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New Orthography

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Thursday, September 28, 2000, 3:54
I've made a slight change to the orthography.  I had written [j] and
[i]; and [w] and [u] differently.  The reason for this was that, altho I
realized that they were merely allophones of each other, there was a
problem with using <i> and <u> for /j/ and /w/.  Namely, that long
vowels are indicated by doubled vowels, and /ji/ and /wu/ were legal
combinations.  Thus, <ii> would be ambiguous between /ji/ and /i:/.
However, I've now eliminated the /ji/ and /wu/ combinations, so that
there's no problem with using <i> and <u> for [j] and [w].  It also
*greatly* simplifies matters, since I don't have alternations between
u/w and i/y.

Due to the elimination of pre-glide <a> in certain situations, new,
formerly illegal, combinations of Cy are possible.  Early on, /tj/,
/dj/, /sj/, /zj/, /kj/, and /gj/ had become /tS/, /dZ/, /S/, /Z/, /C/,
and /j/.  They were written as <ti>, <di>, <si>, <zi>, <ki>, and <i>.
But now, words like daiá became /dja/, but diá would be ambiguous
between /dja/ and /dZa/.  So, in Romanization, I use d'iá for /dja/.
However, native script uses the <diá> for both.  No problem with the new
/gj/, since the previous had merely merged with /j/, and was written
that way.

Words like d'iá give rise to additional complexity in inflection.  The
superlative infix -la- originally went after the first vowel.  Now, in
the older form you'd have daiá/dalaiá, simple enough.  But with the
pre-glide a-deletion, you'd have d'iá/daliá, so that the infix appears
to be -al- rather than -la-.

A secondary palatization later occurred, /sj/, /zj/, /tj/, and /dj/
became /S/, /Z/, /ts/, and /dz/.  /kj/ and /gj/ have so far resisted
secondary palatization.  This, however, is post-Classical.  My
description covers the language used by pá tiNlastá (the Prophetess),
which was, in the Gregorian calendar, around late 17th century.  So, by
today, the year 2000, secondary palatization has not touched /kj/ and
/gj/.  That occurred around the early 4th century YF (mid 22nd century
Gregorian), and caused them to merge with /ts/ and /dz/

--
Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos
God gave teeth; God will give bread - Lithuanian proverb
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