Re: Romula: tense system - request for comments

At 5:21 pm -0500 4/1/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>> But Artyom states quite clearly that it belongs somewhere in the western
>> group; thus, as Andrew says, one would expect -mos.
>
>On the other hand, in Portuguese, unstressed /e/ and /o/ in final
>syllables (at least in Brazilian Portuguese, I don't know about European
>Portuguese) becomes /i/ and /u/, so that "do" is /du/, not /do/ (= de o
>= of the.masc.sing), and "de" is /dZi/ (/d/ and /t/ are palatized before
>/i/).
Thanks - I'd forgotten this.  I understand this is true of European
Portuguese also, tho I don't think it has the palatalization of /d/ and /t/.

>So, it seems reasonable that if Portuguese did it (altho keeping
>orthographic {o} and {e}), Romula could do it.
My understanding is that this is not inherited from Latin or ProtoRomance,
however.  AFAIK Portuguese inherited the common western Romance [o] where
Classical Latin has both [U] and [o:].  The hightening of /e/ and /o/ in
post-stressed syllables is a later development, hence not shown in the
modern spelling.

If Artyom wants Romula to be a plausible western Romance language, then it
will have shared in the common western Romance development of -mus -->
-mos.

Of course, what happens afterwards in Romulan is up to Artyom.
Post-stressed /o/ may well have become [u] as in Portuguese & the language
may have changed its spelling to reflect this.  But then to be consistent
Artyom needs forms like 'illu' and not 'illo'.  To have both 'illo' and
-mus is inconsistent.

In Northern Gaul or France the post-stressed /o/ became /@/ or zero at an
early date.  There we find -mus --> -ms ---> ns.  But Romulan appears not
to be changing as much as French but to be keeping closer to its Latin
ancestor as Spanish & Italian do.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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