Re: An arabo-romance conlang?

En réponse à Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>:

> Hi Christophe,
>
>
> As I've been toying with Arabic for a few months, perhaps I have a few
> observations I can share with you. I treat some details in a way which
> is very far from commonly accepted, but I won't bother about commenting
> and substantiating right now, OK?
>
No problem with me :) .

> On Thu, 25 Jan 2001 17:52:36 +0100, Christophe Grandsire
> <christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
>
>
> > the history of Arabic. Where does it come from? What
> >did it look like 2000 years ago? Is it plausible to have Roman settling
> in
> an
> >Arabic-speaking place of 2000 years ago?
>
> Arabs are mentioned in Latin and Greek sources; they inhabited Arabia
> in the modern sense (or at least northern part of it) and some adjacent
> lands (including Nabatea). They contacted the speakers of Aramaic, South
> Arabian languages (ancestral to today's Sokotran, etc.), and possibly
> Middle Persian.
>
Well, not a very likely place for a Roman settlement, except for a group of
Romans which would have a reason to flee Rome (I was thinking of a group of
Republicans fleeing Rome at the end of the Roman Republic, but the idea is
already taken. Maybe a group of opponents to Octavius...).

> Their language was very archaic (as is modern literary Arabic, compared
> to all other Semitic langs except Akkadian). Structurally, the Arabic
> of 1st century could be not too different from Proto-West-Semitic.
>
Well, if modern literary Arabic is very archaic, then that's good to me, as it
simplifies my problem about knowing about Proto-Arabic :) .

> Main problem with merging it with a Romance dialect: it had 3-way
> opposition for occlusives, voiced : weak (aspirated) voiceless :
> emphatic (glottalized) voiceless. Correspondences with today's Arabic
> for the glottalized series (the other two haven't changed too much):
>
> t'  >  [t.] ('emphatic' t)
> t_l' (or maybe s_l') > [d.] ('emphatic' d)
> c' (or already s') > [s.] ('emphatic' s)
> k' > [q] (the uvular/back velar stop, _qaf_; in the times you are
> interested in hardly different from k and g in the place of
> articulation)
>
Interesting sound changes. I'll keep them for the Arabo-Romance lang I think.

> Modern interdentals (T, D) were affricates (exact quality unclear).
> The glottalized affricate of the same row (different from the s'/c' >
> [s.] mentioned above) turned into modern [z.] ('emphatic' z).
>
> And indeed, modern [d_Z] was [g] (preserved in some modern dialects).
>
> Modern [f] could be still [p] (doubtful). Modern [S] was a lateral
> s_l, or maybe t_l and s_l were still different but later merged
> in s_l > [S]. (Note the nearly complete lateral series - may be
> a good thing for the Arabo-Romance, a way to reinterprete the clusters
> with _l_).
>
Indeed. That's a nice idea for simplifying consonnant clusters.

> This is nearly all about the consonants. It only has to be added that
> modern words with 'waslated' alif could still begin with a cluster
> ([bnun] 'son', [t_Sna:ni] 'two', etc.). Nasals, liquids, [b], uvular
> fricatives and all post-uvulars remained. See below about glides.
>
> Vowels. Originally, the inventory was probably same as today: 3 short
> + 3 long + 2 diphthongs. However, it is not clear which stage of the
> following development was actual for the time you ask about:
>
> (1) Unchanged.
> (2) With (some of) the contractions and other changes described in
> Arabic grammars for 'weak' roots - the difference from the modern
> state being that (no less than) two additional long vowels were still
> distinct from the original long ones: [O:] < awa and [E:] < aja.
>
> I'm inclined to think that around the beginning of Christian era it
> was still (1).
>
Can you sum up all this with a comprehensive table of the phonology of 1st
century Arabic (before the sound changes) for both consonnants and vowels? It
would help me get a full image of what it was and how to mix it with Latin
phonology (I already have a few ideas, especially for the vowels).

> Most probably, the apocopated pausal forms still had not developed
> (e. g. the main feminine ending was still [-atu] even sentence-finally).
>
That good for me. I won't have to bother with the problem of the pausal forms
and can develop liaison features from scratch (even if they shouldn't be very
different from what happens now in Arabic. After all, a Romance natlang, namely
my first lang, has liaison features too. So I think an Arabo-Romance conlang
should have them. It is the same with epithentetic vowels (waslated alif in
Arabic, simple /i/ or /e/ in Romance langs). The Arabo-Romance lang will have
them for sure - more in the way of Arabic than in the way of Romance langs
though :) ).

> Now, special problems with Arabo-Romance:
>
> 1) Where to get uvular fricatives and the distinction 'laryngeal vs.
> pharyngeal';
>
> 2) Where to get the distinction 'weak (aspirated) voiceless vs.
> emphatic (glottalized) voiceless'?
>
I'm working on those two problems. I'll answer to them from other posts.

> For the second problem:
>
> It may be interesting to consider borrowings from Greek into Aramaic
> and Ethiopic which had a similar distinction. Typically, they borrow
> Greek aspirates as weak, and (!) Greek plain voiceless as glottalized
> (rarely, as voiced). This is also true for borrowings from Greek to
> Aramaic to (pre-written) Arabic. So, if you first invent an early
> Romance dialect with aspirates... (?)
>
I've been toying with the idea of reintroducing /h/ and aspirates in the Latin
spoken by those people, both by hypercorrection and influence from Greek and
Proto-Arabic. That would also bring aspiration where it has no reason to be,
leading to nice opaque evolution :) .

> (I'd think of something along the following lines: initial C > Ch,
> but sC > C > C'... or something like that).
>
> As for 'velar vs. uvular' and 'laryngeal vs. pharyngeal' - perhaps,
> an influence of some vowel qualities (otherwise being lost)?
>
> I hope this will help a bit. Good luck!
>
It helps a lot, thank you very much!

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr