Re: Cwendaso vowel combinations (was: Re: Syllabic consonants (was: Re: Beek))

Isidora Zamora sikyal:

> I am very grateful that you have made the contribution.  The language needs
> words and morphemes.  It may possibly have increased in size by 40-50%
> yesterday.  (I am honestly not kidding!  You know that I've been saying
> that this language is embryonic.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to develop
> its grammar much further until I read a good textbook on language typology
> to get an idea what sort of structural options are open to me.  Does anyone
> have a good, all-purpose book on typology, with plenty of examples, to
> suggest?  I read at a fairly high level; I have a B.A. in linguistics, but
> wasn't offered a typology class.  English books only.)
The Cambride Linguistics series is excellent, and has a book on Typology.
Check it out at http://books.cambridge.org/0521004993.htm.  Also consider
anything from Oxford University Press, though I can't find a typology
title at the moment. Wait, scratch that:
http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0198238665.html has one.

> Okay, here I go doubling the current lexical inventory of the language in
> order to demonstrate (or rather, figuring out) a phonological phenomenon or
> two....
> [snip generally nice-sounding examples]
I think your examples can be generalized with the following rules:

For collisions of two vowels:

1) With two vowels of unequal height, the lower vowel becomes the nucleus.
The other vowel is reduced to a glide (onset or coda), with front vowels
uniformly becoming [j] and back vowels [w].
2) With two vowels of the same height, the first vowel is reduced to a
glide as above and the second becomes the nucleus.
3) With two identical vowels, the vowels are simply coalesced into one.

For collisions of three (or more?) vowels the middle vowel is (or:
vowels are?) dropped, and the remaining vowels interact as outlined above.

There's only one problem:
> <pare> --> <paryu>     'to live'  'I live'
This one really should be <parew>, for consistency, as /e/ is the lower
vowel.

> <indumo> --> <indumow>  'to speak'  'I speak'
>
> Does that look better spelled <indumow> or <indumou>?
I much prefer <indumou>, and actually I think that <pareu> is better than
<parew>, which I wrote above. I like <w> for onsets and <u> for codas, for
no particular reason.

> I am going to need some suggestions from some of you as to how /au/ should
> combine with the vowels, because it doesn't seem to want to do so as neatly
> as /ei/ did.  For the purpose of this excercise, I have created the suffix
> -aug, used to form the past passive participle.
>
> <khedi> --> <kedyaug>
> <pare> --> <paryaug>
> <uma> --> <umaug>
> <indumo> --> <indumoug>
> <bukhu> --> <bukhwaug>
These don't follow the rule that I tentatively gave above, whereby the
middle vowel should be dropped. Following that rule would give,
respectively <khedyug>, <pareug>, <umaug>, <indumoug>,  <bukhug>. But
those don't really feel right, either. Perhaps /a/ is treated differently
in these rules, or perhaps there are merely ad-hoc exceptions. That would
certainly be naturalistic! In any case, you'll certainly need to
complexify the process to get good results with /aug/.

It might be more natural for V + /a/ to act exactly like V + /au/--why
should the onset care if it's in the same syllable as a coda? That would
give the results that you originally showed above for /aug/. But to be
consistent, that would mean that /indumo + eis/ becomes <indumweis>, not
<indumois> as you showed--and other such changes.

If you wish to preserve the original ideas for both, you probably need to
stipulate the front and back vowels behave differently, or some such. Of
course, complete consistency is not a requirement.

> All this vowel interaction is really making me appreciate a language like
> Latin where the parts of speech have to fulfill certain requirements as to
> what form they can take instead of them all looking like each other.  Latin
> morho-phonemics are certainly much simpler than this.  Not that I'm not
> having fun, but it's going to be a bear to remember to apply all these
> phonological rules when I assemble words.
Eh, if you can boil it down to a few general principles, as I tried to do
above, it's not so hard. Much easier than remembering a few dozen
individual cases :).

> Well, honestly, I think that I've done enough work (or is it play)
I think it's play, and quite fun play at that. I've enjoyed helping you!
Please do keep posting.

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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