There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: (Recall) Name that Glyph | Round Nine « Pseu doglyph s
From: Adam Walker
2a. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
2b. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
From: Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones
3. Dinosaur Comics pastiche in gjâ-zym-byn
From: Jim Henry
4. Tirelat vowels
From: Herman Miller
Messages
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1a. Re: (Recall) Name that Glyph | Round Nine « Pseu doglyph s
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 9, 2012 7:22 am ((PST))
Peru esti nil ledji djul Dominu ul su
J3 = to sunbathe
Adam
Peru esti nil ledji djul Dominu ul su levachu, ed nil su ledji medidad peu'l
dji peu'l nopi.
Saumu 1:2
________________________________
From: A. Mendes <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2012 8:12 PM
Subject: (Recall) Name that Glyph | Round Nine « Pseudoglyph s
Last week's glyph samples were erroneous. Please find the correction below
and name those glyphs.
Thank you.
http://pseudoglyphs.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/recall-name-that-glyph-round-nine/
Messages in this topic (2)
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2a. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 9, 2012 5:44 pm ((PST))
On 3/8/2012 9:08 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> One bumps fairly frequently into languages with a phoneme called /c/,
> although sometimes its usual realisation will be [cC)]; but aside from
> Australian languages (with their many areal anomalies, e.g. sibilancy being
> right out) I can't name offhand any language I've seen described as having a
> phoneme /t_-/, rather than /tS/.
I'm willing to accept a few phonemes that might be unnatural for human
languages, including things like postalveolar stops if it works out that
way. But without any really compelling reason for anything like that,
I'd prefer to stick to what's realistic for human languages, so I'll try
postalveolar affricates in Early Modern Tirelat for now and see how they
work out.
>> [?r/r?] does'nt strike me as the likeliest source of
>> [r_0]. Any surrounding voiceless fricatives or preceding
>> oral voiceless stops seem more likely -- the latter
>> perhaps after becoming fricatives.
>
> Yeah, glottal stops are voiceless in the opposite of the fashion that most
> other things are voiceless, glottis completely shut rather than not
> vibrating but completely open. Modal voicing uses an intermediate degree of
> aperture. As a consequence, devoicing (specially) near [?] doesn't really
> happen. If [?r] went somewhere special the normal thing would be [r_k],
> proximally at least. (But creakiness doesn't interact with non-phonation
> features of consonants much either. Maybe it could> laryngealisation>
> pharyngealisation or such.)
Okay, I can see how that makes sense. Which voiceless sound would be the
most likely to vanish without leaving traces of breathy aspiration on a
voiceless r? Something like /f/, possibly? Or should I stick with /hr/
and /rh/?
>>> [re production of /j/ and /w/]
>>
>> I'm thinking some sort of vowel breaking may be involved, like what
>> happened in Spanish with /ie/ and /ue/.
>
> Yes, that could well be. But the distributional corollary of thàt would be
> that /j/ and /w/ occur with only one or a few nuclear vowels apiece, unless
> later umlauts or similar changes increased the range of vowels you could
> have after them. Does that square with the facts?
I've been looking at /w/ and I think now that it makes more sense as a
consonant. The absence of *bw, *pw, *fw, *vw (even though /u/ occurs
after labial consonants) is one clue. Also, /w/ is somewhat common
between vowels, in places where there can't be a lost consonant before
it since the vowel before it is short. (That's assuming that I decide to
go with compensatory lengthening as the explanation for the long vowels
in the standard dialect.) It might not have been *w originally (possibly
*É£ as I mentioned in another post), but it looks like it was a consonant
of some kind.
>> One clue is the word "r'jandi"
>> /r_0jandi/, which I'm assuming came from an original *hrjandi or *?rjandi.
>> A 3-consonant initial cluster is unusual for Tirelat (I can't find any
>> examples of one)
>
> You mention on your website (I checked your website since last time!)
> /tkw1r/ -- which is a three-consonant cluster, but with an approximant in
> the third place! If the glides are recent creations then they were probably
> created after two-consonant onsets just as well as after one-consonant ones,
> which means you should expect initial three-consonant clusters of the form C
> + C + /j,w/. So I wouldn't be bothered by this.
Well, whether /j/ and /w/ were consonants is the question, so /tkw1r/ is
just another example of CC + approximant. But that does make it seem
more likely that /w/ was an approximant instead of something like [É£]
(unless there was a vowel between /t/ and /k/ that was lost), since
/tkG/ seems like an unlikely initial cluster for EMT.
> Riffing on the theme more loosely, what sort of initial two-consonant
> clusters are out there?
>
>> Well, [D] is just the allophone of /d/ between vowels.
