Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat

Herman Miller:
<<
The absence of CV:CV: seems to need an explanation, but it could be a
shortening of vowels in unstressed syllables.
 >>

I don't think so, necessarily.  It could be as simple as you can't
have two long vowels in the same stem--or prosodic word, if
you like.  After all, didn't Ancient Greek have a prohibition on
too many aspirated consonants in a row?

HM:
<<
Many of the CV:CV in the current language can be traced back to words
that were CVCV in older versions of Tirelat, so the inconsistent
lengthening may be little more than inconsistent documentation.
 >>

Ah.  Well, now we've stepped out of the fictional history of the
language and into the real history of the language.

HM:
<<
But part of that is due to lengthening vowels deliberately to get the
stress patterns that I wanted.
 >>

This, of course, is a byproduct of exactly what I was suggesting:
length attracts stress in this language, and not the other way
around.  :)

HM:
<<
With the three-syllable words, 'CVCVCV is common; CV'CV:CV and
CVCV'CV: are less common, but also exist.
 >>

No Finnish CV:CVCV?

HM:
<<
I suspect there are elements of both stress accent and vowel length
in this distinction, and that one or the other may be more prominent
in different circumstances...
 >>

If you really want to figure out what's going on so you can
faithfully reproduce it in future lexemes, what you have to do
is subject your corpus to a corpus analysis.  Everything must
be marked for stress and length, and then, just analyze that
puppy up and see what's what.  It's hard to analyze something
with only a few tokens.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

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