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Re: Norreyna again (long-ish)

From:Aidan Grey <frterminus@...>
Date:Thursday, March 22, 2001, 22:40
--- 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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>