Representing Boreanesian (was: Re: quantity triggered vs. quantity sensitive stress

And Rosta wrote:

>A belated reply, but I think not repeating what was in other
>messages in the follow-up thread,
>
Thanks for the reply, And. Lumanesian is presently undergoing a
reform and is now called Boreanesian. Several elements of the
language remain the same. The only change is where stress is located
now - no longer penultimate but ultimate. I'll explain in more
detail what the changes, but first, I have kept what I have written
previously so that others can see the changes:

>Kristian:
-----<snip>-----
>> The situation is quite different in Lumanesian. It appears that
>> stress is what triggers a heavy syllable and not the other way
>> around. The reason for this is that, unlike quantity sensitive
>> stress languages, stress in Lumanesian lexemes is consistently
>> penultimate (with the exception of monosyllabic lexemes).
>> Furthermore, this stressed syllable is consistently a heavy CVC
>> syllable (whereas light syllables are CV only). Stressed CVC
>> syllables can appear in three forms depending on which of the
>> three tones are used. These are:
>>
>> CV? - creaky tone, heavy syllable ending in a glottal stop or
>>       glottalized sonorant.
>> CVH - level tone, heavy syllable ending in a glottal fricative
>>       or a voiceless sonorant.
>> CVX - falling tone, heavy syllable with a long vowel or ending
>>       in a voiced sonorant.
>>
>> The result is that all words must have one of the three
>> possible stressed syllable forms. Furthermore, stressed heavy
>> syllables vary in the coda depending on the tone used. All in
>> all, words without a heavy syllable cannot exist. Does this
>> appear natural?
>
-----<snip>-----
>
>> I'm also not sure if this is a segmental feature alone or a
>> prosodic/suprasegmental feature that applies to whole words.
>> Perhaps it is both (if that's at all possible). In any case,
>> I'm sort of stumped when it comes to representing this
>> orthographically. If word stress is almost consistently
>> penultimate and stressed syllables consistently heavy, do I
>> still have to represent the coda of stressed syllables to mark
>> them as heavy (and thereby also stressed)? I was thinking that
>> the type of the coda represented in the orthography could be
>> used to mark the tone of the word since they are directly
>> related. It just seems gluttonous to overrepresent something
>> that is already consistent when tone alone can easily be
>> represented by diacritics.
>
>By my reading of your description of Lumanesian, it looks as if
>there is a word-level property whereby a word is "+?", "+H", or
>"+X", which means that the penultimate syllable is either CV?,
>CVH or CVX.
Boreanesian is now stressed in ultimate position, and it is this
ultimate syllable (a.k.a. the major syllable - following Mon-Khmer
conventions) that is still consistently heavy (or CVX). So instead
of the previously CVXCV structure, Boreanesian lexeme structure is
now C@CVX.

Like Lumanesian however, this major CVX syllable still appears in
one of the three forms described for Lumanesian. That is, they can
appear in one of the three possible tones/registers: falling-creaky,
level-aspirate, falling-modal. Schematically, this is: C@CV?, C@CVH,
and C@CVX.

>Orthographically, then, you need a three-way distinction that is
>located in some (ideally unambiguous) position on the
>orthographic word (e.g. initially, finally, or on the penult
>itself). The distinction nnedn't be marked on the penult if (i)
>it is marked elsewhere, and (ii) there is some independent way of
>delimiting orthographic words. If one knew the overall
>distribution of CV?, CVH and CVX syllables it might be easier to
>choose between alterntive orthographic solutions.
I have chosen to mark this in the final position. This is an ideally
unambiguous position now that I'm representing all minor syllables
as Ce-. Here is how:

Words with a creaky tone (i.e., a heavy syllable ending in a glottal
stop or glottalized sonorant) is marked by writing the symbol for a
glottal stop "'" at the end. E.g.: "sal'" [sal<?>], "peya'" [pja?],
"kan'" [ka~N<?>], "keluy'" [kluj<?>].

Words with a level tone (i.e., a heavy syllable ending in a glottal
fricative or a voiceless sonorant) is marked by "h" at the end.
E.g.: "nalh" [nal<o>], "kenuyh" [k@nuj<o>], "telah" [t@lah].

Words with a falling tone (i.e., a heavy syllable with a long vowel
or ending in a voiced sonorant) is unmarked - although long vowels
are written double to indicate heavy syllables without a consonantal
coda. E.g.: "pal" [pal], "pe'aa" [p@?aa], "meney" [m@n@j].

>
>A comparison with Livagian may be of interest [especially to you,
>because the two conlangs that currently most remind me of
>Livagian are Lumanesian and Lojban].
Is the common "L" a coincidence in all these languages?

>Basically a phonological word in Liv contains exactly one non-
>low-tone (either H or HLH) syllable, and any low-tone sylls that
>precede it in the word can only have the vowel /oj/ (which in
>that pretonic position is subject to additional phonotactic
>constraints not relevant here). I have three different
>orthographic solutions for the 3 different scripts used to write
>Livagian.
>"syllabary": orthographic words are not delimited, and tone is
>    represented as part of the syllable grapheme.
>"Livagian alphabet": tone is marked at the start of the
>    orthographic word (which is delimited only in this way), and
>    low-tone /oj/ is not written.
>Roman alphabet: orthographic words are preceded by spaces, non-
>    low tone is marked on vowels, low-tone /oj/ is not written.
>
>The Roman alphabet could be used in the same way as the Livagian
>alphabet, but the point of using the Roman alphabet is to try to
>conform to more international orthographic conventions.
>
I have plans to indicate tone in the Boreanesian syllabary through
the graphemes indicating the coda themselves. Other symbols
represent C@ syllables. The @ can modified by these coda graphemes,
similar to how Indic scripts modify the inherent "a" in their
consonants by adding super/sub-scripts.

Regards,
-Kristian- 8-)