On Sun, 7 Aug 2011 01:43:20 -0400, Alex Fink wrote:

>>>I guess the primary thing that strikes me strangely is your post-vocalic
>>>differentiations (i,a,u)_C, for both phonetic and feelish reasons.  I
>>>suppose you did the diversification to maintain as much root distinctiveness
>>>as you could?
>>
>>The idea was that the root consonants should not be subject to any new
>>alternations, as much as possible (for root alternations inherited from the
>>ancestor are already too many - that is, for a "Semitoid" language). (I am
>>not sure if by "root distinctiveness" you meant exactly that.)
>
>By "root distinctiveness" I meant that roots with distinct proto-vocalism
>stay distinct, that *C1aC2 and *C1iC2 and *C1uC2 don't just all fall
>together while you're smashing all the original vowels distinctions.
>
>If the _only_ motivation had been that root consonants shouldn't gain new
>alternations, then surely the simplest way to achieve that is by having no
>conditional reactions of Cs in your sound changes at all.

Oh, no, I don't treat my pets like that  :) 

This means a huge loss of distinctive features; if it's disastrously quick,
it won't look natural; if it's gradual, it's not much simpler to design than
with consonant phonemes split; and in either case it won't be in harmony
with the spirit of the language I'm designing, for my scenario does not
imply e. g. a massive compression of words which would allow for tons of
compact compounds to take care of lexical homonymy.

The true perfectionist way to address this issue is, and my original plan
was, to compile a list of (like) 10,000 common Latin lexemes and check which
phonemic mergers can produce massive problems. I even started to compile
such a wordlist, but unexpectedly it turned out somewhat laborious ;)

>>I didn't want labialization, for labialized consonants would realistically
>>interact with vowel qualities a lot, and wouldn't produce anything
>>particularly interesting in the end.
>
>True, if phenomena like persistence of /u/-vocalism just next to
>labialisable Cs is uninteresting.
>
>I thought Semitic itself was recoverable to have worked this way, though,
>for what it's worth.  I forget my source, and may be mistaken, but in
>Arabic, it was asserted that native root /u/-vowels generally only occur in
>wazn-paradigms which have counterparts with an /i/ in its place (at least
>among nouns, let's say, to be precise), and that the roots which show these
>tend to have a velar (or further back?) C adjacent to the /u/.

This is interesting; I'd like to know the details if you recall any. It
would be an important argument in the old controversy about whether
Ethyosemitic labiovelars are original or secondary (one of the most
important issues in Semitic reconstruction, I think). 

I understand, it's about underived nouns? For /u/ is contrastive in too many
productive models in Arabic, including in nouns; at any rate, there must be
other historical sources for this vowel to explain them.

>>I guess you got the impression of (a)_C working as lenition from the
>>treatment of (a)_b and (i)_b?
>
>That and (a)_t > [D].  What's up with this one?

Hmmmm.... it's just "weakening" which happened to everything outside the
triconsonantal skeleton being thus formed. 

It was supposed to be profound. For example, I notice that intervocalic /s/
and /t/ don't seem to be really contrastive *in suffixes*, so probably /t/
just fricativizes and merges with /s/ in such environments. And then the
allophones of *that* phoneme get voiced and yield the three different
reflexes, depending on the vowel.

>Also, does that mean there's no medial [t] left?  I'd hope not...

Its treatment in roots is different, and then there are clusters common in
suffixes, like /nt/ and /st/, which can yield /t/ in the end.

>>>The feelish reason is that Semitic seems marvelously resistant, presumably
>>>on account of its morphology, to any conditioned mergers of consonants, i.e.
>>>to anything that makes it look like two phonemically distinct nonzero Cs are
>>>alternating.
>>
>>Yes, and this is my favorite example of sound change being conditioned by
>>morphological techniques used by the language.
>>
>>But my project was about **achieving** such Semitoid condition, which
>>appears to be a very different thing, for those morphological techniques
>>just aren't there yet at the moment when the consonant alternations emerge;
>>and in the final condition, they shouldn't look like transparent
>>alternations anymore.
>
>True.  To go meta, I guess I'd be wary that the subsequent rules might not
>erode enough of the consonant alternations away so that, once the
>nonconcatenative consonant-skeleton thing got off the ground, it would have
>the analogical power to poof the remaining traces of it away.
>Of course, in the particular case at hand, the only things this is a
>potentially reasonable objection to are any alternations which in fact dò
>survive... 

