Re: CHAT: Unconventional pronoun systemsshow us yours!

Quoting Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>:

>  --- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> schrieb:
> > * Jump for cover as people tell me how much my
> > phonaesthetic tastes suck *
>
> Well, de gustibus non disputandum, or somesuch. I, for
> one, like it; it's a cute word.
>
> Where does the accent (if any) go in [me;dy]? And am I
> right to assume that the /;/ is an extra-short mark?
> If so, you're a brave man, toying with _three_ levels
> of vowel length!
I _think_ is is my fifth message for today ... let's see if it gets thru.

The _semi_colon, appropriately, denotes half-length - [e;] is between [e] and
[e:] in length. Notice I use square brackets - the length difference is
subphonemic. In phonemic transcription we'd have simply /medy/. Stress is on
the first syllable, and the half-length is a side-effect of the stress -
stressed vowels are somewhat drawn out compared to unstressed ones. Actually, I
think I used a full colon to indicate this lengthening on the webpage.

The Altaii stress system is actually very easy; in polysyllabic words, if the
last syllable contains a diphthong, stress goes on said last syllable,
otherwise it goes on the second-to-last syllable. Monosyllabic words,
naturally, always get the stress on the last syllable! :)

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