Re: thanks and name

At 10:29 PM -0500 03/19/02, Aidan Grey wrote:
>   Just a quick note to say (in front of everyone!):
>
>   Thanks A LOT to Peter Clark and Dirk Elzinga (BTW, I'm a fan of Tepa)
Thanks.

>for helping me hammer our phonology for my new lang, which is named
>Taalannin. Pronounced /'tO.l@n.nIn/
>
>   Fun derivational notes on the name:
>
>   Taalannin < tal 'tree' + 'ra 'speak' + -en 'agent nominal, -er' + -in
>'stative verb/adjectival suffix'
>    Which is used nominatively to mean something like "that of the
>Tree-speakers".
>
>   The 'r' of ra assimilates to the l of tal.
>   The 'aa' arises from vocalisation of the l in tal due to heavy syllable
>rules. Heavy syllables are open syllables (except in monosyllables), so
>closing liquids and n cause compensatory lengthening, which then develops
>into a new vowel. /al/ > /a:/ > aa /O/. Other closing consonants have
>different effects. A closing m, for instance, would be vocalized to a u,
>and cause a diphthong to develop.
>   The 'e' of -en elides after a vowel.
>   The 'n' of -en doubles to close a previous light (unstressed) syllable.
So that would be:

underlying form: /tal-ra-en-in/
r-assimilation:   tallaenin
l-vocalization:   taalaenin
e-elision:        taalanin
gemination:       taalannin
surface form:    ["tO.l@n.nIn]

Got it.

>Vaelennin, vil 'sacred tree' + all the rest as
>above. But then I'd have that other common name-initial, /v/. Actually,
>since I'm just kind of chatting here and people probably have stopped
>reading by now,
:-) Not all of us; I'm having a slow day.

>I still need to figure out how I get that 'ae'. I think
>it's just an orthographic weirdness which was devised by the
>transliterating scholar Har Sceilien. I think it develops something like this:
>
>    /il/ > /i:/ >/ej/ but written ae to indicate an original vowel of the
>frontish variety.
This <ae> to /ej/ mapping is odd given the phonological develoment.
You would think the orthography would be more conservative than the
spoken language, so I would have expected something like Viilennin.

>   How do you folks name your languages, and what do they mean?
Tepa (X-SAMPA ["t1Ba]) is the Tepa word for 'speak', 'speech'. Not
very original. The fictional backstory of the discovery of Tepa has
provided me with a much more satisfactory name, though --
Miapimoquitch (X-SAMPA for the English pronunciation is
[mi%j{pi"moUk_wItS]). It's Southern Paiute (a real language!) for
'little Hopi' (X-SAMPA for the Southern Paiute pronunciation would be
[mi"?app1_0%mOkk_wItS_h]). I now refer to the language as
Tepa/Miapimoquitch, but perhaps in a few weeks I'll start using just
Miapimoquitch.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb