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Re: First Post and Proto-Conlang rough sketch

From:Joseph Fatula <joefatula@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 12:05
Jason Monti wrote:
>> I suppose it all depends on two things: how much like PIE you want it to >> be, and how much work you want to put in on the background. If I were >> making "a creole from the ancient past" that had changed "giving rise to >> this e/o/0 gradation", I would just make the creole, then put it through >> sound changes to get the gradation. It'll look a lot more realistic >> that way! >> > > The problem is that while I know more about historical linguistics than your > average layman, I'm by no means a linguist. I would have NO clue how to give > rise to such a gradiation system as precise as the one I have here from an > almost completely isolating creole (of the ancient past ;-) ). >
----- Here's one way you could make a gradation system through historical sound change. It's not your language, as I don't know much of it, but it might give you some ideas as to how to do this with your own. Let's start with some vocabulary for the proto-language. met = eat sen = sing ba = will (future tense auxiliary) a = what, that (relative clauses) uz = done, completed (perfect) du = they ga = it av = I ----- It's all isolating, VSO, nothing too odd. original: met av ga "I eat it" a met du "what they eat" a met uz av "what I have eaten" ba met uz du "they will have eaten" sen av "I sing" a sen du "what they sing" sen av a sen du "I sing what they sing" ----- Simple enough, right? Let's look at what happens when we apply some changes: changed: meta ga "I eat it" mot "what they eat" tuza "what I have eaten" bamtu "they will have eaten" sena "I sing" son "what they sing" sena son "I sing what they sing" ----- The verb roots show clear alteration in different environments: met/mot/(m)t, sen/son. (Though in retrospect, those might not be the most interesting environments for vowel gradation...) With a little reanalysis of meanings, we have: reanalyzed: met "eat" mot "food" bamt- "eat (fut.)" sen "sing" son "song" basn- "sing (fut.)" ----- Here are the sound changes I'm using: Historical Changes: little grammatical words become affixes e > o / _Cu o > 0 / VC_CV V > 0 / #_C or C_# (except in single-syllable words) C > 0 / #_C or C_# voiced fricative > 0 / _# ____________________________________________________________ ONE-CLICK WEBMAIL ACCESS - Easily monitor & access your email accounts! Visit http://www.inbox.com/notifier and check it out!

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Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>