Re: Open questions on Chevraqis

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Daniel Andreasson wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > > 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.
>
> Oops. I should've thought of that.
No, not at all; for all I know there is some language out there with a
similar rule that doesn't have the 1st syllable stressed on 2-syllable
words.  :-)

> >However, when I tried speaking the language (what little existed of it) it
> >sounded terribly monotonous.  So I'm rethinking that.
>
> So actually, what you have is a "stress the first syllable"
> rule? IMHO, that's what makes Finnish sound bad, (while
> Quenya sounds marvellous with practically the same phonotax).
Well, for words with more than three syllables (in theory) you'd still
stress the 3rd from last.  OTOH since I decided to use triconsonantal
morphology, this is not terribly helpful except with weird things like
compounds.  God, I screwed this one up.  :-p

> ><rueful look>  How do all you people do it?  :-)
>
> As for Cein, first I just had a general rule to stress
> the final syllable (louder and higher). Then I read
> about the Welsh stress where the penultimate is stressed
> but the last syllable receives a higher pitch, making
> it sound (to the untrained ear) to have final stress.
> This sounded cool, but I finally decided against it
> anyway. So I decided only to use this to explain the
> shift to final stress in Cein (from Quenya) (with the
> Welsh way as intermediary).
Cool!

I really know almost nothing about how stress rules arise...something to
find out for the future.  :-p

> >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....
>
> And here I go asking questions you really don't have time
> to answer. Sorry about that. Eek. Ook. :)
No, not at all; we all need excuses to procrastinate, no?  =^)  Thanks
for bringing me back into the fold....

YHL