Re: Takiyyudin phonology

On 13/07/06, Shreyas Sampat <ssampat@...> wrote:
> So I was musing about vowel harmony, and wondering, what's it look like
> when it starts bleeding into consonants, so I threw together this here
> baby conlang.
Hm, in at least Turkish, in rounded words, for the span of the
rounding, the lips remain rounded. So a hypothetical word like "kökük"
word be more like [k_w2k_wyk], I think (with the _w meaning
"labialised", not "labiovelarised"). Also, in Kazakh, velar [k g~G]
are uvular [q~X R] in backharmonic words (and note that the [k]
doesn't undergo postvocalic fricativisation, always being a stop
whereas its back partner [q~X] does, and [R] doesn't undergo
postvocalic fricativisation, always being a fricative, whereas its
front partner [g~G] does too; this suggests some phonologisation of
the process to me. Unless I'm wrong.

Apparently consonant harmony is really common in children's speech,
but almost unheard of in adult speech. It does occur occasionally
(like in Sanskrit), but its strangely uncommon. Your system isn't
consonant harmony tho, I don't gather, but more like the
Kazakh/Turkish processes I mentioned above, yes?

> The vowels are organised into two groups, 'green' and 'blue'; the names
> don't mean anything, obviously. Some of the consonants take different
> forms depending on the colour of a word. In the table below, consonant
> PAIRS indicate the blue form followed by the green form. The affricate
> TRIPLETS are (almost) simply a shorthand for two overlapping pairs; blue
> <chetsun> corresponds to green <chwe'chon>, except in a few cases where
> the simple postalveolar form doesn't alternate (thus green <che'chon).
>
> Inventory, with doubled lines for cxs, sometimes:
Huh? Doubled lines?

> Blue vowels:  i e  a  u u'
> Green vowels: i e' o' o u
Hm, what is the basis for this harmony? I've only heard of backness
harmony, rounding harmony, tongue root (ATR) harmony, and nasal
harmony. This seems to be none of them.

(*My* question is, are their any languages with vowel height harmony?)

...

> So, a question: in languages with harmony, is it common for affixes to
> force the rest of a word into a particular form? I'm thinking about
> including some that have -only- a green or blue form, possibly because
> (fake-historically) they were borrowed from some other language and not
> well assimilated.
rest of the word  = that which comes after? Then yes. For instance, in
Turkish, only high vowels engage in rounding harmony. While I can't
provide any concrete examples and so I'm just making up roots/affixes,
you might have a root "pok", an affix "-IvE" and another "-(I)kI".
Then combining all three, you get "pokuvakı" (that last is dotless i,
high backish unrounded /M/), but combining only the root and the
affix, you get "pokuku".

rest of the word = the whole thing? I'm pretty sure not. Harmony
generally works from in a single direction only, from the inside to
the outside. (O'course, the inside might be in the middle, so prefixes
and suffixes harmonise to a root.) Turkish has a bunch of suffixes
which don't harmonise instead always having one of the vowels /i e a o
u/ (rather than more marked vowels like /y 2 M/). Subsequent
affixes/clitics however harmonise to the disharmonic affix. -istan is
an example of a disharmonic affix, which is furthermore disharmonic
with itself!

There's also the posibility of opaque & transparent vowels:
Transparent vowels don't harmonise, but subsequent vowels harmonise to
earlier ones. /i/ in Finnish, Hungarian and Mongolic languages is an
example. Opaque vowels also don't harmonise, but subsequent vowels
gain their setting. But seeing as transparency and opacity affects all
words with this vowel, it's probably not what you're thinking of. I'm
guessing as their both blue and green (aqua? cyan?) /i/ and /u/ are
transparent in your system?

--
Tristan.

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