Re: Interbeing

David Peterson wrote:


>In a message dated 02/20/02 4:36:23 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:
>
><< >2A) "A mata oliala imata ie kawi ae iko kapivi......  >
Any possibility [vowel-initial glottal stops]  would be a non-phonemic
feature of Kamakawi? >>
>
>Actually, when I read it, the next vowel sort of drowns out the previous
>vowel, so it comes out as:
>[amatolialimatiekawiaikokapivi].  I haven't sat down and figured out rules
>for the way I myself pronounce, or how I think it should be.  However,
since
>there really are no initial glottal stops (that phoneme surfacing as [h]
>word-initially), it could be.  Or maybe it could be designated to classes.
>What I noticed was that when I would put together sentences, there would be
a
>lot of one-letter particles in the beginning or in places, so I decided to
>contract them as a convention.  So, maybe it could be like important words
>(nouns, adjectives, verbs) would get the initial glottal stop so that they
>stood out (especially if the accent fell on the first syllable), whereas
>particles and function words would go without...  Very interesting.  You've
>given me much to think about.  :)
Just the Malayo-Polynesianist part of me speaking......  but it strikes me
that in a language with this structure, and with lots of important 1-syl.
vocalic grammatical particles, you might lose a lot of information if you
allow vowel-elision. >[amatolialimatiekawiaikokapivi] might be read "ama
toli a limati eka wia iko kapivi", which could be quite another thing
altogether.   (Though stress would probably keep a lot of ambiguity at
bay)....Yes, an interesting problem.