Re: New language under development

On 5/27/05, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote:

> Pacific-Northwestern (is that a word?) 

Yeah, that's a word.

In any case, I'm planning to stick to my original four main places of
> articulation (bilabial, postdental/alveolar, palatal, velar/uvular). I 
> probably won't have either /h/ or /?/ at all... well, maybe as
> allophones of something, but nothing more.
> 
> I haven't decided yet whether or not to have phonemic length. But even
> if I can't make up my mind now, I guess it's something that will come 
> to me once I get around to making up some actual morphemes, and
> morphophonemics starts to happen... ;-)

I almost never put ? into a language, but I always keep it around in older 
versions of the language in order to disappear and lead to interesting 
sounds and alternations. Hmm, for some examples around your current area of 
obsession, take a look at Upper Nexaca Totonac. The disappearance of the ? 
in certain (all, maybe?) contexts has led to the emergence of ejective 
*fricatives* -- including the extremely rare ejective lateral fricative -- 
in a language that doesn't otherwise have any ejectives at all.

On the topic of phonemic length, the disappearance of ? intervocalically is 
what led to long vowels in, for example, Oxchuc Tzeltal, iirc. It's the only 
source of long @ in Itzaj. It's a way to get a bunch of new dipthongs, too. 
You can keep a simple vocalic inventory in the ancestor language but still 
get lots of dipthongs to work with.

I'm sure, though, that I won't have phonemic tone. Or ablaut or vowel
> harmony, for that matter. 

Aww, that's no fun. Just last night I was reading up on *counter-harmonic* 
suffixes in Itzaj, which is not a phenomenon I've otherwise encountered. 
Dissimilation, sure, but I'd never before come across regular vowel 
disharmony in suffixes.

I also added the concept of noun classes (I'm thinking of something
> Bantu-ish -- or rather, something along the lines of animate-male, 
> animate-female, plus a number of nonanimate classes like those found
> in Bantu languages). This means that, like in Bantu languages, some of
> the things we achieve in "standard average European" languages with 
> derivational morphemes will happen by inflecting a noun stem with
> affixes from a noun class that's not its "own, natural" one. (Of
> course, in a language that does this extensively, most nouns probably 
> wouldn't have their "own, natural" class. But you get the idea.) And I
> hope I'll end up with a system that allows the forming of (at least
> some) deverbal nouns by simply adding an appropriate noun class's 
> inflectional affixes to a verb stem. ("Writer" would be the verb stem
> "write" with affixes from one of the animate classes; "book", "pen",
> "literature" etc. would be the same stem with various appropriate 
> nonanimate class affixes.)

A quick look at Jakaltek might be interesting; it's the only Mesoamerican 
language I can think of with a healthy inventory of noun classes. There are 
about 24 of them. They're used like classifiers, definite articles, and 
pronouns. Take "naj", which is for non-kin males. "naj Pel" = Peter, "naj 
winaj" = the man, "naj" = he. There are different classifiers for kin (like 
one for siblings) and for respected community members. There's even one for 
corn and corn products -- "ixim ixim" = the corn.

I do have some ideas on person categories -- basically, besides the 
> usual 1st and 2nd persons, 3rd-person agreement will probably pretty
> much boil down to noun class agreement, and 3rd-person pronouns will
> bear a suspicious resemblance to demonstratives.
> 
> Regards,
> Julia 8-)

Good luck! 
-- 
Patrick Littell
PHIL205: MWF 2:00-3:00, M 6:00-9:00
Voice Mail: ext 744
Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00

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