Re: Vocalic Language, take two

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>         Like in French 'lui'?  And are the nasals, glides and liquids followed
> by h unvoiced equivalents of the voiced ones?
Yes, I probably should've explained that better.

> y" is already very rare, I wonder if there is any natlang that has y"h.
Probably not, but so what?  :-)

Anyhoo, I've dropped those two.

>         The front part is very crowded compared to the back part (that's not a
> problem, I know that it happens often). But shouldn't there be a /O/ to
> make a counterpart of /E/?
It's historical.  Originally, there were /i e A o u/, with phonemic
length.  Long vowels did not change, except to lose length, but short
vowels changed thus:

/i/ -> /e/
/e/ -> /E/
/u/ -> /y/
/o/ -> /o"/
/A/ -> /a/

That is, front vowels lowered, and back vowels fronted.

>         So when is the future tense used?
With progressive and perfect aspects, that is "I will be walking" and "I
will have walked".

>         I like the 'first time' modal :) . Can you find a good 'grammatical'
> name for it? :)
Nope, any ideas?

>         How do you use them? Is this an ergative, accusative or active
> language? (or something even stranger :) )
Active system, nominative for agents and volitional S, absolutive for
patients and non-volition S

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