Re: CV metathesis Q

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:54:55 -0400, Carl Banks
<conlang@...> wrote:
>
>Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>> I've been playing with a sketch where most of the verbs have two basic
>> stems, CVCVC and CVCCV, to which a number of affixes are added. Mostly,
>> I've been working on filling in the specific morphology and on subsequent
>> development (sound changes etc.) but recently, I started wondering
>> exactly how the two stems came about in the first place. Any ideas?
>
>How about elision instead?  Stems all started as CVCVCV.  In some cases
>second V is elided, others third V.  Maybe first vowel after the
>accented syllable (before the Great Accent Shift, of course) disappears.
>
>That's pretty much how I generate words: start with random CV x N and
>apply sound rules designed to yield something that looks sort of Slavic,
>with a decidedly nonregular syllable structure.  Only for me elision is
>not based on accent, instead there are some vowel sounds that disappear,
>but they color nearby sounds.  (Gee, I wonder if there are any
>historical natlang families we know of that have sounds like that?)
>Probably this wouldn't work for your case though.
>
>Cool example (pasting Unicode, hope it works):
>
>ðYpiHYhækYHura -> þpixkur
>
>
>Carl Banks
Interestingly, I've done something like that for the later stages, including the
vowel changes. E.g. CV-CVCVC-CV-CV becomes CV'-CCVC-CV'-C. But when I
try to use it to develop the 2 stems in the first place (based on stress
placement*), I get something quite different from my current system. It may
be that what I have just isn't natural.

* such as CVCVCV(C) -> CVCCV(C) and CVCVCV-CV(C) -> CVCVCCV(C),
according to an antepenult stress rule.

Jeff