Re: Vowel-echo (was: Re: Drughu and Rokbeigalm)

Steg Belsky wrote:

> The final vowel of the word copies itself on the other
> side of the last consonant, and if the original vowel was
> long, both new ones are short. Since |gorgu| "orc" ends
> in a vowel, the reduplicated |u| has only empty space to
> jump over, and it merges with the original |u| it was
> echoed from, making a long vowel |û|.
Aha. Interesting. In my new conlang (I've got to give it a
name) all nouns end in a vowel. But it's certainly something
to think about, I mean etymologically, how that lengthening
came to be. Perhaps it went |kV| -> |?V| -> |V| (where V is
'vowel').

Example: piataka -> piata?a -> piataa -> piata:

> > I also have reduplication at the beginning of words to
> > mark the plural. Not very original, I know...
> > Examples:
> > piata    'dog'
> > piataa   'dog:PAT'
> > pipiata  'dogs'
> > pipiataa 'dogs:PAT'
> Are the final |-aa|'s pronounced as two separate vowels, or as
> one long one?
Ah, yes. Sorry about that. I realized I should have said that
only after sending it. Long vowels (and long consonants for that
matter) are marked with double letters. |aa| = /a:/ ; |kk| = /k:/

And then Tom Wier wrote:

> Do you have a diachronic explanation for this? It would seem
> like a textbook case of compensatory lengthening.  (I love it
> when changes in prosody are the only evidence of morphological
> changes in a word.)
None as of yet. This language is so far only in my head and on
some pages of my little black notebook. The explanation above
seems neat though (and shamelessly stolen from Steg and a bunch
of natlangs, no doubt).

Daniel Andreasson

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