Re: Kowei, tonal Indo-European language

E-Ching Ng wrote:


>I've temporarily posted the description of Kowei (ko is 'human' in my
conlang, wei is Fujian dialect for "language") at
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~en27/kowei.doc .  I may not republish, but I would
very much like to hear what people think of the way I finally scrambled
towards tonogenesis and re-introduction of voiced stops.>


What a first-rate job!!!  Very interesting.  I liked some of your semantic
shifts-- e.g. *flat > bed, and at least one case of seldom-seen reversal of
meaning-- IIRC *hot > cold (or was it the other way round? I read it quickly
and didn't save, though I'll go back and do so, as there are some helpful
ideas).

I see you ran into a lesser version of the problem that faces me in creating
a Proto > tonal language:  that _every_ possible combination of initial and
final has to be accounted for.  Unfortunately, Proto Gwr has CVCVC structure
with variable stress, voiced and voiceless finals etc., which makes a lot to
account for and is why it hasn't got very far....

Very nicely printed, too; BTW all the type faces came through unscathed.
Just a bemused aside from an ex-Harvardian (who may be prejudiced ;-)  ):
What is it about Linguistics at Yale that fosters the use of multiple type
faces?  A friend of mine who worked in Austronesian under Dyen used to
delight in cramming as many as possible into his papers-- and that in the
days of IBM Selectric!!