Re: apostrophes in transliteration (stress in Tokana)

And Rosta wrote:

> Matt:
> > > BTW, if some clitics don't trigger stress shift, why write them as
> > > part of the preceding word at all, rather than as separate orthographic
> > > words?
> >
> > I guess because (a) native speakers [i.e., me] feel that enclitics form a
> > tight unit with the preceding word, and (b) encliticisation triggers
> > certain sound changes which are otherwise confined to word-level domains.
> > For example, adding a possessive enclitic to a noun ending in a nasal
> > triggers nasal assimilation:
> >
> >   konom  "hammer"  [ko.'nom]
> >   kononko  "your hammer"  [ko.'noN.ko]
> >
> > Also, failure to add an enclitic causes the allative suffix "-ni" to lower
> > and become "-ne" word-finally:
> >
> >   totsat  "table"  [to.'tsat]
> >   totsatne  "towards a table"  [to.'tsa?.nE]
> >   totsatnima  "towards my table"  [to.'tsa?.ni.ma]
> >
> > (Note that the enclitics which *fail* to trigger these kind of changes are
> > the ones that I'm separating from the preceding word by an apostrophe.  I
> > guess I need to posit level 1 clitics and level 2 clitics, where the latter
> > are more tightly bound to their host that the former.)
>
> If reason (b) applies only to enclitics not written with the apostrophe,
> then clitics that are written with the apostrophe could instead be written
> as separate words, no?
Yes.  But all such clitics consist of a single consonant sound.  And I'll be
damned if I have single-consonant words in my orthography.  Tokana is not
Russian!  ;-)


> If you were not so much guided by your personal aesthetics as deriving a
> practical roman orthography for Tokana, what would your strategy be?
Probably to connect them to the preceding word with a hyphen.

Matt.