Re: Romlang problem in Terkunan

On Tue, 7 Aug 2007 17:45:33 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
wrote:

>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
In Vallés, l + s becomes dz (dental + laminal) after a vowel. The epenthetic e
is used when the singular ends in two consonants (or a voiceless consonant).

Jeff

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