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Thoughts on Prevli

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Saturday, August 4, 2007, 22:21
This is to be the third (so far) language family on Cindu, spoken by some
strange non-Kash (but "great-cat" descended) aborigines (the Lañ-Lañ) who
live in the mountains. The analogue might be Neanderthal (or even earlier)
survivors.

It's going to be like Indonesian Leti and relatives-- that is, it will have
apparent metathesis of final -VC, e.g. Leti Berta ~Berat- 'heavy'. But it
will also probably have something similar with intial C, so a possible
VBrat-- initial vowel (prefix) to be determined.
But: all final C will be voiced-- I think that's pretty much anti-universal,
no? And there will be all sorts of allophonic changes when the metathesis
takes place, e.g. /magad/ > [maGra]. (That's getting complicated already...)
Unlike Leti (AIUI) the "metathesis" will have grammatical function, i.e.
perhaps, changing verbs from realis to irrealis, etc.

3-vowel system, but there may be some sort of vowel harmony, such that
/pálib/ > [pælve] or /púlid/ > [pyrri].  Hypothetical exs. only. At one
point I had a 5-V /ieauo/ system, with the requirement that all vowels in a
CVCV(C) base had to be high, mid, front or back; /a/ would adjust for
front/back/round to match, but that was rather unworkable.

It may even be an ergative lang., though despite all the recent discussion I
still don't get what "anti-passive" does :-((

The pronouns will include forms that express subj.+obj-- I posted about
those a long time ago.

Just a heads-up :-))))

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Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>