Re: Conorthography (phonology)

Mangiat sikayal:

Excellent work, Luca!  I'm impressed:

> lots of snipping
>
> 2) /v/ in intervocalic position, if derived from Latin /b/, is rarely
> pronounced (80% no, 20%yes), while if derived from Latin /p/ it is generally
> pronounced, but it may not: al vureva /al vure.a/ (he wanted) pR VOLEBA
> generating a hiatus; cavèj /ka'vEj/ (hair.pl) pR CAPILLU. There are some
> words with a stable form (as cavèj always pronounced /ka'vEj/), but there
> are a lot with alternate forms, such as imperfect tense's
> endings -evi, -evat, -eva etc. (how is this called? I remember someone
> mentioned this phenomenon some weeks ago speaking about English phonology).
The phenomenon is called free alternation.  WRT to the sounds themselves,
even though they're phonetically identical if only one can be dropped,
they are probably different phonemes.  Therefore it might be wise to
spell them differently.  Perhaps you can use <w> for the [v] that may be
dropped, and <v> for the [v] that cannot.

> The problems come with /ts/ and /dz/. They're not allophones: panza /pantsa/
> and ranza /randza/ show this alternance. Locatelli, in his Vocabulary and in
> his 'Piccola Grammatica del Dialetto Comasco' decided to write /ts/ with <z>
> and /dz/ with <z acute> (the Polish letter), whereas he used <s> for /s/ and
> <s acute> for /z/. The inconvenient is that this system, a very good one,
> uses two letters no typewriter here around used to have and which costantly
> lack in every normal computer. My idea is this:
>
> /ts/ rendered as <zz> when intervocalic (as we used <ss> for intervocalic
> /s/) and as <tz> if in a cluster.
> /dz/ rendered as <z> everywhere.
I think this is a good solution.

>
> OK, next time the vowels. Tell me what ya think.
>
> Luca
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_