New Syllabry!
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Friday, October 29, 1999, 0:54 |
I've worked out a syllabry for Watakassi', it's rather an interesting
system. In Old Watakassi', it was a typical syllabry. There were 6
vowels, /i e a @ o u/ (written in that order). There were 9 "basic"
consonants, /p t k q m n w l j/ with diacritics for voicing and for
fricatives (/h/ was written as /q/ + fricative). There were ONLY CV
characters.
The syllable-structure for Old Watakassi' was CV(C), but the syllabry
did not distinguish CVC@ from CVC, so that kas@ta could be /kasta/ or
/kas@ta/. However, two styles were later created to indicate that. One
used C@ for C, and C@ written twice over itself for C@, so for instance
(use monowidth for this):
kas@ta = /kasta/ kas@ta = /kas@ta/
s@
But another system existed that used CV written over C@ for CVC, thus
kata = /kasta/ kas@ta = /kas@ta/
s@
(Of course, when two characters were written over each other, they were
written half-size)
Later, /q/ was lost, and the q-series has become the vowel series (that
is /qa/ became /a/). The schwa-series was lost, turning those into pure
C characters (so, there are C, CV, and V characters), obviously the old
/q@/ was lost. In addition, /e/ and /i/ merged, as did /u/ and /o/,
thus /ki/ could be written two ways, one with the old /ki/ and the other
the old /ke/.
Now, something interesting happened. The two /i/-series and the two
/u/-series were split into /i/ and /i:/, and /u/ and /u:/ (so ti/tii are
distinguished by different characters). Thus, there's a Ci-series, a
Cii-series, a Ca-series, a C-series, a Cu-series, and a Cuu-series.
There are, therefore, 53 characters. In the old, 6 vowels * 9
consonants. One (/q@/) completely lost.
There are also a lot of ligatures. At present, I've worked out 57
ligatures, indicating geminates, by combining C and CV characters, i.e.,
_tta_ = t + ta, and also long a's, formed from Ca + a ligatures (taa =
ta + a), and ligatures of geminates + a, thus _ttaa_ = t + ta + a
(historically /t@taqa/), so 110 total.
Voicing and fricative diacritics were combined into a single diacritic
for voiced fricative.
I may work out ligatures for Cw, Cy, and Cl.
--
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ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia." --
Joseph Wood Krutch
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