Re: Slovanik, my new romlang

Quoting Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

> Historical plausibility?
> We all know, that the Slavs have never even been near the borders of the
> Roman Empire;
Not so:  the Crimea was an Imperial vassal state for centuries,
all the way well into the Byzantine period.  It is almost certain
that slavic tribes also inhabited parts of the Empire itself,
although not in great numbers until well after Constantine the
Great.

> their homeland must have been located somewhere on the
> territory of contemporary Poland.
According to Mallory, who quotes the Ukrainian archaeologist
Vladimir Baran, the geographical center of the extensive Slavic
"urheimat" was considerably to the south and east of Poland,
somewhere in the western Ukraine, although it is true that Slavs
(more specifically: Balts) inhabited the region immediately to
the east of Oder.

> Diphthongs
> /ae/    [Aj]
> /oe/    [Oj], perhaps [jev]
Any particular reason in having /e/ be the off-glide?

> Consonants:
> Remain as they are, with the following exceptions:
> /p/     before short /e/ for /i/ > [p'] (= [p_j])
I was a little confused about this for a moment, because [']
usually signifies glottalization on a preceding obstruent.
I suppose as one learns the shorthand, though, it's not a
bad thing.

> Does all this make sense? Did I forget something? Etc. Comments sollicited.
What is the prototypical syllable type -- does it allow complex
codas or onsets (presumably it does), and what kinds of segments
may be codas, and how fast does sonority need to rise/fall in
clusters? Also, is stress partially morphologically driven, like
some analyses of Russian?  What about the kinds of voicing
assimilation that is common in Russian obstruent (but not:
sonorant) clusters?

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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