Re: Thoughts on Prevli

    It looks like I would really like Leti, especially
the anticipatory phenomena. Perhaps you could explain
a bit more about how it works,  how exactly does a
form like 'pipdiuma' come about. It looks like
everything gets squished together!   You should also
check out Old Irish verbs, if possible, they have a
lot of weird syncope and squishes, some metasthesis
also.  Myself and a few other people put together a
website last year with many forms of various Old Irish
verbs. It's at
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/duil-belrai/english.html
 -

   As for your language, it looks as if things could
get rather complicated, but that's not really a bad
thing....just look at some of the cool things that
happen in Sanskrit or various other real-life
languages.

As for this question:

> Yes, that works, and would qualify as an "apparent"
> metathesis too.
> Just noticed: both exs. have the same V in both
> syllables; what about
> something like **palin ?
>

   This sort of thing is really rare, since most of
the time, pre-Silindion liked to have the same vowel
in both syllables, since the second syllable was
usually a derivational affix of the form Vt/n, where V
was the same as the root vowel.  However, there is one
example:

   *runin 'he flies' >  *run@n > *runn= > *runn@ >
runna

 However, this form has been replaced by <runni>,
since other forms of the verb have an -i- in the
second syllable:  runina 'flying',  runine 'he was
flying', runire 'flew')

 -Elliott


--- ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:

> Elliott Lash wrote:
> >  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.
>
> Yes, that works, and would qualify as an "apparent"
> metathesis too.
> Just noticed: both exs. have the same V in both
> syllables; what about
> something like **palin ?
>
> What happens in Leti and its kin (6 or so lgs.) is
> also historical-- it's in
> an area where many of the languages have lost final
> consonants, all or in
> part. But a few, including "Proto-Leti", preserved
> them by adding a support
> vowel-- in some, it's reconstructible as **-@ while
> in PL it was a vowel
> echoing the old ultima V. So we have things like
> *vérat-a 'heavy', *?úlit-i
> 'skin' *átur-u 'arrange'  etc. (only *a,i,u could
> occur in the ultima, and
> stress was/remained on the antepenult). Then,
> probably in the proto-lang.,
> the unstressed ultima V was syncopated, leaving
> forms like *verta, *?ulti
> and *atru.  From a generative point of view, the
> underlying forms of the
> modern languages still have the full form + echo
> vowel, and repeat the
> syncope rule. To some extent the two variant forms
> have been
> grammaticalized, though it's not entirely
> clear...e.g. possessive suffixes
> go on the full form (minus echo V); in some cases,
> use of one or the other
> depends on surrounding sounds-- the languages seem
> to favor a VCCVCCV...
> rhythm; one writer thinks it's simply (or originally
> was) a matter of fast
> speech forms. In synchronic analysis, all you can do
> is call it metathesis.
> There's at least one interesting paper in the
> Rutgers Optimality Archive
> discussing this from an OT view-- I find it
> unncecessarily complicated :-(
> The author is Elizabeth Hume, but I don't recall the
> title.
>
> But wait, there's more: something similar can happen
> in compounding: Leti
> pipi 'goat,sheep' + duma 'goat, sheep < Ml. domba'
> can end up as pipdiuma.
> Furthermore, the -u and -i of personal prefixes also
> metathesizes with the
> verb's initial C: au+la: 'I go' > alua: etc. (the
> -u- is semi-vocalic)--
> these look more like anticipatory phenomena. They
> happen in several other
> languages of eastern Indonesia (and some quite far
> afield; I once thought it
> might be evidence for subgrouping, but it's more
> likely an areal thing-- but
> still, mighty strange IMNSHO.)
>
> Anyhow, I'm thinking that in Prevli, the historical
> development may have
> been something like:
> 1. either *nátak + echo vowel > nátaka, or perhaps
> *nátaka to start with.
> 2. a rule voicing C between unstressed V, which
> would give **nátaga
> 3. loss of the post-tonic V, > **natga
> (various assimilations will deal with that -tg-
> cluster, not yet
> decided...maybe ['na?ga])
>
> Perhaps, stress will shift for various grammatical
> purposes, so we could
> have **natáka, which will result in **ntáka; or a
> prefix, say **í- > ínataka
>  > **íntak or maybe íntag ['intaG]. As I said, it
> looks as if it could
> become quite complicated...........in what I've
> played with so far, the
> basic form of the word tends to become quite
> obscured, not sure that's a
> Good Thing.  But this is going to be a weird
> language, at least
> phonologically.
>
> >Another type of faux-metasthesis in Silindion
> results
> >in what looks like an infixed /n/.
> (snip)
> No comment on this; except yes, your explanation
> works, too.
>



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