Re: Sound changes causing divergence of ordinals from cardinals

Neat stuff. Still, this does nothing to extend the cardinal/ordinal
distinction to other numerals! They'll definitely get messed up too in all
these sound shifts, but it would be unlikely that one series would turn out
resembling the ordinals more than the cardinals, let alone contrasting the
two as equally possible roots.

Of course, we can just derive those later, but where's the fun in that? ;)


Alex Fink wrote:
>Nik Taylor wrote:
> >Alex Fink wrote:
> > > (2) Primary stress is penultimate (unless there's only one vowel).
>Vowels
> > > under the primary stress shift: non-high vowels rise (/a e 2 Q o/ > /e
>i y o
> > > u/), while high vowels break (/i y u/ > /j@ H@ w@/).
> >
> >(3) Intervocalic voiceless stops become fricatives (/x/ further develops
> >to /h/ and then 0)
>
>Weird that original /h/ sticks around, then.
Indeed, better delete them intervocally too.

OK, with lots of adjacent vowels now...
(4) Sequences of adjacent vowels with the same roundedbackness develop into
long vowels. Schwa matches with all series. The vowel is high (or low) iff
all the originals vowels also are, else mid.

And to stop this from being just "big" shifts, I think we should also allow
one "small" (ie. affecting only a few of the words herein) sound shift per
turn:
(4.5) Immediately before stress, /tS dZ/ lenite to /S Z/ unless preceded by
an alveolar continuant.

Value Cardinal        Ordinal
1     'j@wQ           i'we:
2     'nero           na'rue
3     'mjo:           mi'ue
4     'to:            'to:e
5     'kin            'kinke
6     'jesu           ja'swe:
7     'Sj@gu          Si'gwe:
8     'dZuz2          Zo'ze:
9     'hj@ja          hi'je:
10    'neo            na'ue
11    'hero           ha'rue
12    'utsu           ot'swe:
20    naro'no:        naro'no:e
21    naronQ'H@wQ     naronQy'we:
22    narono:'noro    narono:nQ'rue
30    mio'no:         mionQ'ue
31    naro'no:ro    narono:'rue
32    naro'no:tsu     narono:'tswe:
33    miono:'mjo:    miono:mi'ue

I also postulate words for 100, 1000 and 10000:
100 'tSifu Se'pwe: (from tSepu tSepuke)
1000 'wegor wa'gurke (from wagor wagorke)
10000 Sun'tSyfu tSuntS2'pw@ke (from tSuntSepu tSuntSepuke )

These do not compound with each other or smaller numerals, so there's no
need to individually process thru numbers larger than 100.

Still needs to somehow perturb the still somewhat regular -e ending of the
ordinals and the matching initial consonants. And all those medial glides
can't be healthy either...

John Vertical

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