Re: question: Arabic morphology

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.

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