Re: Mandarin pronouns (ta1) [Was: a question about names]

Stephen Mulraney wrote:

> ObConlang: My current project, Tiemish(1), as the attached URL
> suggests, is broadly inspired, nay stolen, from Mandarin. It's
> the closest thing to a relex I've done. OTOH, it's intended as
> something straight-forward that I can easily write texts in and
> become familiar with, and later it will serve as the mother of
> a very unruly brood of ill-behaved and unusably-complex conlangs :)
>
> http://ataltane.net/conlangs/chineselikelang.html
>
Very interesting. Since I've just been working on Gwr, a language of similar
type (except I know nothing of Mandarin), I'm struck by the more than
occasional resemblances.

Tonogenesis is a problem; I know some of the principles, but need to find
good sources for some of the subtleties.  I note that in Tiemish, tone seems
to be determined by the _coda_; do the initials have no affect?

I'm starting from proto-forms (non-tonal; mostly CVCV(C) with mostly final
stress; initial stress created nominal or adj. derivatives of verbal forms,
but this isn't fixed in stone yet...; there was some proto-morphology [C-
prefixes] but that isn't entirely worked out either). I too am hoping to
create other descendants, some of which will retain the CVCV(C) structure
and head in non-analytic directions.
(In Bau Da Gwr, CVCV(C) > CVC)

The proto sound system was: p t k q, b d g, m n N, w r l y s h, Vowels i a
u. All C could occur as initial, medial, final.

This developed to modern BD:  p t ts tr tS k q, b d dz dl dZ g, f s S x, w l
y s h, Vowels i e E/& 1 a u o O and vocalic r [3^]. The only codas are ? N h
w y

Sample (easy!) derivations:

*pátV > **pat > pa? high tone
*pVtá > **(p)ta > ta high

*bátV > **bat > ba? low
*bVtá > **(b)ta > ta low (alternative? da high?)

Well, I need to get this organized a lot more before creating a web page.

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