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

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.
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.

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.

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

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.

Any more ideas?
--
Patrick Littell
PHIL101: W 6:00-8:50
Voice Mail: ext 744
Fall 05 Office Hours: W 5:00-6:00, by appointment

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