Re: OT: Blond(e) (Was Re: Genitives and Possessive Adjectives)

Mark wrote:

<<Didn't we talk about this not too long ago on here?  I was taught
in school (USA, Georgia, government school system) that "blond" referred
to a male and "blonde" to a female, and likewise "brunet" and
"brunette", and my English teachers would correct a misgendered use of
either term in any writing we turned in.>>

I stand corrected and apalled.   To me, this kind rampant prescriptivism 
would be the equivalent to saying that every latinate word should follow the Latin 
declension system.   Out of curiosity, I looked up "brunet" on Google, and I 
couldn't find any usages that weren't either: (a) French; (b) someone's 
surname; or (c) referring to erotic art.   Ob conlang, what if latinate words *did* 
have to decline...

Huh.   I can't think of any off the top of my head (that weren't borrowed 
from French first or changed in some other way).   No matter.   I'm not familiar 
enough with the declension system of Latin to be able to give any meaninful 
examples, anyway (that is, unless you want the plural nominative of a word, or 
the accusative of a singular feminine noun.   I'm good at those!).

Okay, really ob conlang, though, I'm reworking an old language, and turning 
into a good-old Indo-European/Finno-Ugric mutt (this'll be my first).   Now, 
I'm combining the traditional Finnish vowel harmony system with an [ATR] vowel 
harmony system reminiscent of an African language like Leggbo.   What I 
*really* want to do is to make it so that the low vowels [A] and [&] are [+ATR], and 
to then have [-ATR] equivalents, which would be [a\] (inverted "a") and [a] 
(below [&]), respectively.   Now I realize that this would be totally fake, and 
that low vowels are usually opaque, or at very least [-ATR] in traditional 
[ATR] systems, but is there even a slight chance I could pull this off?   There's 
no doubt that it would work, but I think what I'm really after is is there 
evidence for [+ATR] low vowels?   I've heard that some midwestern (?) dialects 
of American English allegedly have a [+ATR] [&] that really is [&] and not [E]. 
  Has anyone seen any data on this?   (Dirk, I'm looking in your direction.)

-David

Reply