Re: First post & three questions

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 MGreenlee@AOL.COM wrote:

> This is my first post to this list. My name is Michael Greenlee, and I've
> been working on contructed languages for a few years (I'm fifteen). I've been
> lurking on the list for a while now, and I have a few questions.
>
> 1. What semivowels are there other than y and w?
It seems to me that any high vowel may have a semivowel partner,
so just as /y/ is /i/'s semivowel partner and /w/ is /u/'s, you
can also have a high front rounded semivowel as a partner to /ü/
(u-umlaut), and a high back unrounded semivowel as a partner to
/ï/ (i-diaresis). This is the so-called 'velar glide' of
Axininca Campa.

> 2. Does anyone know of any good sources for information about different
> punctuation systems? All that I've been able to find so far is some scattered
> information about old English, Latin, and Greek punctuation.
I believe that Mark Aronoff wrote a paper on the accentual
system of Tiberian Hebrew in which he treats some of the accents
as punctuation. The article appeared in the journal _Language_
in the mid-80s ... hang on ... here's the reference:

Aronoff, Mark. 1985. Orthography and Linguistic Theory: The
Syntactic Basis of Masoretic Hebrew Pronunciation. _Language_
61.28-72.

> 3. Are there any good books about Proto-Indo-European in general (structure,
> phonology, etc.)? I've found plenty on the Indo-European languages, but few
> on PIE itself.
My favorite is the massive volume by Gamqrelidze and Ivanov,
recently translated into English by Johanna Nichols. It is an
exhaustive (and exhausting!) treatment which presents a clear,
coherent, but radical view of PIE and the PIEans. They are the
major proponents of the Glottalic Theory, and they present their
work (apparently in accordance with Russian academic tradition)
as a self-contained (almost hermetic) logical framework rather
than as a series of proposals requiring explicit defense and
proof.

There's also a very nice little book by Robert Beekes which is a
little more traditional in its outlook and provides some nice
paradigms. The translation is a bit awkward in spots (it was
originally written in Dutch), but it reads well otherwise.

Welcome!

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir