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Re: Can realism be retro-fitted?

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>
Date:Monday, February 5, 2007, 15:31
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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Herman Miller <hmiller@...>