Re: Takiyyudin phonology

Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:

> (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?
Yes, that's what it sounds like.

>> 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.
"Historical reasons." I'm imagining that it was a tidier, more
transparent system sometime in the past, that got obscured and warped by
vowel shifts and mergers. It's built with -graphical interest- as well
as naturalism and stuff in mind, and that has much to do with the
representation choices I made, as well as some of the consonant
alternations.

The consonants, incidentally, sort of indicate to me that maybe the
green system was historically a less rounded system, which might mean
that it was front, or unrounded, or something, this being the reason it
maintains a labialization contrast in the affricate series.

> rest of the word = the whole thing? I'm pretty sure not. Harmony
> generally works from in a single direction only
Nod. So, unnaturalistic in that respect. Good to know.

I'm thinking that there's basically a toggle, a morpheme can be either
dominant or recessive; some combination of dominance and 'head-ish-ness'
(probably the most headly dominant bit, or the most headly bit if no
dominant bits are present) determines the colour of a word. I can
imagine that occurring in a language where harmony has sort of run away
with the spoon and become grammaticalised, rather than merely something
in the phonology. Maybe 'switch the colour of a word' is a way to
pronounce it emphatically or humorously...

> 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?
They're harmony-indeterminate, which I guess is a way of saying transparent.

--
Shreyas