Re: CHAT: TRANS: something slightly more deep (was: TRANS: flutes)

In a message dated 2/10/2000 5:55:41 PM Eastern Standard Time,
fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:

Excellent questions!
Re Kash:
 > Sound system:
 > Vl. stops           p t c k
 > Vd. prenas. stops   mb nd nj Ng("ng")  medial only

 Interesting.  Does {c} represent the palatal stop or is it like English
 "ch", and same with nj, does the j represent palatal stop or /dZ/?
 Interesting that voiced stops exist only after nasals.  They are
 considered as single consonants, I take it?
    Pardon my oversight.  Kash /c/ and /nj/ are affricates, Engl. "ch"and
"nj" (banjo) resp.  And the nasal stops are units; one could write them
phonemically /b d j g/ but  the digraphs clarify the pronunciation better, I
think.

 > Semivow/resonants  v  r l   y

 So, {v} is pronounced as in Latin, that is, as an English {w}?
    No, it's [v].  The Language Academy is in process of doing a spelling
reform-- used to use "w" in all cases, even where it was a
transitional/automatic glide after /u/ (as in "ukuwi" in the verse) or
preceding in case of _awu_  (same with y and i)-- that was required by the
original syllabary, which didn't permit two vowel symbols in a row.  But some
of these w/v's are from historic *b too.  I'm a little chagrined to say, as
an historical linguist, that I didn't start with Proto Kash and work down
from there.......

 > Main morphophonemics to note: "Hardening", whereby nasal+fric > stop,
nasal +
 > stop or nasal+nasal > Nasalized stop.  And many Cons+r combos result from
 > metathesis, as in "amakrale" < /amar+kale/.

 Cool.  Clarify something for me, please - would nf become p?
    Yes.
 What about np, would that become mb?  Would nm become mb?
    Yes and yes.  Other things happen in case of nasal + v r l y
 The nasal+nasal -> nasalized stop makes me wonder if an earlier stage had
voiced stops, but they became nasals when intervocalic.
    At the moment, it's just a rule of this particular language, so
/karun+mi/ [karumbi] 'my lord', /karun+ti/ [karundi] 'your lord'.    Earlier
stages certainly had plain voiced stops, not necessarily in these cases, but
who can say what will turn up in sister languages?????
 What happens when you get a form like s or l followed by a consonant?
    Aha. Kash dislikes clusters in general, but they do crop up.  In the
syllabary there was a mark to kill the symbol's intrisic /a/ vowel, call it
#-- so /tikas/ 'to see' would have been ti.ka.s#.  With future tense /-to/:
ti.ka.sa.to, accent on underlying penult /ka/.  Now that we're alphabetic,
it's just tikasto, with a reduced echo-vowel  or schwa between the s and t---
[tikásato] or [tikás@to]; or /forit+mi/ 'my torch' > [forítimi] or
[forít@mi].  Again, related langs. may allow the clusters, or perhaps we'll
find geminate consonants or something.

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