Re: Je suis de retour !

On Tuesday 05 November 2002 04:13 pm, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> So now I'm back and ready to take part in conversations again. So... what
> did I miss his weekend? :)
        This is a really late response, but I've been meaning to respond as soon as I
had the time. :) Thanks to Roger Mills and Arnt Johansen, I worked out the
scheme for system 1 and 2 vowel mutations. System 1 is the more interesting,
since the results are seemingly irregular.
        To refresh: Proto-Enamyn had the following vowel system:

i 1 u
e @ o
& a A

System 1 mutations were initially conditioned by a final vowel in the previous
word; since Proto-Enamyn did not allow hiatus, it was necessary to insert a
glide for words that began with a vowel. Hence:

i e & -> ji je j&
1 @ a -> r\1 r\@ r\a
u o A -> wu wo wA

With the sound changes, however, the system becomes like so:

i -> ji
E -> jE
a -> la
M -> lM or M
O -> M

What happened was that [r\1] changed to [l1], and then [l1] -> [lu] -> [lM],
while [wu] -> [u] -> [M]. Likewise, [wo] -> [uo] -> [u] -> [M].
        [@] was for the most part lost, except in those cases when it was stressed or
when its loss would have resulted in an unmanagable cluster. In both cases,
it changed to [a]. However, that means that there are a class of words that
have different initial consonants, but end up with a pseudo-prefix [la] or
[l] in mutation!
        System 2 is not quite so interesting, since the vowel mutation scheme came
from a nasal mutation. Hence, the following scheme developed:

i e & -> mi me m&
1 @ a -> n1 n@ na
u o A -> Nu No NA

With sound changes:

i -> mi
E -> mE
a -> na
M -> nU
O -> nO

        Because of the disappearing [@], you also get [na] or [n] for some words, but
that's about the limit of excitement, since [N] -> [n]. I suppose a vowel or
two could have taken [J], which would have resulted in [nj] + vowel, but [J]
doesn't seem to fit in too well with the system as is. Something for further
consideration, however.
        So now I'm merrily in the process of coming up with all the sound change
rules, which have almost doubled since my last post on the subject. Mark
Rosenfelder's 'sounds' program is wonderful for quickly showing how
everything changes. Of course, this also means that I have to reconstruct the
words I've already created for Enamyn to learn how they mutate, but since I
only had less than seventy-five words, that's not too much of a problem.
        :Peter