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Re: Plural vowel change

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Thursday, January 28, 1999, 2:00
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999 17:05:14 +0100 Daniel Andreasson
<noldo@...> writes:
>Hello fellow conlangers! >I have a question (my first ever, yey! :) >In my conlang Rinya, the plural is marked by changing the vowel(s) = >inside the word. The question is: What is the normal way of doing >this? Or is there a 'normal' way at all? >Of course I could just make a pattern up, but if all existing >languages = >that have this feature do it the same way, it would be interesting to >know. >Do the vowels change from back to front or from open/low to >close/high? = >And if the latter, what happens if the word is for instance 'cin'? >Would = >that be 'can' in the plural and go back to open/low again? >Or does it have something to do with the preceding consonant?=20 >And what about diphthongs like 'ae' and 'oe'?
>As you can see, I have no clue at all. Please help! :) >Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. >/ Daniel Andreasson
Well, in Hebrew, because the accent of the word falls on the last syllable in plurals, some of the weaker vowels collapse into a shva-na` (schwa /@/) when they are too far from the stressed syllable, in this case the plural suffix. /'kElEv/ (dog) >>> /k@la'vim/ (dogs) /Sa'mar/ (he guarded) >>> /S@mar'tem/ (you [pl.m.] guarded) /ba'raq/ (lightning) >>> /b@ra'qim/ (lightnings) -Stephen (Steg) ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]