Re: Thoughts on Prevli

 What do you mean by apparent metasthesis? It sounds
very reminiscent of the historical phonology of
Silindion.


So, for pre-Silindion we have  *palan 'rock'
*tho:lon 'river'
This becomes Silindion  <palna>, <sulno>

I'm not yet convinced that this is actually
metasthesis, however. I think that the historical
changes were:

 *palan  > *pal@n > *paln= > paln@ >palna
 *tho:lon > *so:l@n > *so:ln= > so:ln@ > *so:lno >
sulno

So we have both loss of the unstressed vowel then
vowel harmony, changing /@/ into the vowel of the
first syllable.

Another type of faux-metasthesis in Silindion results
in what looks like an infixed /n/.

For example, pre-Silindion had *nakdai 'killed'
(past-participle)
This results in Silindion:  <nankë> (with e-diaresis).
 /naNke/

The sequence of changes was:
 *nakdai > *naknai > *na~knai > *naNknai > *naNkne >
*naNke

 Basically then, there was a change of /d/ to /n/ ,
which then provoked nasalisation in the syllable that
proceeded it.

-Elliott

--- Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

> 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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