> Okay, I think this is a way to put it:
> The consonant glyphs show -citation forms.- If he felt the need to be
> extremely pedantic and clear, then a speaker might suppress harmony and
> pronounce those consonants. This is basically analogous to English
> speakers saying [w_0Vt] for 'what'.
>
> The vowel matras show what harmony quality is going on in the consonant
> they are attached to.
>
> For historical reasons there shouldn't be a word with the citation form
> |t'ith'in'a| (where 'V = palatal vowel marker) (hm, except perhaps in
> forms I have not discovered yet, where the second part of a compound or
> idiom breaks off and retains its harmony quality) or |cithinha| (this
> would be a misspelling anyway; dental/alveolar status does not spread),
> but in a running text you will see things like the following:
>
> tithin /tiTin/
> bech t'ith'in /beS tSiTiJ/
> nénj t,ith,in /ne:n` t`iTin`/ (this is starting to make for a nice way
> of narrowly transcribing sein' script)
>
> where the |tXthXn| (for whatever reason |tithina| didn't sound like good
> Sein' to me:) sequence represents the same word, varying allophonically.
>
> Did that make sense, or am I staying up too late?
>
> --
> Yetyem Lédh once stole the sword of Rakaui. It did not go well for him.
> It was hardly a century, or what passed for one in the time before the
> gods had won their Names, before the sword in its indignation sliced off
> his hand.
>
> Shreyas Sampat
>
http://njyar.blogspot.com
>