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Re: Jameld (was: Re: Germanic YANC alert!)

From:James Campbell <james@...>
Date:Sunday, April 16, 2000, 12:59
Nik wrote:

> James Campbell wrote: > > Conhistorically, _t~s_ developed from OJ _ts'_ (that's s-acute), which
in
> > some way represented a /S/-like sound > > Why not originally /tS/? Say, s' was once used for /S/, thus ts' was > /tS/, but the two sounds merged, and for whatever reason, s' was > dropped; or perhaps s' became another sound, perhaps /x/, and then was > lost, after that, /tS/ simplified to /S/.
Hm, but how do I get from Gmc /sk/ to /tS/? I've always just treated it as a spelling oddity. Loads of things don't make real sense once I start trying to explain them.
> > [* Not being a qualified linguist, I don't know if this would really
work -
> > are very small populations more or less linguistically conservative?] > > They generally tend to be more conservative, but many other factors come > into play. For instance, if the Jameld-speakers interacted with > speakers of other languages, those languages could heavily influence > their language.
...and they did interact a lot.
> > > but some verbs retain the final -e for reasons of euphony, as > > in vegne. > > Any rules to predict when -e is kept? Perhaps if the stem ends in a > stop followed by another sound (as in vegn-)?
Exactly that - certain consonant clusters require that the -e is kept, and it's also usually kept after r, g and j.
> > Past (perfect) -mä I sneezed: Me nësmä > > In verbs like _vegnen_, is the -e retained? In other words, would the > past tense be _vegnemä_? _Vegnmä_ would seem to be a hard word to > pronounce.
Yes, it would be _vegnemä_, for just that reason. It would be dropped after r though, so "she declared" would be "es biklérmä", not "es bikléremä". It's only to make things like _hat~szmä_ more pronouncable. (sp?)
> > Mainly as in English. > > No V2 structure?
I think I know what you mean, but give me a couple of examples. James ========================================================================= james@zolid.com James Campbell Zeugma--Our Life Is Design www.zolid.com =========================================================================