Re: Austronesian style Latin...

On 6.5.2007 Barry Garcia wrote:
 > Where Latin short E and O became /je/ and /we/ in Spanish,

I.e. essentially when stressed. OK.

 > they became /aj/ - ay and /oj/ - oy

And elsewhere:
 >
 > > Why /aj/ and not /ej/? (Why not?)
 >
 > Well, I had practiced out what Penny wrote about a
 > plausibe way /je/ developed: /eE/, but I think I'm
 > beginning to like /ej/ - ey better.

Labov has written quite a bit about how and why vowels
diphthongize, including how and why high vowels tend to
become closing diphthongs ( i:, u: > aj, aw in English; e:
o: > ei, ou in Old French), but low vowels tend to become
opening diphthongs (E:, O:, a:, > je, wo, ea/ja in Old
French, Frisian and a lot of other places). I don't
fully understand the why, which contains a good deal
of acoustic phonetics, but according to him these
patterns are both natural and not only plausible but
to be expected -- at least as much as any other sound
change is.

In short I *would* expect stressed e o from Latin short
i(/long e: and short u(/long o: to become ej ow, and then
perhaps aj oj (e.g. Yiddish had an ou > oj change), but I
would expect E O from short e( o( to become something along
the lines of je/ja/ie/ia/ije/ija
wo/we/wa/uo/ue/ua/uwo/uwe/uwa -- whatever fits your
language best.

It is a bit strange that Romance /e:/ and /o:/ as opposed to
/E:/ and /O:/ diphthongize so uncommonly in Romance outside
Gaul, but it may definitely be different in your lang, and
that is the likely source if you want aj/ej/oj. Given your
developments of consonant + l it isn't exactly the case that
you dislike je etc. It might even be the other way around
from Spanish in your lang, i.e. e: o: > ej oj but E: O:
don't diphthongize!

 >
 > Intial vowels in open syllables tend to get dropped to
 > reduce word which is more than 3 syllables long down to 3
 > syllables (what seems to be permissible at least in
 > Philippine roots).

One would expect prefixes to get lost to reduce word
lengths. Imagine all those cases where CON- and IN- + velar
may give you gratis initial ng! :-)

 > Word final E mostly drops except in monosyllabic words, or
 > where it may create monosyllabic words. Where it remains
 > it changes to /i/, unless preceeded by a glide.
 >
 >
 > Stressed E and O, and E and O in a word Initial syllable
 > change to /i/ and /u/ (might not be too realistic, but it
 > gives me the right look and sound), *unless* it causes
 > homonyms to appear.

Beware! Languages usually don't skip sound changes in
certain words to avoid homonymy. They resolve homonymy by
whatever word-building resources they have, or borrowing,
once it has already occurred. This is IMNSHO *very*
important to realize in order to get realism in
althistorical conlanging. Most cases of what Romanicists
thaught was abeyance of sound change to avoid homonymy
actually are better explainable as reborrowing from Latin,
or borrowing from other Romance varieties with different
regular sound changes.

If you ask me a ruthless application of sound changes, and
then using your morphological imagination to clear up the
mess is what makes the game worth playing IMO. If I don't
like the effect of a sound change in certain words then I
rather alter the sound change as a whole, in all words where
it applies, come hell or high water. If I can't decide
between two alternative sound changes I usually go for a
dialect split, with the possibility that the dialects later
borrow forms from each other (subject to any later changes
in the borrowing dialect, of course! :-) Wonderful forms
which you otherwise hadn't imagined appear before your eyes
this way...

I'm going through an instance of that with Rhodrese ATM.
Well knowing that a language of Gaul ought to have l > u
before consonants I have this happening dialectally, getting
a maze of different diphthongs due to diphthongization,
umlaut, monophthongization and l-vocalization to resolve
neatly when the dialects borrow from each other:-9


--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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