Re: Adding Inuit phonemes to Old Norse

----- Original Message -----
From: Aidan Grey <taalenmaple@...>

> Assuming that the Skraeling langs (and Skraeling was a term that
> is pretty much recognized as a generic term nowadays, essentially
> equivalent to "indians") are adstrates on Old Norse, then Old
> Norse phonology would predominate. Those phonemes that appear in
> all the Skraeling langs may be added to the inventory, but I think
> the Inuktitut phonemes you're having probs with would collapse
> with others already present:
>
> /N, N\/ > n, ng, nk or something similar (i.e. N is in ON already)
> /K/ > /l/
> /q, G\/ > /k/
> /O/ - isn't this in ON already?
> /t', d', r', J\/ > /t, d, r, j/
>
> Take that with a grain of salt, my XSampa isn't what it used to be.
As CXS, it appears sane, though I had retroflex rather than
palatalized apicals.

/J\/ -> /j/ seems to be quite reasonable.

/N/ is in ON already, but isn't it only an allophone of /n/ before /
k/, /g/? I think I'd be looking
to borrow words with /N/ (and /N\/) without their accompanying stop,
though borrowing them both as /
Ng/ (maybe as /g/ initially?) might be a plausible work-around
alongside /q/, /G\/ -> /k/, /g/. I'd
need to know more about how often velars and uvulars are found
distinctively in Inuktitut, and the
other languages of Greenland, Eastern Canada, and the Northeastern USA.

/O/ is in ON. It's not in Finlaesk, and now I think about it I'm not
absolutely sure why not. I may
bring both /E/ and /O/ back via the ogonek. We're starting to get into
the territory of having
scarily many vowels, though, and the very thought of LATIN (SMALL)
LIGATURE OE WITH OGONEK for /9/
makes me a touch queasy. I shall think about it.

Right now I have allophonic devoicing of liquids after voiceless stops
and fricatives (with other
voicing rules influencing that), so I can write sl, fl, kl, as needed.
I may ressurect the use of |h|
(currently representing /x/ alone) as a prefixed digraph character for
voiceless liquids. I had this
idea in place, then I got rid of it, mostly because I needed an /x/
character, and also the rules for
|h| were getting too bulky for the wiki section as it was.




Paul