Re: Primitive W., and a name-change

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
>=20
> First off, the name change.  I've been unsatisfied with the name of bot=
h
> my conculture and of my conlang since recent changes to the conculture.=
=20
> In the Classical Period, there are still both the monotheistic Faith,
> and the Old Ways (polytheistic), the Classical Period beginning with a
> religious schism creating the Faith, analogous to the Reformation.=20
> Thus, while those who follow the Faith may refer to them selves as "The
> Faithful Ones", it's not accurate for all of them.  Thus, I know call
> the language simply "wasagga'" (The Language), and the people
> "wayani'sa'" (The People).  There are other names, but no standard
> name.  The Prophetess' village used the words "sukkassi'" for the
> people, and "watakassi'" for the language (ta- =3D "language of").  The
> origin of this -kassi' is unknown.
Congratulations on taking this step. It takes courage
to suddenly change the statu-quo of a culture (I know!).

>=20
> Now, for Primitive Wasagga'.
>=20
[snip]
> In evolving into Standard Modern W., there were only a few minor
> changes.  Root-final non-nasal consonants were lost, unstressed schwa
> was dropped in many cases, /h/ and /q/ were lost (except that /q/ becam=
e
> /k/ when preceding a stressed vowel - is that reasonable?),=20
I don't know, but I think so -- consonants next to unstressed
vowels seem more likely to be dropped, and the shift /q/ > /k/
is quite reasonable. I recall some explanation I read about the
change of intervocalic /t/ into /T/ and /D/ in some point of the
chain (Proto-)Germanic > English or the like, where stress made
a difference (I think it was a problem with Grimm's laws...
Does anybody know?).

[snip]

> In other dialects, /@/ evolved differently.  In the Southern Dialects,
> it became /i-/ both stressed and unstressed, and actually survived for
> quite some time before being fronted to /i/.  In the Central dialects,
> stressed /@/ became /i/ (from the allophone [i-]), while unstressed /@/
> became /o/, which subsequently merged with /u/, thus triplets like, fro=
m
> k@p@t=ED, kapat=ED/kipit=ED/kuput=ED (Northern/Southern/Central). =20
How far away (and/or isolated) from each other were=20
the speakers of those dialects? The same phoneme evolving
into three different sounds seems a strange event if there
was any contact.

>=20
> /j/ and /w/ in Modern W. evolved from unstressed /i/ or /e/ and /u/ or
> /o/ before vowels, derived from lost phonemes, for instance, Prim.
> qihahuq=E9n (to rest) gave Modern yaw=EDn (to die), consonant clusters =
such
> as /gl/ are derived from lost schwas, for instance, g@l=E1 (all) gave
> Modern gl=E1 (all).  That's also the origin of diphthongs, for instance=
,
> dik=E1hos became dik=E1=FA.
Are those one syllable or two? (I assume a diphthong is one
syllable, but I may be wrong). I mean, the accute being the
two vowels makes it look as if they were *two* syllables.


--Pablo Flores