Re: Dropping from the root

Mangiat wrote:

>Take a look at this explanation I've been working at for my conlang: could
>this work?
>
>For a tri-consonantal root *MANS, in the ancestral language, there were two
>distinct forms playing around: *MAN (or short form) and *MANS (or long
>form). Some inflected forms required the former, some others the latter. In
>Senquarian this alternation has been preserved (in some cases even extended)
>and it can still be seen. In the present tense, for exemple, we have:
>
>  mans (1s), mansän (1p), manseit (2p)
>
>where the element s is present. But also:
>
>  mannut (2s), man (3s), mannen (3p)
>
>where s is absent.
>
>The inclusion or the exclusion of the final consonant of the root in an
>inflected form was originally caused by phonetic developments, but it has
>reached a purely morphological function. Man (3s) was indeed originated by a
>previous *mans with zero ending (the bare root); since final clusters were
>not tolerated, *mans lost its final vowel. The new form quickly spread over
>the entire conjugation. The form mannut (2s) was created agglutinating a
>pronominal clitic to distinguish it from man (3s), as mannen (3p) is from
>man + hen, where hen meant 'those, they'.
>
>*Historical development of the system*
>
>Originally we had:
>
>1 s Mans- the root + an unstressed personal ending
>                                 (a vowel which later fell)
>2 s Man-s the root + an infix
>1 p Mans- the root + a stressed personal ending
>2 p Mans- the root + a stressed personal ending
>3 s/p Man(s) the bare root - notice that the final consonant fell
I'm curious about where the infix in the 2s came from. That seems an odd
trait to have been original to a system. Is there such infixation elsewhere
in the language?

Another point I'm curious about is the "stressed personal endings". Are
these suffixes that happen to attract the stress of the word, or are the
some type of pronoun.

>The infix present in 2s caused the last consonant of the root, an s in final
>position, to fall, and the form generated by this phonological development
>happened to resemble the one of the 3rd person (encoding both singular and
>plural meanings).
What happened to the infix?

>  The two forms merged (analogy), generating this system:
>
>1 s Mans the long root
>2 s Man the short root
>1 p Mans- the long root + a stressed personal ending
>2 p Mans- the long root + a stressed personal ending
>3 s/p Man the short root
>
>Meanwhile, the VSO order typical of the language and the quite common use of
>cliticised pronouns caused the collapse of these pronouns with the short
>root in 2s and 3p. The system now looks like the one described in the
>introductory passage:
>
>1 s Mans the long root
>2 s Man- the short root + a cliticised pronoun
>3 s Man the short root
>1 p Mans- the long root + a stressed personal ending
>2 p Mans- the long root + a stressed personal ending
>3 s/p Man- the short root + a cliticised pronoun
Is there a reason the cliticised pronouns didn't attach to all the forms?
There must have been a stage where 3s had to be distinguished from 3p and
2s, and it doesn't seem quite right to skip 3s in adding new material.

>What do you think?
Good historical progression. I'd like to see how this verb look embedded in
the larger context of the verbal system. That is, how did these historical
processes affect the other verbs in the language?

>Onto the other part of the message...
>
> > Suffixes are always added to the non-truncated form.
>
>Pronominal clitics, too? Or are these agglutinated in front of the root?
Pronominal clitics all occur at the beginning of the word. They definitely
are not "agglutinated" there. Clitics are separate words that have been
phonologically attached to a word, while affixes are morphologically
attached to a word. The distinction can be subtle, but can also be very
important.



Marcus Smith

Unfortunately, or luckily,
no language is tyrannically consistent.
All grammars leak.
                -- Edward Sapir

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