Re: Open questions on Chevraqis

On Wednesday, August 1, 2001, at 07:42 AM, Daniel Andreasson wrote:

> I was checking the Chevraqis website (again :) after
> Yoon Ha wrote the very nice template on how to describe
> a language to non-conlangers/linguists. (I must say
> you've done a great job with your own site Yoon Ha!)
>
<blush>  Thanks.  I'm afraid it hasn't been updated in ages; I've been
working on a newer website format using PHP and stylesheets, and the
language information on that site isn't quite correct anymore...but hey.
Honestly, though, writing a "teach yourself" sort of guide is actually
*more* fun for me than figuring out the language itself...I like figuring
out how to explain things.  Which is probably why I'm studying to be a
teacher.  ^_^  (I should also note that I am not against
"non-conversational" or whatever grammars for those who like them, but I
find them much harder to learn from.  Ideally Czevraqis would have both a
grammatical description for the linguists, tables and all, and the
teach-yourself guide for non-linguists.)

> Anyway. I have some question about Chevraqis. First
> of all, how's Chevraqis pronounced? Or rather, how's
> {ch} pronounced? It doesn't say at the site. I'm
> guessing [tS]. That would make it ['tSevra?Is] right?
Yeah, that's right.  Not very original, huh.  :-p
I've switched the transliteration so "sj" [S] is now "sz" and "ch" [tS] is
now "cz" for consistency.  I even debated changing "j" [dZ] to "dz" but am
worried that yet another z would be confusing.

> The other question concerns the pitch-accent and the
> stress. "Accents work like trochées, counting from the
> back, for an uninflected form, e.g. MIhara, AbRIoren."
> Is this the same as stressing the antepenultimate,
> i.e. third-to-last, or are there occasions when it's
> not the same?
>
You know, originally I figured two-syllable words would have an accent too,
  falling on the first syllable.

However, when I tried speaking the language (what little existed of it) it
sounded terribly monotonous.  So I'm rethinking that.

> Do I understand correctly if the accented syllable
> have a higher pitch/tone? How does pitch differ from
> tone (apart from that tone-languages has a tone for
> every syllable and pitch-accented doesn't)? Since
> Swedish is pitch-accented (or is that tone-accent,
> is there a difference? I'm suddenly very confused)
> I have some personal experience with pitch-accent. :)
> Is there no syllable with a stronger/louder tone? It's
> just higher? Is there some sort of contour?
My idea was that (as in Korean? and Japanese) the accented syllable has
higher pitch.  I didn't actually conceive of anything more complex.  The
rules for Japanese, if I understand the !@#$ thing correctly, are actually
a bit more complicated than that, but I knew nothing formally about
pitch-accent when I had the idea.  :-/  I suppose that, as with Korean,
loudness would tend more to convey emotion.  This is another area I'm
going to have to rethink.  <rueful look>  How do all you people do it?  :-
)

> The voluntary/involuntary and personal/impersonal
> distinctions are très cool and I (and the rest of
> this list I think) are just waiting to see something
> on verbs, etc.
Thanks!  At this point, I may just ditch the whole ancestorconlang thing
because I don't feel I know enough linguistics to carry it off, and leave
things the way they are.  I'll try to post something in the vague future,
and also to read/respond more to all the neat things going on on this list.
   I have two 4000 word papers due this week and things are incredibly busy,
  but I'll squeeze more in...I feel terribly guilty now....

YHL, making a resolution to sit up and pay attention, darnit

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