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

On 9/25/05, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
What I was talking about was the following.  Word-level segmentation
is preserved in the following two schemes:

1) Initial C- prefixes are obligatory; final -C suffixes are optional.
2) Final -C suffixes are obligatory; initial C- prefixes are optional.

Try it out; it works fine.

This gives us 5 possibilities:

3) Initial C- prefixes are obligatory.
4) Final -C suffixes are obligatory.
5) Both C- prefixes and -C suffixes are obligatory.
6) One C may and must occur per word, so long as it's always the nth
morpheme, or nth-to-last.

3 and 4 are technically subschemes of 6.

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

If you're going for euphony, the following scheme will give you a
very... Oceanic feel.

V
VCV
VCVCV
VCVCVCV

a-olana-uta-ili => aolanaulaili

Also, one can require each morpheme to have identical vowels (imi,
eme, ama, omo, umu), and then lop off the initial and final vowels of
each word.  (Except in V morphemes, where one could add a initial or
final h, w, or y.)

This would give you VCV... morphemes and CV(V)CV(V)C... words.

olono-utu-ili => lonoutuil
a-olono-utu-ili => haolonoutuil

Quite pretty, I think.

[snip]

> > 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.
Haha.  My concentration is in American Indian languages; these sorts
of clusters are par for the course.  Not just in langs like Bella
Coola; even in more "reasonable" langs like Mayan ones.  Lately I've
been trying to twist my mouth around the Totonac initial clusters
/Kp-/, /Kt-/, /Kk-/, and /Kq-/, and final /-kK/ and /-qK/.

Your initial C morpheme idea immediately reminded me of certain Mayan
languages (Tzeltal, Tzotzil, I think Jakaltek and Mam, etc.) in which
the possessive/ergative person prefixes are often single Cs.  Which
gives you clusters like "jts'i'" /xts'i?/ ("my dog") in an otherwise
not-too-clustery language.  That, and they show a strong preference
for CVC and CVCVC roots.  So your idea above made me think of it sorta
like a Mayan-flavored engelang.  Much more interesting than an
Anglocentric one.


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Patrick Littell
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