Re: Can realism be retro-fitted?

Herman Miller skrev:
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> I see now that you may also start from an earlier
>> seven-vowel system:
>>
>>     *i                       *u
>>
>>         *e               *o
>>
>>             *E       *O
>>
>>                 *a
>>
>> with a following somewhat skewed chain-shift:
>>
>> *e > *E
>> *E > & > a
>> *a > Q > O
>> *O > o > @
>> *o > u
>> *u > i\
>>
>> o > @ happens when there are only three heights in
>> the front vowels, to remove one height in the back,
>> assuming that /E/ /O/ are really mean mid.
>>
>> As you see there are several possibilities! :-)
>
> Yes, I think this sort of development might fit better with what I have
> in mind. But of course I could come up with many alternatives (and
> probably will, before I settle on something).
>
>
>
I'm reviving this thread because two other examples
illustrating ways in which a Tirelat-like vowel system could
be derived occurred to me today.

The first example is Meyer-Lübkes admittedly super-short
illustration of the vowel correspondances in Latin loan
words in Welsh -- he says they are essentially identical to
the changes in inherited words, but probably this is only
the basic pattern, with complications in the details:
notably there is nothing on what happens to original
diphthongs (of which there was only _au_ left in Imperial
Latin, but IIANM there were more of them in Celtic). I
incorporate info on modern Welsh pronunciation from
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_alphabet>. I also use
| and ( to mark long and short original vowels, because of
the sometimes annoying lack of an explicit shortness
marker in CXS:

- i| > i
- i( > y /i\, @/
- e| > oe /Oi/, wy /Ui/
- e( > e
- u| > i
- u( > w /u/
- o| > u /u\/ > /i\/
- o( > o
- a| > aw /au/, ô /o:/
- a( > a

I remember you saying that _ai_ is the most common Tirelat
diphthong. It should not be too hard to derive it from _e|_:
the Welsh developments are similar to the French _e| > ei >
oi > oe/ui > we > wE > wa_, which should be compared to the
rather much simpler German development _ei > ai_. To get a
preponderance of /a i u/ you can have a| -- a( and o( -- u(
merge, Of course you can also have an original Q|( to create
more instances of /o/.

The second is the English Great Vowel Shift, particularly in
its northern form. The chains were as follows:

The front vowels developed like this in both the south and
the north:

- a: > E: > e: > i: > @i

The E: > e: > i: part later repeated itself, the /E:/ from
Middle English /a:/ pushing on to /e:/ (which later became
/eI/ in the south) and the /e:/ from M.E. /E:/ merging with
the /i:/ from M.E. /e:/ (the meat-meet merger). The /@i/
from M.E. /i:/ went on to /aI/, pushing M.E. /ui/ (in French
loans, cf. above!) before it into /Ai/ and eventually /Oi/.

For the individual vowels the trajectories were:

- a: > E: > e: > eI
- E: > e: > i:
- e: > i:
- i: > Ii > (ei >) @i > aI
- ui > @i > Ai > Qi > Oi

I doubt that the /ei/ stage for M.E. /i:/ is necessary: a
direct [I] > [@] development is surely possible. That 16th
and 17th century writers respelled the diphthong as _ei_ is
not conclusive, since before the foot-strut split they had
no good grapheme for [@], or _ei_ spelled [I\i].


Back vowels went like this in the south:

- O: > o: > u: > @u

Since there was no M.E. /Q:/ the back vowel space wasn't
overcrowded, and there was no secondary O: > o: > u:.
However a secondary /O:/ later developed from M.E. /au/,
probably by way of [Q:].

But in the north the back vowels went like this :

- O: > o: > 8: (u: remained unaffected!)

The new /8:/ didn't last long: it became /u\/ in Scotland
and /Ie/ > /I@/ in the north of England. That's why a "good
house" is a [gu\d hus] in Scotland. In tirelat /i\/ can
descend either from earlier /o:/ or earlier /u:/ depending
on whether you choose an o: > 8: > u\ > i\ or an o: > u:, u:
 > \i trajectory. Scots notably later lost its length
distinction by changing the distinction between DRESS and
FACE into an /E/ <> /e/ distinction. In Tirelat short vowels
may merge with each other as /@/ or with their corresponding
longs in different patterns to get the right weightings of
the vowel phonemes -- except original /a(/ which should stay
/a/. Original /a:/ could merge either with original /a(/ or
intermediate /E/. If you have a lot of /@/ a merger of all
or some original short vowels except /a(/ would not be
unrealistic.

--

/BP 8^)
--
Benct Philip Jonsson
mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,
of what language, pray, is Basque a dialect?" (R.A.B.)

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