>
> Ah! Missed that.
>
> But then I see on your website that /d/ and /b/ have intervocalic fricative
> allophones, but not /dz/ and /g/. Presumably this has something to do with
> the existence of /z/ and /G/ but not of */D/ and */B/ (though note that a
> distinction between /B/ and /v/ is rare! I'd be a little surprised if /b/
> fricated to something other than [v] in a language with extant [v]).
I've gone back and forth on whether the /g/ vs. /G/ distinction remains
between vowels. I don't think there are many minimal pairs. Let's see:
rogu "scissors" vs. roġu "less"; žagi "greedy" vs. žaġi "to dash".
That's it? I think I could merge intervocalic /g/ and /G/ without much
trouble.
As far as /b/ vs. /v/, there's one significant minimal pair: kabi
"overturned" vs. kavi "black". I don't really want to change either of
those if I can avoid it.
> Seeing that state of affairs, what I would hope is true is that /dz/ and /g/
> are absent intervocalically (except in cases where they morphologically vary
> with non-intervocalic stops), because they were subject to the same
> intervocalic frication as /b/ and /d/ but the results merged into extant /z/
> and /G/. If you were rather thinking that their frication was _blocked_ by
> the existence of /z/ and /G/, that's more suspect IMO. (Especially given
> that voiced stops are less stable the further back in the mouth they go.)
/dz/ does contrast with /z/ intervocalically (keża "to announce" vs.
keza "to look for"). I wonder if this could actually be from a different
origin, stop + fricative (*kedza)?
Messages in this topic (9)
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2b. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
Posted by: "Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 10, 2012 2:51 am ((PST))
Sent from my iPhone
On 10 Mar 2012, at 01:44, Herman Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 3/8/2012 9:08 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
>
>> One bumps fairly frequently into languages with a phoneme called /c/,
>> although sometimes its usual realisation will be [cC)]; but aside from
>> Australian languages (with their many areal anomalies, e.g. sibilancy being
>> right out) I can't name offhand any language I've seen described as having a
>> phoneme /t_-/, rather than /tS/.
>
> I'm willing to accept a few phonemes that might be unnatural for human
> languages, including things like postalveolar stops if it works out that way.
> But without any really compelling reason for anything like that, I'd prefer
> to stick to what's realistic for human languages, so I'll try postalveolar
> affricates in Early Modern Tirelat for now and see how they work out.
Wouldn't a postalveolar stop be a click? In other words, ANADEW?
>>> [?r/r?] does'nt strike me as the likeliest source of
>>> [r_0]. Any surrounding voiceless fricatives or preceding
>>> oral voiceless stops seem more likely -- the latter
>>> perhaps after becoming fricatives.
>>
>> Yeah, glottal stops are voiceless in the opposite of the fashion that most
>> other things are voiceless, glottis completely shut rather than not
>> vibrating but completely open. Modal voicing uses an intermediate degree of
>> aperture. As a consequence, devoicing (specially) near [?] doesn't really
>> happen. If [?r] went somewhere special the normal thing would be [r_k],
>> proximally at least. (But creakiness doesn't interact with non-phonation
>> features of consonants much either. Maybe it could> laryngealisation>
>> pharyngealisation or such.)
>
> Okay, I can see how that makes sense. Which voiceless sound would be the most
> likely to vanish without leaving traces of breathy aspiration on a voiceless
> r? Something like /f/, possibly? Or should I stick with /hr/ and /rh/?
>
>>>> [re production of /j/ and /w/]
>>>
>>> I'm thinking some sort of vowel breaking may be involved, like what
>>> happened in Spanish with /ie/ and /ue/.
>>
>> Yes, that could well be. But the distributional corollary of thàt would be
>> that /j/ and /w/ occur with only one or a few nuclear vowels apiece, unless
>> later umlauts or similar changes increased the range of vowels you could
>> have after them. Does that square with the facts?
>
> I've been looking at /w/ and I think now that it makes more sense as a
> consonant. The absence of *bw, *pw, *fw, *vw (even though /u/ occurs after
> labial consonants) is one clue. Also, /w/ is somewhat common between vowels,
> in places where there can't be a lost consonant before it since the vowel
> before it is short. (That's assuming that I decide to go with compensatory
> lengthening as the explanation for the long vowels in the standard dialect.)
> It might not have been *w originally (possibly *É£ as I mentioned in another
> post), but it looks like it was a consonant of some kind.
>
>>> One clue is the word "r'jandi"
>>> /r_0jandi/, which I'm assuming came from an original *hrjandi or *?rjandi.
