Re: Tíngrjsil etabnammity

JS Bangs wrote:

> The consonants come in two sets, palatalized and unpalatalized (a la
> Slavic or Irish Gaelic), though some sound shifts have made the palatal
> label convenient rather than descriptive. Here's a quick rundown:
>
> Non-palatalized Palatalized
> ------------------------------
> p   t   k       p'  ts,tS  tC
> b   d   g       b'  dz     dj\
> f   s   x       f'  S      C
> v   z           v'  Z
> m   n           m'  J
>     l               K\
>     r               z`
>
> The vowels are seven:
> ----------------
>  i    1    u
>  e    @    o
>       a
>
> Here's where the fun comes in. Palatalization is indicated by the vowels,
> not the consonants. The vowels /i e/ always provoke palatalization, and
> the vowels /@ 1/ sometimes do. The vowels /u o a/ never palatalize (except
> sometimes).
>
> In the orthography, we write the full vowels /i e u o/ as |í é ú ó|. The
> unaccented versions are used for the central vowels: |e| for /@/ when the
> preceding consonant is palatalized, otherwise |o|, and |i| for [1] when
> the preceding consonant is palatalized, otherwise |u|. Thus, we get the
> following syllables:
>
> ki   ke   ku   ko   ka   kí   ké   kó   kú
> tC1  tC@  k1   k@   ka   tCi  tCe  ko   ku
I do love the fact that /@/ palatalizes a consonant and the way
orthography indicates it.  It might be the case that schwa comes from
*/e/ and */o/ (who merged), and /e/ reported its palatality on a
preceding consonant, as it often happens. And
maybe this just what you have in mind (?).

However (WARNING :  I may be wrong ;)), if orthography is somehow
related to phonology, I'm not sure whether /1/ causing palatalization is
a realistic phenomenon. This is quite common that vowels palatalize
consonants and reduce themselves to schwa, but I'm not sure we find in
natural languages /1/ causing palatalization.

But maybe the fact that vowels indicate palatalization is not
phonological but only orthographic. If so, then my remark is meaningless ;).


> There are some front vowels that don't palatalize, though, and for those
> we put an |a| between the consonant and the vowel.
This is particularly interesting, and looks nice in your examples. I
have just one question : do you use |a| for both /6/ and
"depalatalization" diacritic ?

Julien


--
"Well be a lot longer discovering the future if we dont recover the
past" John Anderson

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