Re: Romlang problem in Terkunan

Henrik Theiling wrote:
>A small problem arose concerning the sound shifts of Terkunan: I don't
>like the sound of -/ls/ at the end of words but it frequently occurs
>due to a regularised plural ending -/s/.  Since the pronouns are
>regular, too, I constantly see |ilz| /ils/ 'they'.
>
>Any idea what to do about this?  Terkunan is meant to be a typical
>romlang, but there is no trace of an l > u shift and I don't want one,
>because I don't like the diphthongs that will arise from that.  There
>are quite frequent r <> l switches, however, but currently, the
>language tends towards -l at ends of words (e.g. arbul 'tree').  For
>polysyllabic words, anyway.  I thought about having -l > -r in
>monosyllabics and switching the overall tendencies for l/r.  It would
>affect a lot of things:
>
>(Current words are given in parens:)
>
>   ILLE    > (il)  ir  'he,she,it'    =>   irz   'they'
>   CAELUM  > (kel) ker 'heaven,sky'   =>   kerz  'heavens, skies'
>   SOL     > (sul) sur 'sun'
>   MILLE   > (mil) mir 'thousand'
>   NULLUM  > (nul) nur 'zero'
>   MALUM   > (mal) mar 'bad'          ==   mar   'ocean'
I don't like those.......keep the /l/ !!
>
>And also:
>
>   ARBOREM   > (arbul)  albur  'tree'
Yes, nice; r--r sequences often dissimilate, one direction or another.
>
>Maybe even (less likely due to mixed original distribution of l and r):
>   BOREALEM  > (boral)  bolar  'northern'
Hmmmm, not sure about that.
>
>What other shifts of -l would be feasible?  Any ideas?  Could I
>handle -/ls/ specially?  The -/l/ itself I find quite nice.
>
But regarding the -ls problem. Since you don't like the l > u shift, and
assuming your /l/ is dental, how about l > y [j] in *l + plural /s/ final
clusters only (very restricted environment; you could broaden it to *l +
dental clusters in any position if you wanted to, which might give you words
like "muit" < multu- (cf. Port. muito). I'm not sure how many -lt-, -ld-,
-ln-, -ls- clusters might be affected, however. Personally I'd limit it just
to the one env., -l + plural s. It could happen, as we say.

Then you'd have il ~i:s,  (for that matter, it wouldn't be unusal to
restrict this change to this single form...pronoun systems often have
irregularities)
(kel) 'heaven,sky'   =>  keis 'heavens, skies'
>   SOL     > (sul) 'sun'  suis
>   MILLE   > (mil) 'thousand'  mi:s
>   NULLUM  > (nul) 'zero'  nuis
>   MALUM   > (mal)  mais no longer conflicts with 'ocean', but might with
>the reflex of *magis ???
Hmm, not sure I like these. Maybe monosylables could take -es plural???

*l > j is at least "sort-of" Romance-y :-))))

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