Re: An arabo-romance conlang?

First of all, thanks for the help!
Second of all, maybe you should check your email settings, your reply
came as just "/" in the message, and the actually message was an
attachment.  When i opened it in notepad it was all messed up, but when i
cut-n-paste'd it into my email program it re-aligned properly.

About Romance-flavored Semitic:
exactly, that's the problem.  i want Semitic-flavored Romance, although
your 'ultra-Maltese' idea looks pretty cool... i think someone (maybe you
or Christophe?) suggested an idea for something like that a while ago, a
Romancelang that became tri-consonantal.  But i'm just looking for
phonetic alignment, not major morphological restructuring :-)

About the Waw-consecutive:
I assume you mean the same thing as what i learned as the "Flipping Vav"
(_vav hamehapekhet_), but in that case it already became obsolete (or at
least archaic) by the time period in which the development of Jûdajca (=
Ju:dajca) is set, which is after the Bar Kokhba rebellion.

About Segolate Development:
Do you mean that you think that the actual Hebrew segolates were
pronounced CE:CeC, or that that's how you think Jûdajca would develop?
(btw, in case it's coming out wierd, the second letter is a U-circumflex,
representing a U-macron/Shuruq)
I'm trying to limit myself to Hebrew sound changes occuring in at least
the Hellenistic Age, not earlier... so things like the "unaccented [a] >
[i] in closed syllable" rule, the /bgdkpt/ spirantization rule, etc. are
good, but anything that ancient that it's not even attested in Biblical
spelling (imagine that "shomeir" was spelled something like Sh?MR instead
of ShVMR) i don't think would still be active at this time.

Oooh, btw, my orthography system was:
{a} = /a/
{a:} = /A/ (possibly with some rounding)
{e} = /E/
{e:} = /e/
{i} = /I/ (short capital i) or /i/?
{i:} = /i/ or /ij/?
{o} = /o/, sometimes sounding closer to /O/
{o:} = /ow/, sometimes sounding closer to /o/
{u} = /u/, sometimes sounding closer to /U/
{u:} = /uw/, sometimes sounding closer to /u/

So when i said "CeCeC" that means "C[E]C[E]C".

About [P]:
I decided that Ju:dajca should have bilabial fricatives, instead of
labiodental.  So the fricative allophones of /b p/ are /B P/, not /v f/.
/v/ and /f/ are separate phonemes (a non-Semitic-based soundshift)
derived from /w/ (which of course becomes /j/ word initially!)
Also, the allophones of /d t/ are /z s/.   /s/ had already disappeared,
becoming /S/ and /Z/ (another non-Semitic-based soundshift).

About Verb Patterns:
In the verb paradigms i've worked at so far, in each of -A:L/R, -E:L/R,
and I:L/R, the vowel figures prominently.
For instance, tentative present active AMA:L
AMO:
AMA:
AMA
AMA:MU:
AMA:TI (or AMA:TI: ?)
AMAN

(remember, i'm trying to make a Semitic-*flavored* Romancelang, not a
Semitic-*overwhelmed* one :-) .)
It's not so strong in Pa`al, but in Pi`eil the vowel /e/ figures
prominently, especially in the present and future tenses, and in Hif`il
the /i/ figures prominently in all tenses.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment
  that you touch perfect speed.  And that isn't flying a thousand
  miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light.
  Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have
  limits.  Perfect speed, my son, is being there."
                    ~ _jonathan livingston seagull_


On Fri, 16 Feb 2001 19:07:26 +0000 kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET writes:
> \
On Wed, 14 Feb 2001 Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> wrote :
> Do you think it likely
> or possible that the romance words would shift to fit the semitic
> word-structure even when the pattern is from a different word class?
> For instance, at the moment Jûdajca has:
> CALP = "seize!"
> AMÂL = "to love"
Well once you've settled on the shape of the root, you could I suppose
use
any or all of the Hebrew patterns (up to and including the very wonderful
waw-consecutive!) Trouble is you'd then have Romance flavoured Semitic
(like Maltese, well worth looking at) rather than the other way round.

> according to the segolate-creation rules i have in my mind now
> Ca/âCC > CeCeC
Probably CaCC > CE:CeC despite the pointing with segol
Ca:CC might be expected to give Co:CeC since original Semitic /a:/ > /o:/
in Hebrew

> Ce/i/ê/îCC > CêCeC
> Co/u/ô/ûCC > CôCeC
> CALP would become CELEP ['kElEP],
['kE:lEf] ???

> However, both CeCeC and CaC²âC are *noun* patterns in Hebrew, and not
> verb patterns.
But there are quite clear rules for deriving the verb forms, e.g.
[ka:'laf] he seized; [yik'lo:f] he seizes; [kil'le:f] he seized
vigourously;
[?a:'mal] he loved; [yo:'mal] he loves
   (cf. Heb. [yo:mar] < [yo:mo:r] < [ya:mo:r] < [ya?mo:r] impf. of
   [?a:mar] he said)
Even [way'yo:mel] "and he loved" if you like  ;-)

> Also, would it be likely that the Jûdajca verb conjugations -ÂL/R,
-ÊL/R,
> and -ÎL/R would acquire connotations of the Hebrew paradigms _pâ`al_
> (simple), _pi`êl_ (intensive), and _hip`îl_ (causative), possibly
through
> borrowings from Hebrew that align with those endings because of the
> phonetic similarity?
I don't really know, but beware of comparing the 'citation' forms of
verbs  (the forms listed in a dictionary). These are usually 1st sing.
present for latin, infinitive for modern Romance langs, and 3rd sing.
perfect for Semitic langs, so you may be comparing chalk with cheese.

Keith