Re: OT: Orthographic challenges

* David J. Peterson said on 2007-07-03 21:11:38 +0200
> T. wrote:
> > The ortography of Taruven is more of a transliteration than
> > a proper orthography and sometimes the system breaks down.
> > For instance:
>
> First thought: Why bother with a roman orthography since
> Taruven *has* an orthography?  Why not simply use a
> transliteration system--i.e., it just sounds the way it's
> spelled?
A transliteration-system, they way I understand it, is a 1 to 1
mapping between an original orthography and a writing scheme in
a foreign language or script. The roman orthography/
transliteration/whatever *is* a transliteration but it is
currently not 1-to-1, but simplified so as to make it impossible
to know whether an h is breathy, aspiration or fricative!

> T.:
> > I've been using ¨ (umlaut) to mark roots that are writtenn
> > with a symbol instead of with letters, for instance in the
> > negation-marker {ë-}.
>
> Bear with me if I'm not understanding.  Are these words that
> have no phonological stem?
Of course they have a phonological stem, it's just that they're
written with a symbol when the symbol is available. When not
available (say, with an ascii keyboard if they have such a
thing) those roots are marked somehow, by italics, bold, change
of colors, underlining, brackets, cartouche, whatever, since you
may have homonyms which differ only in writing.

Currently, these symbols are all affixes (prefixes, usually). In
addition to the negation-marker there is a "generalizer" for
nouns, the vocative and some others. I know that there exists
symboled nouns however.

I can't seem to get putty to behave regarding UTF8 so I can't
type 'em in.

> They simply have an orthographic form to which affixes are
> attached?
The mapping between symbol and sound is well-known.
Conculturally, when one comes of age one receives the Book of
Symbols (new, in *paper*, with thick margins for the writing of
comments) which maps symbols to their pronunciation and meaning
and the reverse as well.

> T.:
> > A word in taruven cannot end in a voiced stop. Voiced stops
> > are therefore either aspirated (written with an {h}) or adds
> > a protective e (now written as {e}). Unfortunately this
> > means that words that actually end with an aspirated voiced
> > stop, or voiced stop+e, can be mistaken for words with
> > "protected" final voiced stops. This is unfortunate because
> > in a compound or when adding suffixes, the "protection" is
> > stripped away:
>
> Of course, if you don't represent this in the roman
> transliteration system, it's not a problem.
Since it is in the orthography, not having it in the
transliteration would mean it wasn't a transliteration.

> Assuming we're talking about the orthography, though, this
> *isn't* a problem at all--far from unfortunate.  You have two
> different noun genders, as it were, that look identical.
> That's very cool!  Now, is this the case...?
>
> Class I:
> (Requires aspiration or protective /e/)
> dagh "cave" (sg.)
> dagen "cave" (plu.)
> ige "short"
> iga "shorter"
>
> That's the first class.  There could *also* be a class like
> this:
>
> dagh "ukulele" (sg.)
> daghen "ukulele" (plu.)
This is the case, yes. There already is a covert gender-system
though, animate vs. inanimate, but that only shows up in the
syntax (only animate NPs can be subjects of verbs).

> ige "short"
> igea "shorter"
This is not the case. The only agreement is in case, and only
when needed. Adjectives are really proto-verbs after all, as
they generally must be in a verb-serializing/incorporating
language.

> So with the romanization that people are actually going to
> look at and use, I recommend being as transparent as possible.
> It's just a tool, after all; the orthography (your symbols)
> are the artistic bit.
There is another reason for this scheme: I use Toolbox, and it
pays when interlinearising to cut ruthlessly down on ambiguity
by judicious use of spelling.

The orthography itself is very close to morphophonemic btw., I
just haven't bothered to scan things in or update symbols to
their modern form.


t.

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