Nik Taylor wrote:
>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>> The syllable structure gives a total of 32 possible syllables -
>> not enough for a completely oral speech.
>
>Not necessarily. There are about a million four-syllable words, and
>about 32,000 three-syllable. It's conceivable that a primitive species
>might not need that many roots.
Like I said, I was also assuming that these hominids still have a
limited control of their speech organs. There would therefore be a
tendency for monosyllabic morphemes.
>> Several speech morphemes can be uttered together with one sign.
>> Word order within the speech element is not important. E.g.:
>>
>> Speech /GEN/ /plural/ or /plural/ /GEN/
>> Sign < 1 > < 1 >
>> Meaning 'our'
>
>Interesting idea. But, don't you think that there'd be a tendency
>towards one order or another?
Well, studies conducted with signing apes indicate that word
order is not as important for apes as it is for humans. So I'm
assuming that the same would be the case with primitive hominids.
>> Alternatively, several sign morphemes can be given with one
>> speech morpheme. E.g.:
>>
>> Speech / plural /
>> Sign <bird> <lizard>
>> Meaning 'birds and lizards' (perhaps 'lizard-birds')
>
>Would that be a lengthened utterance, to last the length of those signs?
Yes. The vowel in the CV morpheme is simply lengthened: CVVVV...
When I first worked on the language, I tried experimenting with
phonemically long vowels - but when I discovered I could use
several signs with one lengthened speech morpheme, then phonemic
length obviously does not work.
-kristian- 8)