Re: Kijeb sandhi

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:45:32 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<conlang@...> wrote:

>I have entered some preliminary stuff for a new and expanded
>section on Kijeb sandhi to
><http://wiki.frath.net/Talk:Kijeb>, since I in the course of
>revising Kijeb verbal morphology I've found that I need
[...]
>I'd like your input on how realistic (phonetically
>plausible) the sandhi changes look. Any suggestions that may
>make them more realistic or interesting are welcome!
I like it!  Looks realistic overall, but there are a few of what appear to
be niggly exceptions; and that's perhaps one disadvantage of giving only a
table, that isolated exceptions don't necessarily stand out.  But the table
is certainly a good idea for getting an overview of the whole system of
sandhi.  And you've named all the table cells, nice!

I'd expect pN bN > Nwgw.  There's no reason for the sequence Nwgw to be
excluded, given that labiovelars are unitary -- or aren't they?  The whole
velar + labial corner is a bit anomalous as well, but I think it's what one
would expect if velar + labial clusters collapsed to a labiovelar with
manner and voicing taken from the velar before most of these changes
happened (but after nasal assimilation.  And I'm assuming here an xw > f
merger, which seems more plausible than x being redundantly rounded.)

I'd also expect fm > m, since fric+nasal > nasal+stop didn't happen elsewhere.

w seems to be metathesizing before non-approximants [w r j], except that for
whatever reason in [wn ws] it doesn't make it all the way to [nw sw] but
collapses into a single labial, which is odd given that [nw sw] are licit.
What's your reasoning there?

I can't see through your use of ny for the outcome of NN, but suspect
there's probably a reason for it.

Merging cells md and mn would be more parallel to the other nasals.

Given that [z] is an allophone of /s/, is there really a sandhi change in
[sb sd sg], i.e. should the cells be bolded?

Alex