Re: Terkunan > Trekunan?

On 06/05/08 21:57:59, Henrik Theiling wrote:
...
> In all other cases, rC could be resolved by echoing the previous
> vowel.  This is no problem if the echoed vowel is not stressed:
>
>     mer'kat    > mere'kat        'market'
>     vur'kan    > vuru'kan        'volcano'
>
> In other cases, stress, which is currently totally regular, might
> trigger a problem:
>
>     'serve     > ?se'reve        'to serve'
I'm not entirely sure what the problem is here; I'm assuming it's
because the epenthetic vowel is stressed. I'm also assuming stress
falls on the last closed syllable. In that case, it might be perceived
as a quick chainshift:

   VrC -> rVC   (methatesis)
   SrV -> SVrV  (epenethesis)

where "S" is any consonant C for which Cr clusters are prohibited. In
this case, there's no problem.

> In these cases, we might need another resolving strategy (e.g., drop
> of 'r' or 'v' in the above case).  I do not want to introduce
> (unstressed) schwas.  Maybe rC is only forbidden in unstressed
> syllables: of the above examples, 'portu', 'parle', 'Karle' would
> remain unchanged in this case, and maybe 'eternitat', too, because it
> is a compound 'etern'+'itat'.
...
> There are some open questions, e.g. what to do in compounds:
>
>    vir   'true'     + tat   >  ?viritat / ?virtat (currently: virtat)
>    mfril 'inferior' + tat   >  ??                 (currently:
> mfriltat)
>    sul   'alone'    + mentu >  ??                 (currently:
> sulmentu)
>
> The endings are actually -itat and -amentu, but -i-/-a- is
> (currently)
> dropped after vowel, r, and l.
I'm all for any process that makes the language more opaque. However,
if the suffix is transparent (at the time the process happens) and the
vowel is dropped in a context where you'd obtain an illegal cluster, I
would think the vowel dropping process would stop before the process
was made opaque. Hence, I'd expect:

   vir+(i)tat -> viritat
   sul+(a)mentu -> sulamentu

> This is a bit like Modern Dutch's 'kerruk' for 'kerk' and 'melluk'
> for
> 'melk' and 'errug' for 'erg' (only a schwa is inserted here, and the
> l
> is involved too, which might also be thinkable in Terkunan).  Words
> with lC in Terkunan include:
>
>     kalde       'warm'
:)

>     Alman       'German'
>
> I had experimented with l > r here already, but decided that it only
> happens before stop or voiceless consonants (IIRC).
>
> Another problem is that I don't what to rename Terkunan to Trekunan,
> so I might need some exceptions, or simply define that Modern
> Terkunan
> does not have such a constraint in r.
Why would the name not have it? And how would the constraint be lost?
Influence from another language? loss of vowels resulting in the
process returning?

--
Tristan.

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