Re: New language under development

Oops. You think I'd remember by now...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patrick Littell <puchitao@...>
Date: May 31, 2005 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: New language under development
To: Julia Schnecki Simon helicula@gmail.com

On 5/31/05, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote: 
> 
> So, if the harmony was based on frontness/backness, a stem containing
> front vowels ("bibibe") would take affixes with back vowels 
> ("bibibebong") and vice versa ("bobbu" -> "bobbubing")? Fascinating. I
> guess there's no feature we can come up with that's too crazy for
> *all* natlangs...
 That's precisely it. In one of the derivational suffixes, roots with a, e, 
and i, take -ul and roots with o and u take -il. (Roots with @ might have 
already undergone lowering to a at this point in the derivation process.) I 
can't recall which derivation suffix this is... it's probably a nominalizer, 
of which Itzaj has many. 
 I can clearly recall, however, the rules for introducing glides after the 
set A (possessive, ergative) prefixes. Before vowels, in- becomes inw-, a- 
becomes aw-, ki- becomes kiw- but u- becomes uy-. I think it works this way 
in the combination ergative/TAM markers. The durative tin- becomes tinw-, 
tan- becomes tanw-, but tun- becomes tuny-. 

What about consonant harmony, by the way? I'm not talking about the
> normal, "simple", assimilation/dissimilation phenomena here either 
> (i.e. the familiar voicing, devoicing, deaspiration etc.), but about
> something along the lines of "affix XYZ contains voiced plosive
> archiphoneme, which is realized at the place of articulation of the
> last consonant in the stem". With some invented stems and affixes, 
> this would look something like:
> 
> affix 1 -aNa (where N = nasal archiphoneme)
> affix 2 -FiB (where F = unvoiced fricative archiphoneme,
> B = voiced plosive archiphoneme)
> 
> stem 1 balas -> balasana, balassid 
> stem 2 fetep -> fetepama, fetepfib
> stem 3 simuk -> simukaNa, simukxig
> 
> Does this kind of thing occur in some natlang? Or has anyone done it
> in a conlang? I know some North American languages have things like 
> sibilant harmony (so that a stem containing /s/ or /z/ will take
> affixes with alveolar fricatives, and a stem containing /S/ or /Z/
> will take affixes with postalveolar fricatives); but are there any
> languages where this kind of harmony phenomenon affects consonants at 
> all points of articulation, and also other consonants besides
> fricatives? Anyway, I kind of like it. :-)
 I think one finds alveolar/retroflex harmony in various languages of India. 
(A quick google mentions Finnish, in fact; it says that some Finns find it 
difficult to produce both /b/ and /p/ in the same word, and so will make a 
loan like "pubi" into "bubi" or "pupi".) 
 But a thoroughgoing, productive consonant harmony in affixes, I can't think 
of an example. I could imagine this produced diachronically from 
reduplication, though... Say we indicated the plural by reduplication of the 
final syllable. (balaba -> balaba-ba) But then, for some reason the 
intensifier suffix -n gets added to all plurals (giving us balababan) and 
then, due to stress changes or something, the final "a" is elided (balababn) 
and the /bn/ mutates to /m/. Provided this happens across all points of 
articulation, we now have a plural suffix -N. (Archiphoneme N, of course, 
not "ng".) 
 balaba -> balabam
lomoto -> lomoton
qapatj -> qapatjanj
wilugu -> wilugung
 A half dozen funny reduplication processes like this could give us a number 
of interesting suffixes involving consonant mutation. 
 Can't wait to see what you end up doing!
-- 
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 


-- 
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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