Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Meghean phonemic stress ...

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, November 15, 2003, 16:32
As quite likely no-one remembers, in a post of about two months ago, I wrote
that Meghean has phonemic stress, but that there as yet were no minimal pairs.

Looking thru my notes on the language, I realize I accidentally created one
within a couple of days of writing that post, namely _acàr_* "saw"** and
_àcar_ "for thee" (which breaks down as _ac_ "for" and _-ar_, the object form
of the 2nd sg personal pronoun), but didn't realize it till now. I always
react with a mixture of delight and paranoia when I find out unexpected things
in my conlangs - on the one hand it's interesting to make up rules and see
where they take you, on the other it scares the control freak in me.

* No accent marks would, of course, normally be used - Meghean orthography
does not try to be more helpful than necessary!

** I'm unsure what is the best way to translate the unmarked, "imperfect",
form of Meghean verbs for lexical purposes. In meaning, it, when used as a
finite verb, most closely ressemble the English past tense, but perhaps one
ought to go with the English lexical form, namely the infinitive, especially
since the Meghean form must sometimes be translated with an English infinitive
anyway. I assume the imperfect is the lexical form in Meghean - it's at least
the form I use in my own word lists.

                                                          Andreas

Reply

Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>