>>> A 3-consonant initial cluster is unusual for Tirelat (I can't find any
>>> examples of one)
>>
>> You mention on your website (I checked your website since last time!)
>> /tkw1r/ -- which is a three-consonant cluster, but with an approximant in
>> the third place! If the glides are recent creations then they were probably
>> created after two-consonant onsets just as well as after one-consonant ones,
>> which means you should expect initial three-consonant clusters of the form C
>> + C + /j,w/. So I wouldn't be bothered by this.
>
> Well, whether /j/ and /w/ were consonants is the question, so /tkw1r/ is just
> another example of CC + approximant. But that does make it seem more likely
> that /w/ was an approximant instead of something like [É£] (unless there was
> a vowel between /t/ and /k/ that was lost), since /tkG/ seems like an
> unlikely initial cluster for EMT.
>
>> Riffing on the theme more loosely, what sort of initial two-consonant
>> clusters are out there?
>>
>>> Well, [D] is just the allophone of /d/ between vowels.
>>
>> Ah! Missed that.
>>
>> But then I see on your website that /d/ and /b/ have intervocalic fricative
>> allophones, but not /dz/ and /g/. Presumably this has something to do with
>> the existence of /z/ and /G/ but not of */D/ and */B/ (though note that a
>> distinction between /B/ and /v/ is rare! I'd be a little surprised if /b/
>> fricated to something other than [v] in a language with extant [v]).
>
> I've gone back and forth on whether the /g/ vs. /G/ distinction remains
> between vowels. I don't think there are many minimal pairs. Let's see: rogu
> "scissors" vs. roġu "less"; žagi "greedy" vs. žaġi "to dash". That's it?
> I think I could merge intervocalic /g/ and /G/ without much trouble.
>
> As far as /b/ vs. /v/, there's one significant minimal pair: kabi
> "overturned" vs. kavi "black". I don't really want to change either of those
> if I can avoid it.
>
>> Seeing that state of affairs, what I would hope is true is that /dz/ and /g/
>> are absent intervocalically (except in cases where they morphologically vary
>> with non-intervocalic stops), because they were subject to the same
>> intervocalic frication as /b/ and /d/ but the results merged into extant /z/
>> and /G/. If you were rather thinking that their frication was _blocked_ by
>> the existence of /z/ and /G/, that's more suspect IMO. (Especially given
>> that voiced stops are less stable the further back in the mouth they go.)
>
> /dz/ does contrast with /z/ intervocalically (keża "to announce" vs. keza
> "to look for"). I wonder if this could actually be from a different origin,
> stop + fricative (*kedza)?
Messages in this topic (9)
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3. Dinosaur Comics pastiche in gjâ-zym-byn
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 9, 2012 6:58 pm ((PST))
I've written a pastiche of Ryan North's Dinosaur Comics in
gjâ-zym-byn; the comic, with an interlinear gloss of the script, is
here:
http://jimhenry.conlang.org/gzb/dinosaur_comics_beqlaxm.html
Also a new section for the syntax document on the polysemy of the
"topic" postposition, and some other updates; see the "what's new"
page for details:
http://jimhenry.conlang.org/gzb/baxmsra.htm
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (1)
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4. Tirelat vowels
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 9, 2012 8:26 pm ((PST))
The current standard dialect of Tirelat has 7 vowels: front /a/ /e/ /i/,
central /ë/ /y/, and back /o/ /u/. I notice that the back vowels /o/ and
/u/ only occur after /w/ in a few words borrowed from Jarda, and the
central vowels are uncommon after /w/. It occurs to me that the original
back vowels /o/ /u/ in Early Modern Tirelat may have split, remaining
/o/ and /u/ after labial consonants, and changing to /ë/ and /y/ in
other environments. Then /w/ vanished before /o/ and /u/.
The only problem with this is accounting for the cases of /ë/ and /y/
after labial consonants. The word for "round" is actually /mëri/ in some
dialects and /mori/ in others, suggesting a possible solution (borrowing
from dialects with different sound changes). Another possibility is
illustrated by the locative singular article "vë" (which is "ve" in
other dialects). It's possible that the front vowels /e/ and /i/ after
labial consonants changed to /ë/ and /y/. But the conjunction "vël"
(but) must have contrasted with the noun "vel" (day) in the early
language, so it can't have been *vel; it must have been *vol.
There are still some rough edges, but the fact that there are
surprisingly few problems leads me to believe that I'm on the right
track. One of the problems again is the word "tkwyr", which is "dikúir"
in the related language Czirehlat. It's possible that "tkwyr" was
re-borrowed from an older language after the sound changes from Early to
Modern Tirelat had already taken place.
Messages in this topic (1)
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