Re: Maximal flexibility with self-segregating morphology

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Logan Kearsley <chronosurfer@...> wrote:
> ---SNIP---
>> Gary Shannon scripsit:
>>>...
>>> I've always favored open syllables. They are neat and
>>> tidy and east to synthesize. But there's a parsing
>>> probelem with the spoken language.
>> [...]
>>> So here's the solution that occured to me as I was
>>> dozing off last night:
>>>
>>> Words take the form CVV or VCVV or CVCVV or VCVCVV or
>>> CVCVCVV or VCVCVCVV, etc., where the final syllable
>>> must always have a vowel pair and no other syllable in
>>> a word is permitted to have a vowel pair.
>>
>> This sounds like a good plan. And since it depends entirely on a
>> marking at the end of a word to accomplish word-segregation, there's
>> no inherent restriction on consonant clusters internal to the word,
>> which provides a bit of extra freedom.
>
> I am working on a conlang right now that does this. It's looking very
> promising. I know, I know, I said I was going to set auxlanging
> aside... that's why this one is a conlang that just LOOKS like an
> auxlang.
I decided long ago that auxlanging was pretty much pointless for me,
because I am not willing to put in the time or the emotional
investment required to get anybody else interested. Auxlang design
philosophy occasionally comes up with some pretty weird and
interesting things that I like to try out, though. The thing that I
really like about having maximal flexibility in a self-segregating
system is that it allows you to do some things that are distinctly
un-auxlang-like, such as inserting French-esque "disappearing
consonants", if you want to play with that and still keep the
self-segregation.
Gogido is my one intentionally auxlang-esque project, and another nice
thing about this sort of hyper-flexible system is that I might be able
to retrofit it onto Gogido without too much alteration of the existing
grammar and lexicon.

>> But what if we *want*
>> word-internal vowel sequences?
>
> Try separating them with a glottal stop? Or using only a subset
> (perhaps easily diphthongised) for the word-ending markers?
Glottal stops are the 'obvious' solution, but they technically still
count as consonants. That's cheating. :)
Hence, yes, use subsets. If you've got 5 vowels, that gives you 25
pairs (or 16 if you ignore doubles), which should give you plenty of
options for dividing up the terminals vs. non-terminals.

>> It occurs to me also that the final-pair marking system without
>> initial vowels is essentially equivalent to a surrounding-vowel
>> system, where all words start and end with a vowel, except that each
>> initial vowel is shifted backwards by one word.
>
> Correct. Saves a syllable per word, too, if the vowel pair can be
> pronounced as a diphthong.
Oo, good point. Didn't think of that. I tend to think of diphthongs as
single vowel units, distinct from two vowels in series.

>>
>> Altogether, this results in the most flexible self-segregating
>> morphological system I have yet seen (although, it only addresses
>> segregating words, rather than individual morphemes, but a
>> word-internal segregation system could be superimposed fairly easily).
>
> I've also done this. I'd be happy to send you a sample if you'd like.
> I think your overall design is very different from what I'm doing, but
> I'm happy to share examples if you think they'd be fruitful for you.
Sure. I'll look at just about anything for additional inspiration.

-l.