There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system – is this naturalis
From: Arnt Richard Johansen
2a. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: Sam Stutter
2b. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: Carsten Becker
Messages
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1a. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system – is this naturalis
Posted by: "Arnt Richard Johansen" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 5:25 am ((PST))
Thanks to everyone for your kind responses. My general impression is that the
system as a whole is not absurd, but that there are some details that need to
be changed or explained.
Jörg Rhiemeier:
> The change /k/ > /p/ looks weird to me, I'd expect something like
> /k/ > /ɰ/. Otherwise, the mutations look fine.
...yeah. /k/ > /ɰ/ was actually part of the original plan, but I changed that,
because I thought it made the system too neat and symmetrical. I'm not too
happy with /k/ > /p/, but it's not entirely unprecedented, at least
diachronically speaking. Latin /k/ turned into Romanian /p/ in certain contexts.
Alex Fink:
> [...] or else originally included in the system and then analogised out of
> existence. [...]
> that opens the door to the /l L/-stem paradigm analogically stealing nouns
> away from the mutating paradigm.
Can you give me some pointers to help me understand what kind of process
“analogy” is? Is it the same as regularization?
David Peterson:
> The only way to answer that question is to show how it evolved.
You have a point. Working out the actual sound changes is one way to be *sure*
that it is possible. In general, I think it's absurd to make two languages in
order to make one, but focusing on one or two things in the language and
“evolving” them in this way might be worthwhile, if you really care about those
few things.
So yesterday, I started sketching out what might have happened. It's based on a
suggestion by Edgard Bikelis, that at one point geminates were voiced and
fricativized. In my previous experience, it's always dangerous to apply such
general and uncoditional sound change rules, because before you know it, you've
removed something you know exists in the current language, and have to go back
and revise. Fortunately, I've already decided that quantity doesn't matter in
the present state of the language, so removing geminates is fine.
Stage 1
In the beginning we have the word /aʃ/, a singularizer prefix that goes in
fron\t of the noun.
tat ~ aʃ tat
pat ~ aʃ pat
ʃat ~ aʃ ʃat
Stage 2
POA assimilation. Not sure how to constrain this properly without creating POA
assimilation all over the place, but is it okay to have a synchronic rule, that
applies only to the prefix? Sort of like assimilation that happens with al- in
Arabic.
tat ~ at tat
pat ~ ap pat
ʃat ~ aʃ ʃat
Stage 3
The prefix is now reanalyzed as a quantifier with only two surface
realizations, /a/ or /aʃː/, and is no longer obligatory; singular nouns now
have either:
* initial geminates, or
* nothing
tat ~ tːat
pat ~ pːat
ʃat ~ at
Stage 4
Fricativization of geminates. /t/ goes to /ɹ/ because\ at this time, it's the
only *voiced* coronal continuant consonant.
tat ~ ɹat
pat ~ ʋat
ʃat ~ at
When I'd finished this system, I was very pleased, because it seems to explain
both the main rule in the synchronic system (stops go to voiced fricatives),
and one of the “warts”: /ʃ/ → /∅/. (/k/ → /p/ I can't readily derive, but maybe
that would be possible if the original prefix were something like /af/.)
A critical problem dawned on me immediately after finishing the last stage: OH
SHIT! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROOTS WITH INITIAL FRICATIVES?
If we assume that the proto-language had fricatives, the toy word /ʋat/ gives
the following derivation:
ʋat ~ aʃ ʋat
> ʋat ~ aʋ ʋat (assimilation)
> ʋat ~ ʋːat (reanalysis)
> ʋat ~ ʋat (geminates are voiced and fricative (does nothing))
So the scheme above would give rise to some roots that are the same in the
singular and the plural. It's *possible* that they would regularize into the
consonant mutation paradigm, and give rise to the unhistorical plural /pat/ or
/ɓat/, but it strikes me as a bit far-fetched. More likely, the speakers would
just live with the ambiguity, or develop new periphrastic strategies to
disambiguate. Or the solution might be to posit that the fricatives were rarer
to begin with.
--
Arnt Richard Johansen http://arj.nvg.org/
Your speaker should [...] not be suffering for a cold, or cough, or a
hangover. If something goes wrong [...] it is important that the speaker has
as similar a voice as with the original recording, waiting for another cold
to come along is not reasonable, (though some may argue that the same
hangover can easily be induced).
--Building Synthetic Voices, by Alan W. Black and Kevin A. Lenzo
Messages in this topic (5)
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2a. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 5:53 am ((PST))
On 5 Feb 2012, at 03:46, J. Snow wrote:
> As I continue to develop Sironu, I'd like to go into the realm of poetry and
> songs as
> well. However, the way my conlang has developed, rhyming would be nearly
> impossible, and I'm looking for other alternatives. I understand there are
> other ways
> besides rhyming to express song and poetry, but don't know much about poetry
> and
> thus am pretty confused. Any ideas? Examples?
Consider the amount of requiems, etc which have been set to music: hardly the
most "poetic" or rhythmic stuff, but then again the primary part of sung music
(I think the word "song" is too suggestive of western popular traditions) is
the music, not the libretto. Now I know bugger-all about international folk
music, but I should imagine the only aim is to make the words fit the music,
and when you have stuff like plainsong, that's not too hard a process. :)
And as for poetry, isn't it just saying the most, with the fewest words. And
then you get the opportunity to push the limits of your language: to test it
almost to destruction; using as many of the prosodic features available to add
to the meaning. I guess it's one of those things which is specific to your
language. Line length, emphasis patterns, information density, phonemic
patterns, everything that everyone else has said: and then there's *not* having
a pattern or breaking one deliberately.
Messages in this topic (7)
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2b. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 6:36 am ((PST))
On Sat, 4 Feb 2012 22:58:52 -0500, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> even no pattern at all (blank verse).
Um, nó, that's nót corréct I feár becaúse
a páttern fór blank vérse exísts, that ís,
a líne must háve of íambs fíve, excépt
though ín this sénse at leást you dó say ríght
the fínal sýllablés don't rhýme unlíke
in sónnets whére you múst fulfíll a schéme
of rhýmes in cértain waýs addítion'lý.
:D
Besides that, rhyming is boring in my conlang as well because of the many
suffixes, and using alternating stress doesn't work well either. So what I
tried for both a translation of Ozymandias[1] and the LCC4 relay[2] is
counting syllables and keeping stanzas at about an equal number of lines. I
had lots of fun :)
Carsten
[1] http://benung.nfshost.com/archives/756
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn87HrQs6ww
(Sorry for the shameless plug, but I couldn't resist because I'm kind of
proud of those two translations.)
Messages in this topic (7)
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