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Re: apostrophes in transliteration (stress in Tokana)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, January 25, 2001, 19:39
J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> The final stress > here is justified by the fact that these words used to end in an [h]; the [h] was > dropped, but the word-final stress triggered by the final consonant was retained.
> (In fact, the [h] remains when a suffix is added, e.g. _napeh-mo_ "with the > daughter".)
Is final [h] still possible in Tokana? If not, you might respell "nape" as "napeh", with a spelling rule that final written "h" is not pronounced. I am very fond of these morphophonemic spelling systems.
> eta "X walks" [E.ta] > eta' (< eta-a) "that/if/when X walks" [e.TA]
How about "etaa" for the latter, with a rule that "aa" is pronounced like "a" but attracts the stress? (And similarly for the other vowels, as I suppose.)
> How do I distinguish orthographically between [E.ta.na] "s/he walks" and [e.TA.na] > "that/if/when s/he walks"?
> (3) Add an addendum to the basic stress rule of Tokana to the effect that suffixed > pronouns don't cause a stress shift, and then mark exceptions to THAT rule with an > accent over the stressed vowel.
I like this best. After all, orthographies are intended to provide literacy for native speakers, who already know what is and what is not a suffixed pronoun. -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@...> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein