Re: Elvish ideas ...

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
>
> > I mentioned, last week I think, that I've begun to work on an Elvish
> language
> > for the same coniverse that hosts Yargish. Most aspects still remain quite
> > hazy, but some things are settling down, in particular phonology and
> spelling.
> > I thought I'd present some of it here, in the hope of attracting some
> feedback.
>
> Go forth!  I am looking forward to seeing a new (hopefully) naturalist
> conlang, after so much constructivist (i.e., non-naturalist) stuff
> that has been dominating this list lately.
>
> As quite some people here on the list might already know, I am also
> working on something I call `Elvish', even though my `Elves' are
> simply humans.
I really must come up with it's native term soon, so I can refer to it by
that, or by a reasonable anglicization (like "Yargish" for _u-Rakh u-Nayargiz-
ung_, AKA _u-Rakh u-Natayiz-ung u-Nashavariz-ung_).

> > The Elves we're speaking of are essentially just skinny, long-lived humans
> > with pointy ears - they are not immortal, not in possession of any
> inherent
> > superior wisdom or anything like that. Were they to be found in our world,
> > biologists would, little doubt, conclude they were another species within
> the
> > Homo genus.
>
> Are they interfertile with humans?
Nope. I'm currently too bored with half-elves even to call them half-humans in
Elvish, so I simply biologize them away.

> > [...]
> >
> > Speaking of orthography, the language uses eighteen glyphs, romanized as:
> >
> > p b m t d n k g ñ r l s i e a o u h
> >
> > Most are what you'd expect. _h_ isn't really a letter; it turns the
> preceeding
> > (oral) stop into a fricative; _bh_ = [B], _th_ = [T] and so on.
>
> Much like the orthography of my own Elvish languages, where fricatives
> are spelled by h-digraphs, too.  But _h_ also has its own letter
> value, namely (big surprise ;-)) /h/.
If you read the later posts in this thread, you'll see it effectively also
spells [j] in some situations ...

[snip]
> > As regards morphology, I've this far largely looked at nouns.
> >
> > A noun can take up to four "modifications" - it can be marked as definite,
> > plural, accusative and possessive. The corresponding unmarked noun is
> > therefore indefinite, singular, nominative and, well, non-possessing.
>
> Makes for a total of 16 different forms, with just four morphological
> elements that can be added to the noun stem.  Very efficient!
>
> > An uninflected noun never begins in a fricative; fricativizing an initial
> stop
> > makes the noun definite, eg _creach_ "castle", _chreach_ "the castle". It
> > should be stressed that "fricative" and "fricativizing" here essentially
> > means "anything spelt as stop+h" and "add -h" respectively.  Thus we also
> see
> > _cea_ [tSa] "lady" and _chea_ [Sa] "the lady". I'm not yet sure what to do
> > with nouns beginning in a vowel, liquid or [w-] or [j-] - leaving those
> > without a definite-indefinite distinction strikes me as odd, but I don't
> > really know what I want to do with them. Something evil, little doubt.
>
> How about voiceless liquids like those found in Welsh, and h-prefixion
> in case of initial vowels?
Only, "h" never spelt /h/. See my replies to Christophe.

[snip]
> > Accusatives, serving as direct objects, and probably in some other
> > miscellaneous functions, are formed by suffixing -o to the stem. It goes
> > before the pl -an (which loses its -a-), but of course after the pl infix
> with
> > final former fricatives. Not yet sure how it combines with nouns ending in
> > vowels.
>
> In languages that have separate plural and case affixes, the plural is
> usually closer to the root than the case.  So you have STEM-PL-ACC
> rather than STEM-ACC-PL.
And having both is a problem? It occurs to me that the pl acc in _-on_ is a
little hard to derive, too. Hm, may have to rethink this.

> > The possessive, finally, is formed by infixing an _-i-_ , turning the stem
> > vowel into an diphthong. Pronunciation; _ii_ [ej], _ei_ [ej], _ai_ [aj],
> _oi_
> > [oj], _ui_ [uj]. Yes, _oi_ is ambigious between [wi] and [oj]. The
> possessive
> > goes after the thing possessed; _chreach chain_ "the castle of the lord".
>
> This looks very nice.  Possibly a trace of a lost genitive marker *-i
> that caused diphthongization as a kind of umlaut effect?
Possibly. I'm, as usual, largely doing diachrony backwards. But it seems to be
the easiest explanation.

> >       To
> > top it off, it, out of misplaced sympathy, echoes any accusative ending on
> the
> > thing possessed, giving us things like _chreanco chainon_ "the castles
> (acc)
> > of the lords".
>
> This is very good!  It is called "suffixaufnahme", and I have fallen
> in love with it, and use it in my own version of Elvish.
_Suffixaufnahme_. What a wonderful word! There ought to be more German words
in linguistic terminology ...

> What happens if the possessum is itself in possessive case, as "the
> lords" in "the castles of the lords of the land"?
There'd be case agreement thru it all. Coining on the spot _lad_ for "land",
your phrase would be with nominative "castles" _chreanc chainan lhaidan_, with
acc _chreanco chainon lhaidon_ (assuming current forming of pl acc is kept).

                                                          Andreas