Re: Cein

Keith wrote:

BTW, what's your last name, Keith? And how come you know
so much about Celtic and Gaelic languages?

>  > What would /-ea/ become? That's a common adjective
>  > ending in Quenya.
>  /-ea/ >> /-j@/ >> nil, but with i-affection of the preceding vowel.
Aha. This would thus lead to i-umlauted adjectives in Cein.
Interesting. See also my reply to Andreas.

Would /-oa/ become /w@/ >> nil, too, but with u-affection
of the preceding vowel?

>  > Perhaps I should write it as <mm> after all.
>  It could simplify to /m/ when word final, perhaps only when unstressed,
>  where does the stress fall in Cein? Otherwise too many /mm/'s might
>  make the language look too "heavy". The same would apply to /nn/ and
>  perhaps /ll/ /rr/. The sound would double up again when an ending was
>  added.
Well, the stress in Cein is always on the final syllable of
each word (not sentence final as in French). So there wouldn't
be any unstressed word final /m/s for poly-syllabic words.
I could have just {-m} for the monosyllabic ones (which
makes up the largest part of the lexicon).

>  > What do you mean by "doubling of /l r m n/? That it should
>  > be geminated in the beginning of a word following _ir_?
>  > _melf_ 'love' >> _i mmelf_ 'the loves'  (to take an odd ex.)
>  Yes, phonetically it's really all one word, stress group that is,
>  "immelf", so it's really up to you how you split the double consonant
>  i-mmelf; im-melf; imm-elf, whatever seems most logical to you.
So the spirant mutation variant of /m/ is /mm/? I like the
look of double m in the beginning of words, but I already have
[v] as the spirant mutation of [m]. I also have {r} for {rh}
and [l] for [K] (i.e. {ll}). The only one I don't have a spirant
mutation for is [n], which I suppose could be [nn], as in e.g.
_i nnog_ 'the dwarfs' from _nog_ 'dwarf'.

I guess I could change the spirant mutation of [m] to [mm]
instead of [v] to avoid the clash with soft mutation.

> Again, you could write ir- or else add the r to the start of the
> following word.
I've pretty much decided to go for _h-_ before vowels. See other
posting.

>  > Yes. See my previous posting on this. Judging from a previous
>  > posting on Welsh vs Brithenig, I'm thinking of having <nt>
>  > become <nh>, instead of as now <nd>. Ex. _lanta_ >> _llanh_
>  > instead of _llanh_. Which would be more correct?
> In Welsh you never get /nh/ at the end of a word. Either you could
> keep /-nt/, or take it to /-nn/ or /-n/ (see above).
/-nt-/ in Quenya is always followed by a vowel, making it
a middle /t/. Wouldn't that come out _-nd_ in that case?
Example: Q. _lanta_ >> C. _lland_.

>  >>> ffilit    filig      filit    small bird
>  > OK then. _Ffil_ it is.
>  Hmm, looks a bit small.
It does? I think it looks like any other Cein word. They
all get this small.

> Maybe you could extend it. You could add an affix for the plural,
> and maybe another affix to mean "a single one of" to the singular.
But I already have rules to form the plural. It would become
_ffil_ in all four cases (sg/pl, def/indef).

> Using Welsh affixes to demonstrate (I don't know the elvish
> forms) ffilyn - small bird; ffilod - small birds.
> There again, ffilod could mean "(a flock of) small birds" especially
> if the word is mainly used for birds that go about in flocks, and
> then you add a suffix to get the singular ffilodyn - "a single bird
> of a type that usually goes about in flocks" -- just a thought :-)
That's very interesting. It doesn't really fit the current
Cein morphology, but I could make a general collective suffix
from Q. _hosta_ >> C. _-os_, leading to _ffilos_ 'a flock
of birds' and _ffilitos_ 'a flock of small birds'.

How to form "a single bird..." from that would be stretching
it a bit too much. I'll think about it tho.

I could also make the ending _-it_ a diminutive, making
_ffil_ 'bird' [since I already have a word for 'small bird',
namely _ew_].

>  Did I read that you were thinking about using the Irish version of
>  lenition /t/ >> /T/; /d/ >> /D/ etc in some environments, was that
>  Cein or am I getting my threads crossed?
Hmm... The lenited form of /t/ in Cein is [d]. It's the spirant
form that is [T], so I guess you're mixing it up. Ooch! :)

>  I just thought that you might avoid some of the problems with palatal
>  /nh/ and suchlike by using the Irish version of the nasal mutation,
>  sometimes called "eclipses". This is how it goes :
>  /mb/ >> /mm/
>  /mp/ >> /bb/ >> /b/
>
>  /nd/ >> /nn/
>  /nt/ >> /dd/ >> /d/
>
>  /Ng/ >> /NN/
>  /Nk/ >> /gg/ >> /g/
>
>  All of these can be normal or palatal. In fact everything just about can
>  be palatal or neutral (or u-coloured !) in Old Irish, but without any
>  affricates. That is you'd have had things like palatal /T/ and /D/.
>  Sadly these haven't survived into the modern langs, so we can only guess
>  at their exact pronunciation.
I'm not sure I'm following you. Which sound would render which
nasally mutated sound?

Cein words cannot begin with a voiced stop /b d g/, so the only
three sounds that can be nasally mutated are /p t k/ and the
voiceless allophone of /k/, [tS], which turn up before front vowels.
Examples:

_parf_ 'a book' ; _ne mharf_ 'by a book'

_tor_ 'a brother' ; _ne nhor_ 'by a brother'

_casar_ 'a dwarf' ; _ne nghasar_ 'by a dwarf'

_cen_ 'an elf' ; _ne nghen_ 'by an elf'
[tSen]            [nE njEn]

'By *the* elf' would be _nen i gen_ [nEn I dZEn], without nasal
mutation.

So it's only in the case of the voiceless velar stop [k] and
alveolar affricate [tS] that the palatal nasal would show up.

The spirant versions [f T x] occurring in the plural wouldn't be
affected since the spirant mutation takes precedence before the
nasal mutation and [f T x] cannot be nasally mutated. I.e.
_nen chasar_ 'by dwarfs' and not *_nen nghasar_ 'by dwarfs'.

>  I think the thing is to get the feel of the sort of sound system you want
>  for Cein. Then when the rules turn up something that fits well, keep it,
>  but if they turn up something that fits badly, nudge it over to the
>  nearest stable slot. That's what happens in natlangs IMHO.
Yes. Thanks for reminding me. It's too easy to forget that
Cein is *my* conlang. I want everything to fit with its
ancestor Quenya, and I want it to be in accordance with
the sound changes in Welsh, etc. but in the end, it's what
*I* like that counts. I should put that on a big note on
my wall. :)

||| daniel

--
<> Qheil rynenya alanda! <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <>
<>           Rinya lawa! <> www.geocities.com/conlangus <>

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