Re: Ustekkli: a new project (longish)

Etona a Dirk (Tirik for monolingual Skerre):

> I thought I'd introduce some features of a new project that is
> underway. This is something that I don't usually do; while I enjoy
> the discussions here, I tend to view conlanging as a solitary
> activity, and I have been reluctant to share volatile features of
> projects in progress. So I'm new at this :-). That said, here are
> some things I find interesting in my latest project, tentatively
> called Ustekkli ["ust@kli] (nominalized plural of the perfective
> _ust_ of _usta_ 'speak', hence 'words'. I know, I know, but I gotta
> call it something).
Based on the recent discussions of what names conlangs begin with, you
seemed to have picked a good name, since few conlangs start with letter "U."
(Uatakassí is the only one I can think of).

> Inventories
>
>
> consonants
>
>
> p       t               kj      k
> b       d               gj      g
> f       th      s       sj              h
> m               n
> r,l
> w                       j
>
>
> The consonants are presented in the orthography with one exception;
> <th> is written with <thorn>. <kj, gj, sj> are alveopalatal
> consonants rather than clusters; <kj> and <gj> are voiceless and
> voiced affricates, respectively, <sj> is [S]. <j> is jod.
Why not have /j/ be written as {y} as to avoid any possible confusion with
the {kj}, {gj}, and {sj} digraphs?

(snip Vowels and some phonology)

> syllable contact
>
>
> The driving force of Ustekkli prosody is syllable contact. Syllable
> contact refers to the nature of the connection between a vowel and a
> following consonant. Two kinds of contact are distinguished: close
> contact and loose contact (these are translations of Jespersen's 1912
> 'fester Anschluß' and 'loser Anschluß'). Close contact describes the
> connection between a short vowel and a consonant within the same
> syllable, while loose contact describes i) the connection between a
> long vowel and a consonant within the syllable or ii) the connection
> between a vowel of any length and a consonant in the next syllable.
> (Trubetzkoy 1939 [1969] discusses this kind of prosodic distinction
> and makes the claim that loose contact is the unmarked member of the
> pair -- hence its wider distribution.)
>
>
> Here is how syllable contact plays out. In Ustekkli, stressed
> syllables must be heavy; this is accomplished by gemination or vowel
> lengthening. The choice between the two depends on if there is close
> contact or loose contact between the vowel of the stressed syllable
> and the following consonant. If there is close contact, the consonant
> is geminated; this creates a heavy syllable:
>
>
> If there is loose contact between the vowel of the stressed syllable
> and the following consonant, the vowel is lengthened, which also
> creates a heavy syllable:
>
> nikk-r  /nikr/  ["nIk.k=r]  (close contact)
> nik-r   /nikr/  ["ni:.k=r]  (loose contact)
> oatt-n  /oatn/  ["wat.t=n]  (close contact)
> oat-n   /oatn/  ["o@_^.t=n]  (loose contact)
Can you illustrate step-by-step how these are derived?  I'm still a bit
unsure how close contact and loose contact work in action.

(snip rest of phonology)

(snip nouns--unfortunate use of the term "absolutive" in Uto-Aztecan--do the
Ustekklists use a different term to avoid the confusion?)

> verbs
>
>
> Verbs do not agree with their subjects, but do carry object prefixes
> if transitive. The object prefixes are:
>
>
> sg    pl
>
>
> 1  ne-   te-
> 2  me-   pe-
> 3     o- (refl)
>
>
> (The prefix _o-_ is only used in reflexive sentences; there is no
> object prefix for non-reflexive third person objects.)
>
>
> Verbs do show aspect distinctions; imperfective verbs are unmarked,
> while perfective verbs truncate the final vowel, if present.
>
>
> usta    'speak'
> ust     'spoken'
>
>
> hipi    'drink'
> hip     'drunk'
>
>
> bieme   'jump'
> biem    'jumped'
>
>
> (Object prefixes and truncation are shamelessly stolen from O'odham,
> a Uto-Aztecan language of central and southern Arizona and
> neighboring Mexico.) There is a derivational process of reduplication
> which carries an iterative meaning; so from _hipi_ 'drink' there is
> also _hippi_ 'sip' (some opaque phonological alternations going on
> there), and from _bieme_ 'jump' you get _bibieme_ 'hop'.
What about reduplication of 'usta'--how does Ustekkli reduplicate
vowel-initials? (couldn't resist this question :-))

(snip aux paradigms)

>
> The auxiliaries always occur in the second position of the clause.
>
>
> Here are some sentences in orthography, X-SAMPA, morphological parse,
> interlinear gloss, and translation:
>
>
> hippi se a hrenkli a luotne
> ["hIppisA"r_0ENkliA"lu@_^tn@]
> hippi se    a   hrenk -l   -i  a   luot  -n   -e
> sip   AUX:3 DET man   -ABS -PL DET water -ABS -OBL
>
>
> The man sips the water.
>
>
>
>
> a hrenkl se hippi a luotne els touth
> [A"r_0ENk=ls@"hIppiA"lu@_^tn@ls"to:T]
> a   hrenk -l   se    hippi a   luot  -n   -e   el      -s touth
> DET man   -ABS AUX:3 sip   DET water -ABS -OBL AUX:SUB -3 pour:PERF
>
>
> The man sips the water which he poured.
>
>
>
>
> a hrenkl ast hipp a luotne alst touth
> [A"r_0ENklAst"hIppA"lu@_^nAlst"to:T]
> a   hrenk -l   a   -s -t    hipp
> DET man   -ABS AUX -3 -PAST sip:PERF
>
>
> a   luot  -n   -e   a   -l   -s -t    touth
> DET water -ABS -OBL AUX -SUB -3 -PAST pour:PERF
>
>
> The man sipped the water which he poured.
>
> hippi ne a luotne alnt touth
> ["hIppinA"lu@_^nAlnt"to:T]
> hippi ne     a   luot  -n   -e   a   -l   -n  -t    touth
> sip   AUX:1s DET water -ABS -OBL AUX -SUB -1s -PAST pour:PERF
>
>
> I sip the water which I poured.
The syntax seems to be vaguely like O'odham, too, although with some
differences--Ustekkli keeps initial determiners, but if I remember things
correctly from my experience with O'odham, O'odham doesn't.

> Not too exciting right now, but there are some promising features, I think.
Depends on what you consider exciting, but I think Ustekkli is pretty
interesting already--I've never seen any language manipulate syllable
contact, so that's interesting, and it's always nice to see a slightly
less-than-configurational AUX2 language.  So, please explain more, as you
develop it and have a chance to either post here or put something up a on
webpage.


Doug Ball
http://tsketar.tripod.com/skerre/
CLI v1.1 !l§ cN:R:S:H a++ y n2d:7 B? A-- E L* N1 Is/m/p k-- ia+ p+ s++ m--
o+ P- S Skerre

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