Re: CONLANG Digest - 24 Nov 2000

On Sun, 26 Nov 2000, Elliott Lash wrote:

>     The way I slightly understand it, one way to reconstruct a protolang from
>  just one language might be... rrr..  sort of like the idea of 'underlying
>  form'.  If, say, an affix has one appearance in some stems, and another in
>  other stems, one might try to reconstruct an "original"/"underlying" form
>  that in your modern language produces two forms due to sound change but in
>  the protolanguage was only one, and perhaps find a way to reverse-engineer
>  that kind of sound change elsewhere.  Er.  Or not.
>
>     This is exactly what happens in my languages, Silindion. The genitive
> suffix can be variously -ti, -ni, -di, or -ri  depending on the final sound
> in the
> stem of the noun.
>
>   Examples:
>   séhwa "twig"    >  sehwári "of a twig"
>   ívan "familly"    >   ivándi   "of a familly"
>   mar  "city"        >  márni     "of a city"
>   oss   "wind"      >   ósti       "of wind"
>
>     From this I have discovered that the original suffix must have been -di.
> This
> then assimilated to the base.
>     The same sort of process occurs with the passive participle marker. This
> could
> be -dë, -të, -në, -ë, and -rë. The underlying suffix was -dai
Neat!  I wish I knew how to do things like this.  :-/  I foolishly
decided to use triconsonantal morphology in a case-marking language and
have, as a result, thoroughly confused myself.  I've considered ditching
the triconsonantal morphology (gosh, I *hate* typing those words!)  And
unfortunately I have not yet had the opportunity, schedule-wise, to learn
Arabic or some other Semitic language so I can read up on the "real
thing"!  <wry g>  Thank you for sharing.

YHL