Re: Another weird idea!

Well messes are always useful--look at the English language.

On 9/11/05, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> I thought of something very similar the other day, actually. Since vowels
> are usually bound to be much sparser than consonants, I decided to go for a
> primarily 3-way split instead, with a slightly symbolic side. These 4
> metaphonemes were among the first to turn up:
> [?]<>[h]<>[@] ("neutral")
> [d]<>[m]<>[a] ("soft")
> [t]<>[s]<>[i] ("sharp")
> [p]<>[l]<>[o] ("round")
> They also refer to the numbers 0,1,2 and pi, ;) among other more abstract
> things.
>
> Morphemes would need have a base form: with the structure 20pipi0, you could
> have eg. /tholh/ [t_hOK], /thol?/ [t_ho5k], /s@po?/ [s8'b8k] etc. But say
> that the last one is a verb stem, and you want to use it as a consonant
> stem: just re-arrange it to /s@pl@/ [s8'bl8].
> You might even have /s@pl@/ exist as a verb stem, too; only *that* one is
> realized as [s9'plE:].
>
> Further chaos is easily added by very active as- and dissimilation. Say we
> have the words 021, 1pi1, 222 (/@ti ala tsi/ [Eti &la tsi:]) and if you add
> a suffix -01, they become [@tite apeti si:ki] (Note that since /tsi/ belongs
> to declension class 6, the [-ti] suffix assimilates its vowel, dissimilates
> its plosive, exagerrates the preceding vowel, and lenites the preceding
> plosive, rather than the opposite, as usual.)
>
> This thing is looking like a very promising mess so far. :)
>
> Joihn Vertical
>