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Re: First post & three questions

From:dirk elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>
Date:Friday, January 19, 2001, 23:21
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