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Re: yet another new lang sketch (sorry)

From:Daniel A. Wier <dawier@...>
Date:Monday, November 1, 1999, 15:19
Quoth Jennifer:

[most of original post omitted]

>legal initial clusters: stop/non-glottal fricative/non-velar nasal + >liquid/semivowel >non-glottal stop + s >the glottal stop occurs only between vowels
Oh I like this; initial <ks> and <ps>, like Greek...
>pitch-accent: acute accent on a vowel means high pitch stress, grave accent >means low pitch stress
Nice. Reminds me of Hausa.
>tentative rules for spplication of accent: final vowels of >/= 3 syllable >word have low accent >second syllable of >3 syllable word has high accent >final syllable of <3 syllable word has high accent
You know, I'm still trying to get Greek accent rules all figured out. I mean, when do you put an acute on a long penultimate vowel and when do you put a circumflex, that sorta thing. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna work out stress in Tech. My basic words are mostly two-syllable with three-syllables thrown in here and there. The structure varies from CVCV to CVCCV to CVCVCV to even a case of CVCCVCV. Then you got augment stems; for example, the verb _hlot'a-_ means 'to curse', but add _-na_ and you get _hlot'ana-_ > _hlot'na_ 'to accuse, to be an enemy' (incidentally cognate with Hebrew _s'a:Ta:n_ 'Satan, the Devil'. And there's two augmentations of some verb (I don't have my notes handy, and I forgot!), something like _hala_ to _halya_ and _halwa_. Augment infixes are apparently going to form the bulk of fully-developed words, and there might be a logical system where the same infix applied to the same word root might have the same direction of meaning. (What am I trying to say anyway?) (Note: hl = Welsh ll; t' = ejective t.) But I digress again. Chances are, I'll have a pretty regular stress system along the lines of Arabic and, to a lesser extent, Latin. First of all, words are never stressed on the ultima unless you have a case of syllable reversal (CVCV > CVVC where V becomes a new long vowel or diphthong). Three- and four-syllable words will tend to fall on the 'long' syllable (and since basic roots do not have long vowels, this means a vowel followed by two consonants). I have a word _dotgihu_ for 'fish' (there are probably a dozen words for fish and they have various shades of meaning), so stress there is initial, but another word, _biruwqa_ (I think that means 'frost') has second-syllable stress. In the latter case, the first syllable's <i> disappears but palatizes the <b>, so you'd have [bjrwu:q~V] in ASCII-IPA transcription.
>aspect infixes - fall after the initial consonant of the verb > >telic -ix- >repetitive -ak- >inchoative -uun- >durative -us- >perfect -il-
Okay, time for me to ask a dumb question -- what is 'inchoative' again?
>gender - general rules - masculine ends in high vowel, >nasal, or liquid; definite article "an" > feminine ends in low vowel, schwa or stop; > definite article "al"
I do that in Tech as well! Feminine nouns actually end in a reversed syllable _ta_, pronounced [VT] or [Vh] and affixed to the end, and they have a tendency to lower the final vowel of the oblique stem of the masculine (the nominative is the last syllable reversed, usually, or sometimes marked by an -s suffix, especially in animates). Neuters will probably end in -m or something, like in Indo-European.
>the consonant of the article elides before a noun starting with that >consonant >the definite article doesn't decline
Mine (which is _?a_) doesn't either, but it does affect initial mutation of the next word. Fortition (gemination) for masculine, spirantization (aspiration) for feminine, and nasalization (eclipsis) for neuter. For words beginning with a laryngeal (especially the glottal stop), the consonants h-, t- and n- are prefixed, respectively. Examples (given in phonetic transcription: k'aT' 'cat, tomcat' (T' = yes, an ejective interdental fricative) ?a k'aT' 'the tomcat' k'ad'ah 'pussycat' (d' = implosive d) ?a x'ad'ah 'the pussycat' k'ad'aM 'neutered cat' (M should be a labiodental nasal) ?a N'ad'aM 'the neutered cat' (N' = implosive velar nasal) (which can also be realized as Ng', a prenasalized implosive stop) By the way, if you really wanna insult someone, say _?avamax_ -- meaning 'your father who is a eunuch'...
>Suggestions? Comments? It's meant to feel sort of Native American,at least >at first glance, so what else can I do it to this end? Does anyone actually >read these all the way through?
Actually it kinda made me feel like Malay-Indonesian with a little Korean for some reason. But I like what you got! Still confused on a few things (like the 'telic' or the 'relative case'), but I'll figure it out. (I'm still trying to work out when to use nominative/accusative and when to use ergative.) The Saints be with you! (Not the football team.) Danny http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Hall/5517 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com