Re: Case/Tense question

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> I first thought I'd simply replace it
> with "gonna", unfortunately, there's a problem with that, too.  I became
> /e/, while I gonna became /egEn/ --> /egE~/ --> /ege~/ --> /ege/ --> /e/
Whoa! Are you making all pronouns clitic? What if people
consciously emphasized the word break so that /g/ was
kept? Or maybe using just 'gonna', without the pronoun,
would do for 'I' and 'you' -- it'd be clear from context.
As for "he's gonna" and "she's gonna", what happens to
the /z/ (for some reason "he gonna" doesn't sound right).

> but I don't like the idea of simply recreating the current form.
> What other kinds of constructions might be used?
"I'm about to"
"I'm just gonna"
"I think I'll" (shifting 'think' > 'plan to' > 'intend' > 'will',
more or less as 'to will' became an auxiliary).
"I'll go and" (is /l/ retained there? anyway, 'go and' could become
a new future auxiliary!)

Just my two centavos...


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html