Re: [romconlang] Romlang splitting off ~0-100 CE

Hi!

R A Brown <ray@...> writes:
>...
> course, in some pronouns). At what stage the spoken Latin of 1st cent
> CE was in this process, I am not sure. But I would think the 4 cases
> of German plus a liberal use of prepositions would be plausible
> possibility.
>
> As for the ablative plural - when the ablative & acc. singular fell
>...
> preposition + noun, the question about the ablative plural becomes a
> "non-question". In effect, the ablative had disappeared.
This is all very interesting! :-)

>...
>  > And can I
>  > not deduce that final -m at least lengthened the preceding vowel?
>
> No, you can't.
Ah, ok.

> Indeed, it is a rule of Latin that the vowel before final -m (and
> -t, -nt) was always shortened. The only consistent way of explaining
> the behavior of final -Vm in classical verse is that the short vowel
> was nasalized, being elided before another vowel but giving rise to
> a non-phonemic homorganic nasal consonant before the next consonant.
That's interesting again.

>  > Of course, common speech is not poetry, but lengthening why also
>  > explain collapse of acc. and abl..  Otherwise (no lengthening by
>  > -m), acc. would have a short vowel while abl. usually would have
>  > a long vowel.
>
> No - the unstressed, word final vowels seem to have lost quantitative
> distinctions before this became general elsewhere.
And did this happen together with a quality change when it happened
earlier?  (Sardinian 2nd decl. nouns end in _u_, not _o_, indicating
no quality shift.)

> In 1st decl. the two cases would just be -a; in the second the [U]
> of the acc. & [o] of the abl. were practically the same in final,
> unstressed position. The ablative -e in the 3rd decl. was short in
> anyway, so again the acc. & abl. would be homophonous.
Yes for 3rd decl.  I see this immediately.  Although for the 2nd
decl. this assumes the qualitative vowel system already, right?
Otherwise we'd get acc. in -[u] vs. abl. in -[o].  This is still close
enough for a merger, especially if unstressed.

I don't doubt the two cases were collapsed by 1st cent. CE, but I'd
like to understand how this happened (if that is known).  A final -[u]
vs. final -[o] is still a very interesting thought very hard to resist
to use for North Germanic sound shifts.  E.g. take _bellum_ [belu]
vs. _bello_ [belo].  We'd get _bjöll_ vs. _bell_.  I find that
very tempting. %-)

Further, for interesting sound changes I had hoped to have a length
distinction in the final vowels.  Now you say that that is also
infeasible?

I see three variants.  In both, I'd assume that the qualitative vowel
system happened after the split-off of my conlang.  From your
explanations, I also assume that acc/abl. have merged, and final -m
has disappeared without traces (i.e., no compensatory lengthening).

Variant 1:
    - short/long vowels have collapsed in final syllable, without
      quality change

Variant 2:
    - short/long vowels have collapsed in final syllable, together
      with quality change.

Variant 3:
    - short/long vowels have not collapsed at all, but still, acc/abl
      have merged

I like variant 3 most, but you say it is too 'unrealistic', right?
So I assume variant 1 is most likely?

**Henrik
--
Relay 13 is online:
http://www.conlang.info/relay13/

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