Re: Phaleran number

Marcus Smith wrote:

> Tom Wier wrote:
>
> >(/a:/ is phonemic in Phaleran).
>
> I take it then that the circumflex signals a long vowel?
Well, that's the best ASCII equivalent of the macron that I can get
usually without special fonts.

> >   Reduplication is somewhat more
> >complicated.
>
> I love reduplication. </random comment>
Yeah, so do I :)

> >    No longer a productive process, it was massively
> >productive several centuries ago, and still affects lexical classes
> >like body parts, most family relations, and most animate nouns
> >(excluding lower orders of life like sea-slugs, most plants, arthropods,
> >etc.).  However, the template that results in the reduplicant operates
> >under stricter phonological rules than does the rest of the phonology:
> >typologically marked phonemes like glottalic consonants and long
> >vowels are simplified, as are consonant clusters:
>
> So, the reduplicant template is a CV- prefix, with some kind of Emergence
> of the Unmarked effect.
Exactly.

> >     t'olka    'arm'                        tot'olka    'arms'
> >     nemes    'sister'                     nenemes   'sisters'
> >     yamna    'son-in-law'            yayamna    'sons-in-law'
> >     fû           'domesticated         fufû           'dom. owls'
> >                    owl'
> >     tlîna        'black bear'            titlîna         'black bears'
> >     thuran    'imperial janissary'   tuthuran     'imp. janissaries'
>
> You mention a bimoraic minimum in the segment of the email I snipped. This
> makes me wonder about your forms for 'domesticated owl': fû ~ fufû. Is the
> vowel underlyingly long here? Or does the lengthening requirement disregard
> the reduplicant?
You bring up an interesting point.  Obviously, if one were just given the
singular data, these would be impossible to answer.  But the plural makes
it clear. If the underlying form were /fu/, then although the reduplicant
would still be [fu], the base would also be [fu], making it *[fufu].  So, yes,
the 'emergence of the unmarked' effect applies also to vowels, as can
also be seen in the 'black bear' example.

> I like the way you simplify your cluster in 'black bear'. It is more common
> to see reduplicants contain strings that are also contiguous strings in the
> base, but your system is well attested.
Yeah.  That just means that the constraint governing contiguity needs to
be fairly lowly ranked.

> Another possibility is to copy the
> consonant immediately before the copied vowel; so tlîna would be litlîna or
> tlilîna.
Yeah, I'd thought about that, but decided I liked the stop consonant better.

===================================
Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos

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