Re: Grammatical tones

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 10:30:43PM -0300, Pablo David Flores wrote:
> H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> writes:
>
> > I don't know how plausible it is, but Ebisedian inflects gender by
> > shifting the stressed (high-pitched) syllable. Of course, in many cases
> > the consonant changes as well, but that is only because of emphasis.
>
> I'm working on a similar thing for Senu Yivokuchi, only
> the tone is lost in the modern language. I also wanted
> to ask the experts whether this is plausible. It's quite
> similar to the Ebisedian emphasis-triggered alternation
> (I swear I didn't know!) but this is a human language
> and E. is not...
But Ebisedian *is* supposed to be a human language. The Ebisedi are more
or less human manifestations, albeit in a rather unusual universe.

> The modern language has pairs like these:
>
>     bir- 'know' / pir- 'wise man, sage'
>     deka- 'painful' / teka- 'sick person, suffering one'
Interesting. Ebisedian has two ways of forming such nouns:

1) the usual way is to take the radix form of an adjectival noun,
   and prefix it to _bis33'di_, "person". E.g.,
        rosa'ni [r`o"sani], "wise"
        rosanobis33'di [r`o%sanobi"s@\di], "wise person"

2) an idiomatic way is to prefix the adjectival noun with one of the
   proper noun prefixes, thus turning it into a name, or a special
   designation:
        Kasa'ni [k_ha"sani], "expertise", "mastery"(*)
        oKasa'ni [?ok_ha"sani], "Expert"(*) (epicene name)
        iKasa'ni [?ik_ha"sani], "Expertise" (personified(*) abstract noun)

(*) there really isn't an adequate translation for _Kasa'ni_. It refers to
a superlative, ultimate mastery, the culmination of _cusa'ni_,
intelligence, _rosa'ni_, wisdom in dealing with matters and things,
coupled with the learnings of experience. The _hoKasanii'_ (pl. of
_oKasa'ni_) are a special group of people among the Ebisedi, the pioneers
and masters of learning. (Long con-history here which I will omit. :-P)
Thus the designation _oKasa'ni_ is special; it's not just an ordinary
"expert" but a capitalized "Expert".

(**) not really *person*-ified, because _i-_ is neuter; but it does
indicate a special designation, such as we distinguish between
"the thing" and "the Thing" in English.

[snip]
> Is an intermediate stage plausible (e. g. creaky voice
> becoming an intrusive glottal stop or glottalization,
> as in /b_ki_kr/ -> /b?i_kr/ -> /p'i_kr/ or /bhi_kr/)?
> The change from creaky voice to /?/ to /h/ would fit in
> nicely, since /bh/ -> /p/ regularly. (SYV has "aspirated"
> voiced stops alongside unvoiced ones, like PIE.)
Sounds plausible to me. :-) I'm no expert at phonology, though; so I leave
it to somebody more qualified than I am to answer your question.


T

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