Re: NEW LANG: Telek

At 4/26/00 03:14 PM -0600, you wrote:

>Hey.
>
>This is getting longer and more involved; lot's of fun stuff
>below about Telek!
Sometimes I wonder why I didn't go into phonology.  But then I work on some
syntax and remember.  :)  (Syntax and morphology coming soon, I hope.)

>> Stated this way, yes it probably does.  I should rearrange the order of the
>> rules: 3 before 1.  Actually, I was thinking about this intuitively as:
peak
>> must be heavy, do not lengthen word final vowel, put peak as close to the
end
>> of the word as possible.  Rather OT-ish.
>
>Yes! If we assume the following constraints
>
>        WtS: Weight to Stress "stressed syllables are heavy"
>        NonInit: initial syllables may not be stressed
>        NoLongF: final syllables may not contain long vowels
>        Align-R: the stress is as close to the right edge as
>        possible
>
>and rank them in that order, the right results should pop out,
>as the following tableax show (oh no! he's including tableaux!)
I was tempted, but the last time I used OT on a mailing list (Elfling) I got
some private requests that I not do it again.  I didn't want to alienate
myself
here so quickly, but I guess that won't be an issue.

>To get cases where both of the final two syllables are heavy, a
>top-ranked constraint MaxMora will be needed to insure that
>there is no deletion of underlying moras to satisfy NoLongF (and
>get stress on the ultima).
I also need Id(Length) positioned immediately above NoLongF, that way
underlying long finals would remain.  Lengthening of both the ultimate and the
penult would violate it, but then the correct output would result from
NoLongF.

>In Telek, you have a system of deletion which handles hiatus
>between stems and derivational affixes, but a different system
>between stems and inflection. This would be a prime candidate
>for a lexical phonological analysis.
Interesting.

>A functional principle which the OTers have adopted is that
>preservation of underlying material in the root or stem takes
>precedence over preservation of underlying material from
>affixes. That's why I thought this was unusual. There's a
>corollary which states that affixes will contain "unmarked"
>segmental material and "marked" segments will be confined to
>roots and stems.
Now that you mention it, I remember hearing that, but I was not presented any
evidence for it, so I didn't pay too much attention.  (A professor's
nightmare!  Make him justify everything!)

>> The glottal stop and h don't have a place of articulation in the mouth, so
>> they
>> disappear, but the time slot is still present, so the preceding consonant
>> spreads to fill it.  (Autosegmental thinking.)
>
>If timing is represented by moras in Telek, doesn't this amount
>to the claim that onsets are moraic? This would truly be
>unusual!
As I learned it, each segment of a word has a timing slot with its
autosegmental features attached to it, geminates and long vowels are attached
to two slots.  I didn't mean anything about morae, because I don't  know
enough
about them to feel comfortable playing with them.  (Maybe I should have taken
that seminar on metrics....)  Am I implying that onsets are moraic?  I may
need
to change things if so.

>That would clinch it. Thanks for some conlang phonology to think
>about! (Mind you, I can afford the time only because the end of
>the semester is here and I don't have to prepare lecture notes!)
Thank you!  First chance to do this, since I don't know any conlangers around
here.

Marcus