Re: Kar Marinam (was Re: Random |mormon| :-) (was: my proposals for a philosophical language)

In a message dated 1/26/03 10:44:13 AM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:

>Josh Roth wrote:
>>Kar Marinam would also switch around the /rm/. It wouldn't add a /b/
>though -
>>it takes the reverse approach, so that sequences of //mbr// and //mpr//
>>become /mr/.
>
>I've seen Kar Marinam mentioned several times recently.  Is it a nat- or
>conlang?
It is a conlang.

>Whatever the case, it strikes me as typologically very odd for a language
>to
>_lose_ a stop in that environment.  The reverse-- intercalating a homorganic
>stop in the env. nasal__liquid-- is far more common.
I agree. Stranger still, note that as a similar but opposite phenomenon,
sequences of //ns// do become [nts] or [nt], depending on position and
dialect. I'm sure there are stranger things in natlangs though. Kar Marinam's
phonotactics are odd in general ... somewhere on the borderline between the
plausible and implausible, or so I imagine.

For example, only these clusters (all of only 2 phonemes) are allowed
initially and medially (far fewer are tolerated finally):
b + r l
d + r l
dh + r l
p + s sh r l
k + s sh r l
s + b d g m n w r l
sh + b d g m n w r l
h + b d g m n w r l
m + p b f dh s sh h n w r l
n + t d sh h m w r l

(The pronunciation is identical or close to what you'd probably guess)

As you can see, there are plenty of strange things going on here. Some can
maybe be rationalized synchronically, others are just historical baggage. I
myself do not intend to actually create all the analyses or history though to
justify them; I see it as more like a newly discovered natlang, with strange
features but no old literature or related languages to explain them, so
people have to just accept that they don't understand them, or else write
dissertations and such....

Josh Roth