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Romlang problem in Terkunan

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 7, 2007, 15:45
Hello!

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'

And also:

  ARBOREM   > (arbul)  albur  'tree'
  MANTELUM  > (mantil) mantir 'cape, cloak'

Maybe even (less likely due to mixed original distribution of l and r):
  BOREALEM  > (boral)  bolar  'northern'

I am not really content with this, especially the monosyllabics are
not what I dream of.

What other shifts of -l would be feasible?  Any ideas?  Could I
handle -/ls/ specially?  The -/l/ itself I find quite nice.

  **Henrik

Replies

Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>
ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>