Re: Nimrina phonology

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

>> I wóuld like to get [K\] involved somehow. Voiced stops have fricative
>> allophones, as in /dmázi/ [Dma:z_ji] "blue-green". Possibly /nidlu/
>> "violet" could be [n_jidK\u]. Or another possibility could be
>> lengthened /l/ between vowels.
>
> Maybe both /dl/ > [Dl] > [K\] *and* [l:] > [K\].  Again the
> kind of thing that would happen in a natlang.  BTW if you
> have *G > zero, you can have the fricative allophone of /g/
> also be zero.  Cf. Welsh where *G > zero but /w/v/D/ are
> preserved.  Also modern Danish which in the course of the
> last century merged its [G] allophone of /g/ with /j/ or
> the [w] allophone of /v/ depending on the backness of the
> preceding vowel, much like in Old English as I wrote of
> yesterday.
I was thinking I already had /dl/ > [K\] in one of my languages, but I
can't find it, and there's no reason not to reuse it even if I do. What
I might be remembering is /tl/ > [K] in Zharranh. But certainly with [D]
as an allophone of /d/ in cases like /dm/, /dr/, the /dl/ > [Dl] > [K\:]
development would make sense. Phonemically, maybe the best way to
represent it is /l:/ (or /ll/).

> In particular there seems to be males of the kindred in Norway,
> which is never the case in Sweden, where huldran is more of
> a female demon luring horny young men to perish in the woods.
> On the whole the Norwegian huldre shows herself to be more
> domesticable, having a cow rather than fox tail and all! :-)
Considering the variety of human hair color, length, curliness and so
on, there are probably similar variations in tail features. Maybe the
cow-tailed huldre speak a distantly related language. The absence of
males in Swedish legend could simply be a result of the rarity of
encountering one in the first place.

> It should be noted that there are variants of the hollow
> back where the back looks like bark or is hairy, which are
> perhaps easier to make biological sense of (bark = coarse
> or gray skin).  Especially a species which is naked in the
> face and the front/under side of the torso but hairy otherwise
> seems like a biological possibility.
Yes, how would they stand upright with a hollow back? I like the idea of
the rough or hairy back better. It could be both hairy and look like
bark, I guess -- a coloration pattern in the hair.

> What d you think of the idea that _huld(r)a_ is an attempt
> to adapt a Nimrína word [hudK\a]? :-).
>
> FYI all of _huldra/huldre/huldu/_ are derivable from the
> past participle of the Old Norse verb _hylja_ 'conceal',
> but it seems strange that the genitive plural _huldra_
> should prevail as a base form in Swedish and Norwegian.
I don't think that's a good idea if the Icelandic huldufólk are
something else entirely. I guess it's probably not likely that humans
know what the Nimrína speakers call themselves in any case.

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