Re: proto-romance questions

J. Barefoot wrote:
>
> Well what'dy'a know? I went to the university library and they had exactly
> what I needed! "Proto-Romance Phonology" by Robert Hall, who my French
> insists on calling Bob {cue creepy music}; it has lots of examples. Perhaps
> I'll post a proto-Romance vocabulary to my webpage. Anyway, not having
> studied Latin really, I have some questions:
> 1) the -ere verbs (so my sources say) were all stressed on the stem. Do the
> other verb classes have (semi-)regular stress like this? Specifically, are
> the -are verbs stressed on the ending? Because of stress and
> diphthongization rules in my current sketch, the -ere     (-ara) verbs are
> merging with the -are (-aira), by analogy of inflection, not infinitve form.
> Okay, so I have a question. Let me tell y'all what I've got so far. {cough
> *peer review?* cough}
>
> stops: p t k b d g {pi tau kappa beta delta gamma} <-- Greek orthography!
> fricatives: f s sh v z zh h {phi sigma sigma* upsilon zeta zeta* breathy
> diacritic} *still iffy on the orthography of /S/ and /Z/; probably
> sigma+iota and zeta+iota, as /S/ and /Z/ were originally allophones of /s/
> and /z/, becoming contrastive by borrowing(?) "h" also reintroduced by
> borrowing
> affricates: /tS/ {kappa+iota / kappa+eta}
> nasals: m n {mu nu} Do many languages have a palatal m?
> liquids: l r {lambda rho}
> semivowels: y {iota}
> vowels: i {iota}   u {omega}
>         e {eta}    o {omicron}
>               a {alpha}
>
> essere > easara > easra > yasra "to be"
> su     sumu
> es     esi
> est    sud (nt>d)
>
> andare > adaira "to go"
> vo     adamu
> vas    adasi
> va     vad
>
> lingu_a >lengba > leamba > leaba "tongue"
> kingere > kienara /tSenara/ "to don"
> u_irde > bierda "green"
> die > zia /Za/ "day"
> kria're > kriaira "to create"
> amare > amaira "to like"
>
> first (and so far only) conjugation verbs : -ara and -aira
> -ara - stress on stem
> -aira - stress on ending
>
> kiendara
> kie'ndo    kie'ndamu
> kie'ndas   kie'ndasi
> kie'ndat   kie'ndad
>
> kriaira
> krio'    kria'mu
> krias'   kria'si
> kriat'   kriad'
>
> A sentence: Amo' kriai'ra una lea'ba!
>
> Jennifer
>

I really really like the way this Romance language came out, Jennifer,
it seems really cool.  I can't really explain why, but...How did you
come up with the sound changes and conjugations and stuff?  Can we see
your rules?  I always try to make up my own Romance language but it
never sounds quite right - I'm jealous!  So, where is this language
spoken? (Presumably near Greece, right?) And is it influenced by Greek
in other ways besides alphabetically?  It seems really interesting.

Nicole
--
nicole.eap@snet.net
http://nicole.conlang.org