Re: Norreyna again (long-ish)

--- Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> wrote:
> We-ell, Tolkien was a bit more innovative than that.
> In his langs, there's plenty of endings for deriving
nouns for examples, and some endings have several
meanings. The word _lanta_ is the verb "to fall" and
the noun "fall", but from the form it looks quite like
an adjective ... :-)
>
   Yes, he did have several suffixes (-mo, -do, -me,
-e, etc) but the endings all come out too similar for
my tastes. Looking into the matter some more, I may go
with root modification. Tolkien used this method to
derive different roots (like ISIL from SIL) and PIE
used it as well. So I may use a combination of
"grades"  of roots together with buckets of
compounding (the "drag" root with the "follow" noun
grade to make 'travois', for example). I'll have to
play and test it...

> In my conlang, many basic words consist of the bare
> unmarked stem.
   Which will probably be the verbal grade in my
system.

> We-ell, what kind of umlauts are you thinking of? If
> you're using I-umlauts
> or U-umlauts,
  Because Irish is a big influence on the lang, It'll
all be I-umlaut, as both I and long U cause I umlaut.
On the other hand, I like U-umlaut, and I like
diphthongs, so I want a good variety of them as well
as vowels. Again, need to play and test...

you could simple say that some nouns
> in the primitive language
> took _-a_ in plural and some _-i_/_-u_, and then
> introduce rules for
> phonological change that keeps _-a_ but causes
> _-i_/_-u_ to first cause
> umlaut and then disappear. Voila!
   Yep, that will work. The change is a common final
vowel weakening. Short vowels will drop out, and long
vowels (and diphthongs) get shortened. Here are some
simple examples of what I mean:

   TES-SIWI (drag+follow)
   > tessii (loss of intervocalic w)
   > teshii (palatization before i intervocalically)
   > teishi (metathesis or I-umlaut with loss)
   > teish 'travois' (final V weakening)

   TES-SIWI-AA (above+plural)
   > tessiiaa
   > teshiiaa
   > teshijaa (i > j / before a, o ,u)
   > teishjaa
   > teishaa (j > 0 / after palatal)
   > teisha 'travoises ??'

   TESE (drag noun grade)
   > tesse (gemination after short accented vowel)
   > tess 'ditch' (final V weakening)

   TESE-I (above+plural)
   > tesii (ei > i after accent)
   > teshi (palat. before i)
   > teish (I-umlaut)
   > teis 'ditches' (final C weakening)

   Resulting in two groups, plurals in umlaut and
plurals in -a: tess/teis vs. teish/teisha.


   Note that the weakening of finals is very common
(it's how I'll lose some of my case marking - but not
all!). This is how I plan to find out which cases
remain, and which fall together. It feels more fun,
and less like I'm making it, this way. I'm discovering
instead! I thank you guys for you input - it has
helped me figure out how to do these root thingies!

   Oh! I just noticed that the final C wasn't weakened
in "teish". Perhaps final C weakening happens just
before final V weakening, or maybe they are
concurrent, so that I only lose one or the other.
Hmmmm....

   Aidan

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