Re: CHAT: Vowel harmony (was: CHAT: Another NatLang i like)

At 16:37 -0400 19.7.1999, John Cowan wrote:
>BP Jonsson wrote:
>
>> >Qyrgyz (Kirghiz) is perhaps the most difficult sort of vowel harmony
>> >known: [...]
>>
>> I don't find that very difficult -- the rules are easy to remember --
>> though very restrictive!
>
>"Difficult" in the sense that consciously borrowing words into Qyrgyz is
>hard, and making up words for a Qyrgyz-style conlang would require great
>discipline.
OK, got it.  I have a real problem with Finnish VH: the vowels /i/ and /e/
are neutral, i.e. can occur together with both front and back vowels, but
words with only any of these two vowels in the stem count as front and take
front-vowel alternants of suffixes.  I get constantly confused by these
words, even though I have realized that the fault lies with traditional
grammars, which take the back alternants of affixes for basic -- probably
taking the front rounded vowels as modifications of the back ones under the
influence of Germanic "umlaut".  I simply stored only the back alternants +
a fronting rule in my brain, but get confused when it comes to applying the
rule to words not flagged by the presence of y =F6 =E4.  I could not get thi=
s
problem in Qyrgyz...

=46innish has a lot of recent loan words that don't obey the VH rules, e.g.
_mont=F6=F6ri_ "mechanic" (from French _monteur_, of course), but they are
actually no more deviant than th emajority of compounds made up of
inherited material.  Besides the readiness with which old loans have been
mangled to fit the phonotactics is amazing.  Appalling at times to a
speaker of the main donor language!

=46WIW Icelanders claim that their language has a real problem with consciou=
s
borrowing because of uncertainty of how to inflect foreign words.  The
effects of inflection and umlaut on the occasional accepted loan, like the
genitive _d=F6mu_ of _dama_ "lady", or the controversy whether the proper
genitive of _Aga=FEa_ is _Ag=F6=FEu_ or _=D6gu=FEu_, and the animated=
 _sirkill_ vs.
_sirkull_ debate makes one inclined to agree, but then the fact is that
modern colloquial takes upp tons of loans, and simply leaves them
uninflected.  While it is questionable if uninflected nouns can get
accepted there are a few uninflected adjectives in the language since a
thousand years, so I think the very popular adjective _naes_ /nais/ is
there to stay...

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>

        Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                            (Tacitus)