Re: word derivation in sabyuka (some principles)

En réponse à julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>:

> Hi,
>
Hi!

Sorry not to have replied before, but I wanted to wait until I had time enough
to give thoughful comments.

> I'm glad to show you what I did so far (not so much to be honnest)
> about
> word derivation in sabyuka. First I'll talk about roots. Every root
> must
> end in a weak vowel 'à, i, u' (there are three series : weak 'à, i,
> u';
> mid 'a, e, o' strong 'â, ê, ô') or in a consonant (except a few CV
> words)
> The general patterns are : (I)V(C)(V) / (I)VCCà
>
How are the vowels pronounced? And are there gradation effects that justify the
classification in "weak", "medium" and "strong" vowels, or just phonetic
phenomena like the Spanish classification of a, e and o as strong vowels and i
and u as weak because when a weak vowel and a strong vowel meet they make a
diphtongue, while when two strong vowels meet there is a syllable break between
them?

> Verbosely, it is : a root is at least made of one vowel (V),
> optionnally
> preceeded by one initial cluster (I), optionally followed by one
> consonant(C) and eventually a vowel (V) , or two consonants and a
> schwa
> necessarily.
> Initial (I) is any consonant or 's' followed by any sonorant 'v, y, l,
> m, n' (except 'r' because *sr is an illegal cluster which turns to
> 'sl'
> (just because I can't pronounce it !!!)).
>
How do you pronounce 'r' in Sabyuka? Because I cannot even think of a
pronunciation of 'r' that would be impossible to pronounce after 's'. And if I
understood correctly 'v' marks /w/? Neat!

> Examples will make it clearer :
>
> V :
> CV : 'xa' "to be" (an exeption because of final 'a')
> VC : 'ic' "to go"
> VCV : 'urà' "water"
> VCCV : 'aktà' "to lead"
> CVC : 'leth' "to believe"
> ClVC : 'smak' "to want"
> CVCV : 'sabi' "to know, kowledge", manu "man"
> and so on...
>
I'd like to see pronunciations :)) . (especially for the difference between 'c'
and 'k' and the pronunciation of 'x' and 'th' :) )

>
> Then, sabyuka is a nominative language with 6 cases. Referential roots
> (for instance 'manu' can be directly declined : the declination basis
> is
> found by :
> - deleting every final 'à' *urà > ur-
> - consonantizing into 'y' final 'i' *sabi > saby-
> - consonantizing into 'v' final 'u' *manu > manv-
>
Am I right to think that 'à' is the schwa? :)))

> Here are the cases and the words declined :
>
> Nominative (NOM) : -à
> Accusative (ACC) : -(à)na
> Genitive (GEN) : -i
> Dative (DAT) : -u
> Instrumental : -(à)ru
> Locative : -e
>
> NOM : urà, sabyà, manvà
> ACC : urna, sabyàna, manvàna
> GEN : uri, sabyi, manvi
> DAT : uru, sabyu, manvu
> INST : ullu*, sabyàru, manvàru
> LOC : ure, sabye, manve
>
> * from illegal *urru, that I can't pronounce :).
Why? If 'r' is a flap, why don't you do like Spanish which takes 'r' as flap
but 'rr' as trill, which sounds near enough to a geminated flap :)) . Any other
pronunciation of 'r' I can think of can easily be made longer. But it doesn't
mean you have to change anything, this r>l change is rather neat and adds a bit
of irregularity which is nice and naturalistic.

> Schwa is there only to break illegal clusters, such as sabyàru from
> *sabyru. In certain dialects, or non colloquial fast speech, there is
> pronounciations such as [s'abiru] for [s'aby@ru], but the writing is
> only |sabyàru|.
You normally put the stress mark in phonetic marking before the whole syllable,
not the vowel only, because stress is a prosodic phenomenon, not a phenomenon
linked only to vowels. So you should write ['sabiru]. Also, you should have
written "['sabiru] for /'saby@ru/" since the second one, besides being what
some people may say, is also the actual phonemic representation of the word,
even for people who pronounce it ['sabiru]. Anyway, I already have my answer
about the 'à' ;))) .

> As you can see, words are always accentuated on the root basic vowel :
> such words are called "first derivation words". You can add for
> instance
> a suffix to the root ('sabyàjà' > "the-one+who-knows" >>
> "grammairian")
>
You should put your explanatory glosses (e.g. "the-one+who-knows") in the order
of the morphemes in the word itself. For instance here the root |sabi| is
followed by a suffix |àjà|: "the one who" (at least if my analysis is
correct :)) ). So your gloss should have been "know+the-one-who": "grammarian".
It's just to make things clearer so that we know where to look for the morpheme
limits.

> There are also "second derivation words", which can use, for instance,
> a
> particular case of the root (I borrow this feature to Euskara).
It's a neat feature isn't it? :))) I have it in Moten, which is slightly
inspired by Euskara indeed :) .

 The
> accent moves to the final vowel of the root to make a new root.
> Example
> : /s'abyu/ > /saby'u+kà/ = "that+which-leads-to-the-knowledge" -->
> "language".
Well, wouldn't |kà| rather mean "that-which" rather than "that" alone? Because
|sabyu| to me only means "to-the-knowledge". Your analysis adds things in the
wrong places in my opinion, unless for some reason you have a zero relative
pronoun which is meant always with such derivations.

> 'Ure' > 'urekà' = "that+in-the-water" --> "fish"
> And so on.
>
You see, if you gloss |-kà| as "that-which", you can simply gloss both examples
as:
|sabyukà| = "to-the-knowledge+that-which" >> "language"
|urekà|   = "in-the-water+that-which" >> "fish"

It makes in my opinion the analyses clearer and more consistent between words.
Note also the main rule of interlinear: follow the morpheme order of the
*source* language.

> There is also a few infixes, such as the metaphoric (sometimes called
> poetic) infix "-ek", placed before the (first) vowel. The meaning is
> really hard to define and there are plenty of uses. Compare :
>
> 'yol' "to cry" > 'yekol' "to rain"
> 'teq' "to tell" > 'tekeq' "to sing"
> 'mat' "to see" > 'mekat' "to desire"
> "dem" " to do" > 'dekem' "to build"
>
That's a neat feature. Is it a productive feature (i.e. you can apply it to any
verb and even to new ones) or just used with some verbs? (well, the number of
different meanings for the infix lets me think it's the latter, but I may be
wrong)

> So I will stop here. Congratulations if you managed to go so far. Any
> comment or suggestion will be welcome :).
>
Well, my comments had more to do with the form rather than the language itself,
but as you may know I don't consider myself to be able to comment on linguistic
features themselves, except for asking more questions and maybe propose some
features :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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