Re: Romlang problem in Terkunan
| From: | Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, August 8, 2007, 0:09 |
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Hi!
Roger Mills writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
>...
> > 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/ !!
Ok.
> >And also:
> >
> > ARBOREM > (arbul) albur 'tree'
>
> Yes, nice; r--r sequences often dissimilate, one direction or another.
I like this, too. Southern Italian dialects are full of nice shifts
similar to this. And I love to read in, say, the Sicilian
Wikipedia. :-) It's often quite surprising. (Today, I found
'ncicropédicu' for 'encyclopedic'.)
>...
> 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-,
My sound shifter tells me it would be 'murt' (l > r before stop unless
r follows).
> -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.
Ok, we'd get -i:s, -eis, -ais, -ois, -uis. Some of these dipthongs
will only exist in this very place, I think, so there is not much
chance of collision. But it would introduce more dipthongs, something
I wanted to avoid, too.
> 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)
Indeed. And no dipthong either.
> (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 ???
'magis' for 'but' becomes just 'ma'. 'magis' for 'more' is 'pru'. :-P
> Hmm, not sure I like these. Maybe monosylables could take -es plural???
Ah! No bad idea either. But it leaves us with |arbulz| in -/ls/.
But maybe -ez plural after -l and -r? Hmm. But why? To avoid
epenthetic -t-? Thinking of it, this may be one reason why I don't
like -ls, actually, because it immediately becomes -lts. Three
consonants in coda are usually (but not always) avoided. OTOH, -rs is
not so prone to insertion of -t-, but -ns- is. And I don't like -ns
so much either! Maybe base -z vs. -ez on avoiding epenthesis?
sg. pl.
-r -rz
(-r -rez?)
-l -lez (avoid epenthetic -t-)
-n -nez (-"-)
-nt -ntz (no need to avoid what's already there)
-s -sez (avoid assimilation, too)
I already defined, maybe should be changed?
-lt -ltez (inconsitent with epenthesis rule, but avoiding
clusters may also be a good reason)
-rt -rtez
Or should I also have
-nt -ntez?
I just notice that this could mean that the plural is almost always in
-ez, since the only consonantal stems are in -n, -l, -r, -t, -s. All
other nouns are in -e.
A short overview of the proposed solutions, with other words not
ending in -l for comparison:
sg. before assim. l>i epenth.
il ilz iz iz ilez (irr. 'iz'?) 'they'
kel kelz kez keiz kelez 'heavens'
arbul arbulz arbuz arbuiz arbulez 'trees'
sol solz soz soiz solez 'suns'
devat devatz devatz devatz devatz 'debts'
mar marz ? marz marz 'oceans'
vent ventz ventz ventz ventz 'winds'
ort ortz ortz ortz ortz 'kitchen gardens'
What do you think of these?
Very good ideas so far. I need more thinking. And I am surprised how
many things I did *not* think of before...
**Henrik
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