Re: Taalen mutations

heb y pavel,:
>Aaargghh!!! Dyn lwcus!
    Hee!

>No Welsh here at MSU :-( Yeah, I _have_ started Mod. Irish, and I'll
>possibly be taking Old Irish next semester and Breton next year...
    Oooh, Old Irish. The most beautiful, and the most difficult, lang I
have ever studied!


>Though, I have very firmly articulated my desire to have Welsh, so one
>of the teachers promised to arrage a meeting with one of the faculty
>members (who doesn't teach, sadly) so that we could set up a small MW
>reading class *anxious for that*
     Well, since you've got Modern Welsh, Middle Welsh shouldn't be that
hard. I've only had a semester of Modern, and Middle is close enough that
I'm not having any problems at all. We're using Ford's edition (since Ford
is teaching it!) of the Math fab Mathonwy branch of the Mabinogi (4th
branch, I think). Between that (and Ford's glossary), and Evans' Grammar of
Middle Welsh, it's easy. I can get you a copy of Evans, if you need it.
$20. should cover the book and the shipping, I think.

> >      The /nT/ > /D/ is actually an analogical development.
> > Originally, the
> > fricatives did not mutate, but eventually the voicing that applied to
> > unvoiced stops applied to unvoiced fricatives as well.
>
>Was that only initially, or word-medially too? If it was the latter,
>then wow, the Taalen speakers _are_ Ñoldor! :-)
    To be honest, I'm not sure. I have to get more vocab figured out before
I'll know. I _think_ that they _are_ Noldor, in that sense, though!

> >      Hmm... I don't know how to make this unrounded [w], so
> > that's a strike against it.
>
>Try a _heavily_ velarized [l] until it is an approximant. I think I have
>heard in some pronunciations of 'cold'. I also stand by my opinion that
>is the sound of the Polish crossed _l_
   Ah! I believe that's the "dark l"...which is not a distinctive sound in
Taalen, so it would still just be [l].

>Hmm, why couldn't this be closed class immune to sound-changes for some
>reason? That was an idea I once toyed with for Quenya, but eventually
>abandoned it as a working theory; I'd love to implement it.... I
>actually did and it was exactly the same situation - in Skuodian, V_d_V
> > V_r_V after stressed syllables (virtually ALL words are stressed on
>the first syllable), but the language's name resists, and its Skuodian,
>not Skuorian.
>But there, I'm not wedded to that _r_.
    Well, I've already got a very rich system of vowel change ("slender"
vowels like /a/ becoming "wide" vowels like upturned c (can't remember the
XSAMPA), diphthongs are frequent thanks to i-affection, and so on) , so
even the one more would make it a language of vowels entirely. I'd have to
get imports of consonants from Serbia to finish the lang! :)

    Mostly, it just doesn't feel right, so I won't. But it was a good idea!

> >    On the other hand, the Noldo in me likes the l>n change
> > too, but I think
> > levelling would return it to [l] or remove the [l]
> > altogether.
> > For example,
> > _emeth_ 'shrine' < nemeton, where the [n-] was interpreted as
> > part of the article (i, in before vowels).
>
>Do you mean that this _nn_ could be reinterpreted as part of the
>article?
    Yes, that, or that the word, orginally in _l-_, would be reinterpreted
as _n-_. That a word like _lonn_ 'homeland' would become _onn_ or _nonn_,
and if this process continued (likely), eventually there would be no words
which began in _l_.

    Aidan

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