Re: New monster word in Maggel ;)))

OK, time to stop this unbearable suspense ;)))) and give the correct answer.

En réponse à bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>:

> well, done some research . . .
>
As I said, doing a little research would probably help a lot to find the
solution, but I didn't know I had given so much info already :)) . Anyway...

> |g| gives length to a [E]
Correct! (a |g| at the beginning of a syllable is often - but not always - a
mark of length of the syllable's vowel or diphtongue)

> and could it be possible that |is| is [z] ?
Correct! (|i| often acts as a modification marker on a following consonant,
switching its voicing, so that |ib| is [p] but |is| is [z]. Of course, it
doesn't *always* work that way ;)))) )

> that leaves |dhm| and |bg|
> your original description of the orthography gives
> |dh|=[dj], in which case |m| would have to be reduced
> to [v] after it, and the [j] lost
> alternatively |hm| could be [v] and |d| could be plain
> [d]
> your original description says that |d| followed by
> another consonant is silent. so i'ld be inclined to
> follow the first explanation
Unfortunately, your inclination is wrong, but your second explanation is
right! :)) Indeed |dh| is pronounced [d_j], but in this case |h| is part of the
digraph |hm|, not |dh| (as I had hinted, although it's often the case in this
case no letter was part of two digraphs at the same time :))) ). So we have
|hm|=[v] and |d|=[d] (see, not so complicated ;))))) ). As for the rule that
|d| in front of another consonant is silent, I should have explained it more
specifically, but I didn't do it since rules in Maggel usually explain less
than 40% of the cases, so I didn't see the point in explaining too much :)) .
The point here is that |d|-deletion happens mostly postvocalically, thus
between two syllables or at the end of a word. initially, it normally stays,
especially in absolute initial (don't trust the orthography, the initial |g|
marks length of the vowel and is thus not the absolute initial, unlike |d|).
However, in the (hypothetic until now) case of an initial cluster of three
letters with |d| as second letter but not absolute initial (the first letter is
pronounced), this |d| would be probably silent (but here the rule is much less
strong than intervocalically or postvocalically).

> this leaves |bg|. i'm tempted to guess this cluster is
> rendered as [I] after the vowel [E], but that's an
> uninformed guess.
>
Spot on! |a| indeed can regularly mark the vowel [E] (just like it can mark as
regularly [a], [&], [@], [aI], [eI], etc... Vowels must usually be written in
digraphs to get a more definite sound. Alone, they wander around quite a
lot :))) ). As for |bg|, it is indeed a cluster which after a vowel marks an
off-glide [I]. Actually the cluster |bgi| has exactly the same function, so we
could also say that the |i| in |gdhmabgis| is used in two digraphs, |bgi| and
|is|. But since the digraph |bg| is used just like |bgi|, I didn't feel the
need to take this explanation. Let's not complicate chaos :)))) .

So, summary of the slaying of the monster:

|g|: lengthens the vowel of the syllable it preceeds (actually it lengthens the
whole diphtongue).

|d|: [d], about the only letter with a sensible reading in this word :))) . The
strength of Maggel is not to mark everything in completely insane ways, but to
be always at the very edge of this state ;)))) .

|hm|: [v], the normal use of a preposed |h| on |m|. As I told in an earlier
post today, there is no rule to find the sound that |h| will create when
connected to a following consonant. If there ever was a productive process,
sound changes must have destroyed it a millenium ago ;)))) .

|a|: [E], a regular pronunciation of the written vowel. You're lucky that the
word I showed was not the clitic |-ba|: and which is pronounced [vU] (or [v] in
front of a vowel) ;)))))) .

|bg|: following a vowel, it creates an off-glide [_I]. So |abg| is [E_I] here,
and with the initial |g| it leads to a long [E_I] that I conveniently wrote
[E:I] (because we're arriving at the edge of the reasonable for IPA here :)) .
It would have been written more correctly [E;_I;], with [;] marking half-long
vowels, since the whole diphtongue benefits from the lengthening, but then we
would have lost the fact that the diphtongue is a falling one, in which the [E]
part gets more stress - and a bit more length - than the [I] part).

|is|: [z], |i| being regularly used preposed to consonants as unpronounced
marker to switch their voicing. Note that there is a convention that says that
|i| in this sense is always put at the beginning of a consonant cluster, even
when the consonant it refers to is at the end of this cluster (an example is in
the word |ueisbfi|, pronounced ['eZvI]. In this case the |i| switches the
voicing of the last consonant of the cluster, |f|, from [f] to [v]. |sb| is
regularly [Z]. If |i| had not referred to the last consonant, the
pronunciation "should" have been *['eSfI] - "should" in quotes, since those
regularities have the nice habit of disappearing as soon as we're getting used
to them :)))) -). According to this convention, the word should thus have been
written *|gdhmaibgs| which would have probably ruined any analysis of it, since
probably everyone would have wrongly equated |ai|=[E:I] :)) . But fortunately
for you, this convention is not always applied (another example is |himidu|
pronounced ['CE~mptU], where |id| refers to [t] - don't pay attention to the
[p], it's there only because [m] cannot assimilate with the following [t] -.
The convention would have it written *|hiimdu|). The reasons why the convention
is sometimes applied and sometimes not doesn't seem to obey any consistent
rule, but aesthetics (or a certain sense of it at least ;)))) ) seem to play a
big role in it.

So that was it. Was it interesting, or extremely boring? :)))

> anyway, am i any warmer ?
>
Well, only Joan of Arc ever got any warmer than that ;))))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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