Re: Today's all-purpose reply (inc. Tech syllable inversion)

Well I'm gonna hafta answer the recent threads in one fell swoop...

First of all, my birthday is 17 January 1971, the day of Super Bown V (wh=
en=20
the Baltimore Colts led by Johnny Unitas beat the Dallas Cowboys by a=20
last-minute field goal).  That means I'll be 29 next January.  Capricorn,=
=20
but almost Aquarius.  Year of the Dog, almost Year of the Pig.

Second, Tech, which is written in the _fidel_ alphasyllabry of Ge`ez, has=
 an=20
unusual alphabetical order (at least to us who use a script more or less=20
based on Phoenician rather than Sabaean as the Techians do).  I still=20
haven't worked out how the script is to relate to Tech phonology, but thi=
s=20
is basically how the order works out:

h   (Vowel sequence: h=E4, hu, hi, ha, he, h=FC, ho)
l
h'  (Arabic hhaa)
m
sh  (The symbol which resembles a W is /S/ in Tech, not /s/)
r
s
s^  (Amharic /S/, probably /K/ (v'less lat. fric) in Tech)
q   (additional characters for qw- syllables)
q'  (C' =3D ejective; also q'w- syllables)
b
v
t
ch  (=E7 =3D /tS/)
x'  (Arabic khaa, uvular not velar; also x'w- syllables)
n
ng  (=F1 =3D /N/, not /nj/)
'   (Arabic 'alif)
k   (also kw- syllables)
k'  (also k'w- syllables)
`   (Arabic `ayn)
z
zh  (/Z/)
y   (/j/)
d
dz or dl?   (This is an implosive /d'/ in Chadic, I think.)
jh  (/dZ/)
g   (also gw- syllables)
gg  (uvular g)
t'
ch' (=E7' =3D /tS'/)
p'
c'  (/ts'/)
tl' (/ts/ in Ge'ez/Amharic, but this is Tech so there :P)
f   (this is found almost exclusively in loanwords)
p

And there would be lots of additional consonants, such as CyV (palatized)=
=20
syllables, as well as extended _fidel_ for such and such.  One particular=
=20
mark (lower left of the character) marks retroflexion, and alveolarizatio=
n=20
is marked by a simple horizontal tick through the symbols for <l>, <r> an=
d=20
<n> (also the shift from <m>to /M/, the labiovelar nasal; <r> shifts from=
 a=20
tap to a trill).  You get my point (at least I tried :/).

Now onto a distinctive feature of Tech inflection.  Not only are vowels=20
shifted betwixt one of three gradations (zero/'schwa' < short > long), an=
d=20
consonant mutations along the lines of Welsh and Irish, a CV sequence in =
the=20
original root becmes VC -- that is, it reverses!  Let's take for example =
the=20
root

esso  'to stay' (also can mean 'to be')

There is an implied glottal stop at the beginning of the word, so it's=20
really ?esso, where ss =3D retroflex s.  You have CVCV, two CV's, so you =
have=20
the following permutations:

eoss
e'sso (?e > e?)
e'oss

The latter two cases are cut and dried.  Vowel, glottal stop, and continu=
e. =20
But what about the first, where you have two adjacient vowels without an=20
intermediating consonant.  Ah, that's where the bulk of Tech's complex vo=
wel=20
structure comes in.  You have 49 possible combinations of vowels, which=20
result in various mixes of long vowels or diphthongs followed by palatize=
d,=20
neutral or labiovelarized consonants.

The word _eoss_, by the way, is pronounced e:s.w, because the epenthetic =
o=20
lengthens the <e> (because it's a low vowel) while it labiovelarizes the=20
<ss> (because it's a back rounded vowel).  But if the vowel sequence was=20
<eu>, then you'd have a diphthong plus labiovelarization, <ea> would be l=
ong=20
<e> without any coloring of the following consonant, <ee> would be long <=
e>=20
plus palatization of the following vowel (palatized <ss> is almost identi=
cal=20
to <sh> or even <sy>/palatized <s> and is often not distinguished in comm=
on=20
speech).  Finally, <ei> is the diphthong <ei> plus a palatized consonant.

Here's a chart of the compound vowels:

ii  ie  ia  i=E4  io  iu  i=FC
ei  ee  ea  e=E4  eo  eu  e=FC
ai  ae  aa  a=E4  ao  au  a=FC
oi  oe  oa  o=E4  oo  ou  o=FC
ui  ue  ua  u=E4  uo  uu  u=FC

And the results, in brief:

ii > i:
ie, ia, i=E4, io > i@ ('falling' diphthong)
ee, ea, eo > e:
aa, ao > a:
oa, oo > o:
ue, ua, u=E4, uo > u@
uu > u:
ai, ae > ae (&, ae-ash)
oi, oe > oe (o-slash)

Well that's all I got time for, more tomorrow...

Danny

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