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Re: question: Arabic morphology

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Monday, August 21, 2000, 0:27
Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> Arabic uses three-consonant verbs, correct?
For the most part, yes. There's a few two-consonant and four-consonant roots.
> Now that I look at essays on how sound change happens, a wholesale shift > like this seems unlikely. My question is, as far as this morphology > business goes, do I apply sound change across a pattern (what I have > above) or per individual word?
Sound changes affect individual words. This may mess up morphology patterns (the classic example being root-changing verbs in many Romance langs, like Spanish puedo/podemos - stressed /O/ and /E/ became /wE/ and /jE/, later /O/ and /o/, and /E/ and /e/ merged, so that it was no longer predictable whether an /o/ would remain /o/ or become /we/ when stressed). However, depending on the nature of the change, the majority may remain the same. For example, suppose that, in a future form of English, there were a rule that in consonant clusters involving two stops, the first stop became a fricative, thus you'd have pairs like /bejk/ and /bejxt/ for the present and past of "bake". At this point, there's no problem, it's a predictable alteration. Now, suppose that a further change occured, wherein /xt/ became /St/, and then /S/. There's still a predictable alteration, /k/ becomes /S/ in the past tense, but it's more complex, non-stop consonants add /(@)d/. Now, suppose that syllable-final /k/ was lost. Now, it's no longer predictable, /pej/ becomes /pejd/ in the past tense, but /bej/ becomes /bejS/. There's no way of knowing which vowel-final stems will do which. Analogy would tend to make those verbs like /bej/ into regular verbs, thus /bejS/ would be replaced by /bejd/. Analogy in the real-world has replaced irregular forms like "kine" and "wrought" with regular forms like "cows" and "worked". So, sound-changes may mess up your system, but analogy would probably restore the order with a few irregular exceptions.
> The SAC doesn't let me apply pattern-rules like the above, though; maybe > you can set up the variables in such a way, but I can't figure it out, or > perhaps you could edit the source code, but my C is nonexistent
Just apply it to individual words. In all liklihood, most of them will preserve a common pattern. Thus, that common pattern would be the new inflectional pattern. Then, the ones that change differently, some of them change back to regular inflections, and some keep as irregulars. An example from my conlang, non-nasal final consonants were lost. Thus, _láqënas_ became _s-láana_ (the s- is the gender prefix, the ancestreal form didn't have gender prefixes; I've added the hyphens for convenience). However, when the plural suffix -i was added, the -s was no longer final, so _láqënasi_ became _sul-láanasi_. Some such words, like _s-láana_, kept that alternation, while others, like su-klú/su-klúsi (foot/feet) analagized the consonant as part of the root, thus su-klús/su-klúsi, while others, like wa-gláazu/waf-gláazufi (piece of advice, pieces of advice/advice), dropped the consonant entirely, thus wa-gláazu/waf-gláazwi. Those alternations are traditionally known as "hidden consonants". The consonants also show up in the genitive and dative inflections, which were the only cases in Common Kassí. The other cases of Classical Watakassí are descended from bound postpositions, and thus became part of the word AFTER the final consonant loss. -- "Their bodies did not age, but they became afeared of everything and anything. For partaking in any activity at all could threaten their precious and ageless bodies! ... Their victory over death was a hollow one." ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor