Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: proto-romance questions

From:Grandsire, C.A. <grandsir@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 15, 1999, 9:46
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}
I like this one!
> nasals: m n {mu nu} Do many languages have a palatal m?
Romance languages often have a palatal n and a palatal l, but palatal m seems rather rare for me. However, palatalisation of liquids and nasals in Romance languages is very frequent, so I think you can have your palatal m if you want :) .
> liquids: l r {lambda rho} > semivowels: y {iota} > vowels: i {iota} u {omega} > e {eta} o {omicron} > a {alpha} >
Interesting, omega is used instead of upsilon for the u. I like it :) .
> > A sentence: Amo' kriai'ra una lea'ba! >
Me too! :) Good job Jennifer. I'd like my Romance language Reman to be like that, but I wasn't consistent when I made it (nevertheless, you can take a look at it at http://reman.conlang.org, if you understand French :) ).
> Jennifer > > --------- > There are, it may be, so many kinds of languages in the world, and none of > them is without significance. - I Cor. 14:10 > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
-- Christophe Grandsire Philips Research Laboratories -- Building WB 145 Prof. Holstlaan 4 5656 AA Eindhoven The Netherlands Phone: +31-40-27-45006 E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com