Re: Ce[i]n

Aidan Grey wrote:

> Let me start by saying that this is one of my top 5
> faveorite langs, already.
Why thank you! Very flattering, although I must say that
Tolkien has already done the work of inventing the vocab.
I just happened to come up with the idea of combining it
with the GMP (and Tolkien came up with a similar idea for
Sindarin). Hopefully, the grammar will be even more
interesting than Sindarin's grammar (the syntax at least).

I'm quite fond of Cein myself, though. :)

> Probably because it's very
> similar to Aelya (or what Aelya will be when I get off
> my ass and do something with it). I'm intending for
> Aelya to be a Quee language (quee = both q- and
> p-celtic) with a heavy influx of terms from Quenya and
> Sindarin, particularly to remove latinate terminology
> in Irish.
That sounds very interesting too! "Quee", very interesting.

> > Well, I had big problems with _hiisie_. [h] -> 0,
> > leaving _iisie_.
> > Then the vowels shortens -> _isie_. Then the vowels
> > are supposed
> > to drop, but I didn't really know what to do with
> > [ie]. So I
> > thought, why not let s+i -> [S]? But then I kept the
> > final [e].
>    One of my early solutions to this problem was to
> have final vowel weakening instead of loss. This was,
> long vowels and diphthongs would only become short,
> and only short vowels would drop. Frex, -i: > e, but
> -i > 0. A possible development of hiisie could be:
>
>    hiisie >
>       hi:Sie   ' palatization before front vowels
>       i:Sie    ' loss of h initially
>       i:Se     ' weakening of final vowels, ie > e
>       orthographically, isce.
Hmmm. That's an interesting solution. I'll have to consider
that option more closely. Frex adjectives ending in -ea could
keep the {a}: hoorea -> oorea -> urea -> ura. (The -e- might
be interpreted as [j], making the u -> y. Most adjectives
will look exactly like the nouns since all final vowels drop
and Tolkien makes good use of final -e, -a, -o, and -i (and
sometimes even -u). I thought that would make for a lot of
homonyms, but scanning through the wordlist tells me that's
not a problem.

> > _Era_ is actually from _haira_ 'remote'. ai -> e
> > and [h] and final vowel drop.
>    But the final vowel didn't drop. If it had, the
> word would be 'er' wouldn't it. This could be
> explained as analogy at work, or differentiation from
> another word with which it would otherwise clash.
Yet another way of explaining it is me being stupid. It
should of course be just _er_. I even wrote "final vowel
drop[s]". D'oh! :)

Of course, it could be analogy as you say. If many adjectives
end in -a, then _er_ might get an -a as well. We'll see what
I decide.

I fail to see where the common Sindarin adjective ending
-eb, -en and -ui come from. Does anyone know? It's probably
a development from Eldarin in which case I should ignore
them since Cein is based on Quenya.

> > No, {ch} is the mutated form of {c}, which I decided
> > should occur after the definite article. I'm still not sure
> > if there should be mutation or not after _i_ (sg) and _ir_
> > (pl).
>    Well, if you had a word 'icess', would it become
> 'igess'? I'm pretty sure that you would have some
> mutation with the plural though, since r+stop creates
> fricatives: ircess > irchess or ir chess.
Ah, yes. That's true. rc -> rch, just like lc -> lch.
So _ir_ would trigger spirant mutation and _i_ would
trigger soft mutation. I like that. Tho, since there are so
many words beginning with a vowel, the only thing saying
a word is in plural is the definite article.

Though, I'd like some nasal mutation too. Perhaps I could
make the sg. def.art. _in_ which would trigger nasal mutation:

cen [tSEn] 'elf'
i nghen [I N_0En] 'the elf' (with def.art. _in_)
i gen [I gEn] 'the elf' (with def.art. _i_)
chen [xEn] 'elves'
ir chen [Ir xEn] 'the elves'

Two questions: (1) If I go with _in_, how would {ngh} be
pronounced before [e] and [i]? {c} is [tS], so the nasal
would be the equivalent. The closest I come is some sort
of palatal nasal.

(2) How do I explain the spirant mutation of indef. plural?
And do I need to explain why c -> ch becomes [x] even though
it is an [E] afterwards and the original {c} is [tS]?

> > I'm thinking of doing something similar with Cein.
> > Perhaps by using the Mystery Case "respective" which ends
> > in _-s_ and thus would trigger "spirant mutation". Then the
> > _s_ could fall and leave only the mutation. I.e. the A
> > argument would be marked by mutation only.
>  Sounds good. It would be like the Welsh  for 'my'
> often indicated by nasal mustation only: nhad 'my
> father' < tad, or nghariad 'my love' < cariad.
Aha. Nice to see there is precedent. This is probably
what I will do.

> > Another idea is to use the preposition _allo_ which
> > could wear down to _llo_ and then _o_ plus spirant
> > mutation or something.
>   I like the use of the "respective"  myself.
Yes, me too. Plus _o_ would clash with genitive _o_.

> Either way, it's sure to be excellent. I really can't say
> how much I like Cein. When are you gonna have some more
> stuff for us? I am excited to see what you do with
> verbs, for example...
I'm gonna be very busy the coming week. (In fact, I shouldn't
even have worked on Cein at all the last days, but I couldn't
resist.) I begin my summer job on June 6th - as an account
manager transferring stocks back and forth in Europe - which
will probably not be very hard work. I might even have time
to do some conlanging at work. I know I could last summer. :)

||| daniel

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<> Kattawiknik pimaktasal! <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <>
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