Re: A Self-segregating morphology (was: Guinea pigs invited)

On 12/16/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> How about this for a self-segregating morphology with
> a non-flat sound: (self-segregating at the word
> boundry, but not at the root+root boundry withi8n a
> word.)
>
> First vowel determines the length of the word in
> syllables. Remaining vowels can be anything.
This is similar to Jeff Prothero's "Plan B"
and the projects discussed by Ray Brown
and Jörg Rhiemeier in the thread "brz, or Plan B revisited"
back in September -- except there, it was
the initial consonant that determines the
number of phonemes the listener is
to expect in the word.

.....
> To cover very long words, when the first and second
> syllable both have the same vowel expect the word to
> be double the normal length:
>
> "komotegulimaxusu", or "kakadaso".
Nice.  I suspect this might be a little easier
for the human brain to parse in real-time
than the schemes Messrs Prothero,
Brown and Rhiemeier came up with, but
one would need to experiment to make
sure.

> Vowels are irrelevant to the identity of the word, so
> when words are compounded the first vowel is changed
> to match the new word length: "galo" + "haki" =
> "golohaki"; "ki" + "kedaso" = "kokedaso", OR
> "kakadaso".
Hm...  So if you have a word "kanu" you
could not also have a word "kani"?

> With a few other rules about which vowels may follow
> which consonants in which contexts it would not even
> be necessary to write the vowels down at all. Thus
....
> With perhaps a few dozen "standard" vowel sequence
> patterns, possibly choosen based on intial consonant,
> the language could have a very melodic and varied
> cadence. For example, suppose that two-syllable words
> beginning in "k" use the pattern "au", four-syllable
> words beginning with "d" always used the pattern
> "oaiu" while four-syllable words beginning with "n"
> always used the pattern "aaui". Thus "g dxtk kn ntpt"
> could only possibly be "gi doxatiku kanu nataputi",
> which is not at all flat and monotonous, yet remains
> audibly self-segregating and completely determined
> even without writing down the vowels.
Alternatively, you might (allowing free choice of vowels
in morphemes after the first syllable) set a
_default_ vowel to follow each consonant, which
would save space while writing but still give you
a lot more potential morphemes at any
given length than your original scheme.
So a word like /nataputi/ following the default
vowel pattern could be written "ntpt" but you
are still free to have morphemes like /natapote/
written "ntpote", etc.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that self-segregation
at the morpheme level is more important than
self-segregation at the word level.  Word boundaries
are clear from spacing in writing, and usually
clear from stress accent in speech (for the languages
I'm most familiar with); but morpheme boundaries
within compound words are more likely to be
tricky, at least for students of a language
if not for fluent speakers.  I've had problems
due to uncertainty about morpheme boundaries
in learning Esperanto and Volapük and to
a lesser extent Greek, but rarely if ever with
word boundaries.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field

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