Re: On Phonological Constraints: The Long Vowel Rule

Hey all & Dear Nicolas,

On Sunday 23 January 2005 02:02, Roger Mills wrote:

 > Generally speaking, homophonous forms tend to occur in
 > such different grammatical environments that there's
 > little problem. In this case, I could foresee a problem
 > with: "We saw the sea :: We saw you".."The sea is calm ::
 > you are calm" etc.  Again, what are the case endings if
 > any? Do verbs agree with their subjects? Perhaps "you"
 > could be declined differently than "sea"??

Languages search for ways to disambiguate things if
necessary. The German subjunctive mood is sometimes a
little complicated to form because of this:

Regular:

  sehen       - to see

  er sieht    - he sees
  er sah      - he saw

  er sehe     - he would see
  er sähe     - he would have seen

Irregular:

  gehen       - to go

  ich gehe    - I go
  ich ging    - I went

  ich *gehe => ich sei gegangen - I would go
  ich ginge   - I would have gone

Irregular:

  wollen      - to want

  ich will    - I want
  ich wollte  - I wanted

  ich wolle   - I would want
  ich *wollte => ich würde wollen - I would have wanted

IIRC there are forms where both forms must be shifted, but I
cannot think of one at the moment. The examples above
mostly only go for writing. In my dialect at least, the
present subjunctive is usually formed using the past
subjunctive form and the past subjunctive is nearly always
formed using the auxiliary "würde" (from "werden" - to
become) or using the indicative past tense!

Or think of English /ðer/. It may render as "their",
"they're" or "there" depending on the context.

Another potential ambiguity in English: "'d" and "'s". "'d"
can stand for both, "had" and "would". How do you know
which one is meant without a given environment? Likewise,
"'s" can show possession, but it's frequently used as
abbreviation for "is" as well.

My conlang Ayeri has a quite insane verbal morphology with
many two-syllabic infixes to show moods and with
monosyllabic prefixes for the tenses. E.g. without a
context, you do not know whether the verb 'macáo' (to
shine) is the past of 'cáo' (does not exist yet) or if
'maca' is a verb stem of its own. Even when forming the
past, 'mamacáo', it's unclear. You don't know if this form
means "shone" or rather means "to shine again". Tricky, no?
Things like this need a context. Otherwise, the meaning is
unclear.

As you can see, ambiguity is a very normal device in a
language. Many things are only clear from the context.
Ambiguities enrich languages in that otherwise, you'd get a
(rather boring) logical language instead of something (more
vivid & more interesting) that tries to behave like a
natural language.

Carsten

--
http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri