Re: Plural vowel change

Hi Daniel,

>Hello fellow conlangers!
>
>I have a question (my first ever, yey! :)
Welcome!

>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?
This is a common method in both Germanic & Celtic languages.  In both these
groups it is caused by the loss of a final -i.  These in ProtoGermanic we
have 'fo:t' (foot) 'fo:ti' (feet).  It seems that in anticipation, so to
speak, the /o:/ became fronted to /=F8:/  (French 'eu', German o-umlaut).  A=
t
first this is just a conditioned allophone of /o:/, but speakers come
eventually to regard it as a separate phoneme and thus the plural ending -i
becomes redundant and is then dropt, so we have: fo:t ~ f=F8:t.

In Old English the rounded front vowels became unrounded, so it had: fo:t
(sing.), fe:t (plural).  These developed regularly to modern English 'foot'
and 'feet'.   Thus, to answer one of your later questions, the change is a
fronting of the vowel.  Thus in English we have:
goose  -  geese
tooth  -  teeth
man    -  men
woman  -  women /wImIn/
mouse  -  mice    <--- earlier:  mu:s  - my:s
louse  - lice
etc.

In Welsh you'll find:
car    -  ceir   =3D  car(s)
bachgen - bechgyn =3D boy(s)
gwr  - gwyr  =3D man/men


>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.
No they don't all do it the same way.  Welsh has other interesting patters, =
cf.
ty - tai =3D house(s); troed - traed =3D foot/feet.

You could, e.g. an original plural ending -a (like, e.g. neuter plurals in
Latin), which cause vowels to move lower, so, e.g. you could have: kin -
ken; tun - ton.

I've never come across it, but there is no reason why you couldn't have had
an original plural ending in -u which then cause front vowels to move to
the back; this could well give rise to unrounded back vowels in your
language.  They seem to be less common among natlangs than rounded front
vowels, but they certain occur; Thai, e.g. has seven unrounded back vowels:
three short, three long, & a low diphthong.

Don't worry - there's variety in natlangs.  Devise your own pattern as long
it is not purely arbitrary and you can show how the form came about.

>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?
All depends on you & what the 'original' plural was and what sounds have
been loss.  You could experiment with different diachronic scenarios - that
might be fun.
>
>Or does it have something to do with the preceding consonant?
Not really, I think.  Preceeding consonants can cause certain vowel changes
but that in itself wouldn't cause the plural change.  I wouldn't worry
about that at the moment.  Experiment with different pural patters that can
be give a "history".

>And what about diphthongs like 'ae' and 'oe'?
Oh yes, definitely diphthongs are possibilities.  You'll have notice the
Welsh 'car' /kar/ (with trilled /r/) becomes 'ceir' /k@ir/ in the plural.
The final -i of the original *cari seems first to have palatalized the /r/
so that you a sort of /rj/ sound which would tend to have a _very_ short
/i/ anticipating it, thus something like [kairj(i)].  Later the final
consonant was depalatalized but the /i/ remained, hence 'cair'.

Yep, if your original - now 'lost' - plural ending was -i, you could well
have forms like, e.g. kan, kain; fos, fois; mus, muis etc.  Tolkien uses
this as well as simple fronting in Sindarin (and IIRC some of his other
langs), cf. Adan, Edain.

If your original plural was -u, then this might have given rise to
diphthongs in -u rather than unrounded back vowels (or you might have
both!), e.g.  kan, kaun; mer, meur /mewr/ _or_ meor etc.

>As you can see, I have no clue at all. Please help! :)
Well, I hope I've given you a few clues  :)

There's no one way of doing this.  Be bold and experiment - the main is
that your changes are not arbitrary but can be given some "historical"
explanation. Have fun - that what this hobby's about!

>/ Daniel Andreasson
>
>PS. What is the standard way of saying; high/low or open/close?
Both are used. High/low seem, I think, more common and IMO are preferable
since some people use open/close to refer to _syllables_ which end in
vowels or consonants respectively.  This can be confusing and it's probably
best to avoid open/close and talk about vowels being high or low and
syllables being blocked or free.

Ray.