Re: Poijpohloneny

On Sun, 8 Jun 2003 00:30:01 -0400, Jonathan Andrew Beagley
<jbeagley@...> wrote:

>Jeff Jones wrote:
>>
>> :) I see that there's been a subsequent discussion of copulas.
>>
>Yes, there has! Now I have to decide who I believe!
That's always a problem here, plenty of equal and opposite expertise!

>>Hey, I noticed you have carymohloneny for the singular and carymonihloneny
>>for the plural. "N" seems to be the plural suffix. What about the "i"
>>after it?
>>
>You are correct, "n" is the plural suffix. As for the "i", well, the
>Hloneny people don't particularly enjoy certain consonants being
>together, so they put vowels between them (basically, if one of the
>consonants isn't "j", then put an "i" in between the noun and the
>adjective).
Makes sense. 'Yemls takes the opposite approach; some original vowels can
be dropped if the adjacent consonants will fit together.

>>>What do you mean by "|o| and |a| are alternatives of the same vowel"? Do
>>>you mean that they can have the same pronounciation (depending on what
>>>follows, of course)?
>>
>>No, they are pronounced somewhat differently, as partly reflected in the
>>forms |o| and |a|. Let's see if I can explain without being too wordy.
>>'Yemls is normally written in a syllabary (one symbol per mora) that
>>happens to map to the 52 upper and lower case letters. Each of these is
>>either V, CV, or C(V). Ignoring the consonants, there are 4 basic vowels.
>>The specific phonetics for each vowel depends on whether it's short or
>>long or part of a diphthong. In addition, one of these vowels has rounded
>>or unrounded versions depending on the following vowel (even where the
>>following vowel isn't pronounced). Now, for people who don't read the
>>syllabary, I have an alternate orthography designed to suggest the actual
>>pronunciation without having to always specify each segmental feature (X-
>>SAMPA does the latter). In my alternate orthography, the vowel with the
>>rounding variations is written |o| when rounded (phonetically [O]) and |a|
>>when unrounded (phonetically [V] or [A]). Example: the symbol {B} becomes
>>either |bo| or |ba|.
>>
>Cool! Now I have to reread that a couple of times until I understand it.
> :-D
Maybe we can find someone to translate it; this is the conlang list
afterall!