Re: Double-segmentation (Was: brz, or Plan B revisited)

Hallo!

Patrick Littell wrote:

> On 9/22/05, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > There are many ways to achieve self-segregation.  Jeff's solution
> > is elegant and original, but far from the only one.  A simple
> > self-segregation system I once came up with has morphemes of the
> > following structures:
> >
> > C
> > CVC
> > CVCVC
> > CVCVCVC
> >
> > etc., i.e. alternating consonants and vowels beginning and ending
> > with a consonant.  In this system, all morpheme boundaries are
> > marked by consonant clusters, and every consonant cluster marks
> > a morpheme boundary.  For example, _blaraktalmin_ can only be
> > segmented as b-larak-tal-min.  If every word has to begin with
> > two consonants in a row (i.e., with a C morpheme), word-level
> > self-segregation is also achieved.
>
> Quite clever!  Self-segmentation is pretty easy, but a good method of
> double-segmentation (morpheme and word) like this takes some thought.
Yes.

> This would also require, of course, that C morphemes could only occur
> word-initially and word-finally.  Internal C morphemes would lead to
> word-level ambiguity.
C morphemes would have to be restricted to *one* end of the word,
*either* initial *or* final.  Otherwise, a single C between two
other morphemes would be ambiguous as for to which word it belongs.
Unless, of course, each word is required to have one C morpheme
on *both* ends.

But I'd now say that C morphemes should not exist, because they
lead to awkward consonant clusters.  I'd propose something else:

1. The language is exclusively suffixing.  Nothing (except another
   root followed by /a/, see 5.) may precede the root.

2. Roots are alternating consonant-vowel sequences, beginning end
   ending with a consonant, with at minimum one vowel, i.e. CVC,
   CVCVC, CVCVCVC, etc.

3. Suffixes are alternating consonant-vowel sequences, beginning
   with a vowel and ending with a consonant, with at minimum one
   vowel, i.e. VC, VCVC, etc.

4. All vowels in a morpheme are the same, and only /e/, /i/, /o/
   and /u/ occur.  Each suffix has two allomorphs, one with the
   vowel /i/ and one with the vowel /u/.  The /i/ allomorph is
   used after a morpheme with a back vowel; the /u/ allomorph is
   used after a morpheme with a front vowel.

5. In compounds, a vowel is inserted between the two roots that
   occurs neither in roots nor in suffixes: /a/.

If I haven't made a mistake, this should be self-segregating at
both morpheme level and word level.  A change of vowel indicates
a morpheme boundary before it (with the exception of /a/, which
marks a boundary between two roots); two consonants without a
vowel in between mark a word boundary.

> I would picture some grammatical category like person or number that
> could occur on nouns, verbs, etc., marked obligatorily with a C
> morpheme prefix.  (Or as a suffix, of course.)  Say, person is marked
> on nouns for either the inherent person features of a noun or those of
> its possessor, and on verbs for the subject.  (Object could be marked,
> too, 'cuz there's space for one more C morpheme word-finally.)
> Nothing particularly unnatural about this.
That's also what I was thinking of when I proposed C morphemes
at word boundaries.

> Also possible, although weird, is a requirement that the C morpheme
> must be the 2nd morpheme in the word, or second-to-last, or etc.
>
> --------------
>
> A couple other methods of naturalistically self-segmenting these on
> the word level:
>
> 1) The final consonant of a morpheme must be a stop, and word-internal
> sandhi rules cause them to fricativize:
>
>    kotuk-qap-t-mit => kotuhqafsmit
An interesting idea.  But the consonant clusters /hq/ and /fsm/
in your example are hideous.

> 2) The final consonant of a morpheme must not be a stop, and all words
> undergo a word-final stop mutation.
>
>   kotun-qam-s-min => kotunqamsmit
>
> And, of course, the many variations of these using different consonant
> series, word- and morpheme-initial mutations rather than final ones,
> etc.
Or encode morpheme boundaries in vowels, as I did above.

> Any more ideas?
See above.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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