I suspect there will be too many alternations inherited from Latin, anyway.
Think of past participles in 2nd and 3rd conjugations, for example. So I
don't want the whole morphology to be overloaded with root consonant
alternations to be eliminated by analogy.

On the other hand, consonant alternations in suffixes are helpful, for
basically they encode e. g. the thematic vowel of inflexions where it's not
final (and thus allow for keeping e. g. several conjugations and several
declensions apart in most forms).

>>The begadkefat alternations also work in Aramaic
>>(and it's not just Biblical Aramaic that has them); if any external
>>influence was in play, it should have come from this source in the first
>>place. But even this may be unnecessary, for some spirantization seems to
>>happen in late forms of Akkadian as well, i. e. it could be an areal thing
>>(ultimately, one might explain spirantizations in Greek by the same local
>>"vogue").
>
>Yes.  I tried to frame my statement carefully to exclude the original
>begadkefat alternations.  They're clear examples of consonant allophony that
>has survived in Semitic; what they don't do is confound two phonemically
>distinct consonants.  Even in modern Aramaic, as I understand it, either
>[fvTDxG] are still allophones of [pbtdkg], or they've been marginally split
>into two phonemes by geminate reduction or something -- except in the
>instances and varieties where they've merged back in (I think only [TD] have
>anywhere).

Ah, now I see. "Modern Aramaic", though, seems to be a cover term for quite
different languages and dialects (unless you meant specifically literary
Suryoyo, which I think can be considered an artificially preserved or even
revived language, not unlike Modern Hebrew).

>But, in modern Hebrew, pairs of protophonemes have had allophones fall
>together without merging entirely: /b/ [b~v] with */w/ now [v], and /k/
>[k~X] with both */q/ now [k] and */X\/ now [X].  _This_ is the thing that
>seems against "the Semitic nature" to do, and which I was ascribing to
>German influence.  (Or maybe Slavic, whatever.)

Sure. This could be very late.

>>>The consonant alternation
>>>traces that these changes leave, e.g. of the _t_ in your first conjugation
>>>table in endings like _-a:tis_, feel extremely un-Semitic to me.
>>
>>True, these don't have very straightforward parallels in more conservative
>>Semitic languages. But the idea was, rather, that (e. g.) /j/, /z/ and /r/
>>(as reflexes of internal -t-) work more like different suffixes. A vague
>>parallel to this could be /t/, /?/ and zero as (the consonant component of)
>>feminizing suffixes in Arabic: the choice depends on the vocalization model
>>of the derivand,
>
>Wait, really?  I thought it depended basically on the following material.

I meant primarily elatives and afjectives of color and defect:

m. ʔaħmar(u), f. ħamrāʔ(u) 'red' (color adjective)
m. ʔakbar(u), f. kubrā 'very big, biggest' (elative)

Historically, the consonant component in both -āʔ(u) and -ā was probably
-j-, but in Arabic it appears to be -ʔ- and zero, respectively, contrasting
with -t- in the more common feminizing suffix, -at(un).

My point was that the endings in the feminine forms _faʕlāʔ(u)_ and _fuʕlā_
signal that the corresponding masculine is _ʔafʕal(u)_, while forms like
_faʕlat(un)_ or _fuʕlat(un)_ would imply a different vocalization in
masculine, _faʕl(un)_ or _fuʕl(un)_. "Colored" consonant reflexes in
suffixes do essentially the same job in my language: past participle in
_-az_ signals that present 3Sg. is _1i23at_, and p. p. in _-ar_ points to
_1u23at_. 

>>In particular, one problem I had to address was vowels in inflections being
>>word-final in some forms but word-internal in others (e. g. in verbs:
>>_-a:s_, _-at_ vs. _-a:mus_, _-a:tis_, also _-a:bam_, _-a:tum_ etc.). To
>>preserve the difference between (e. g.) conjugation classes in most forms, I
>>needed the quality of the internal vowel to be reflected *somewhere*; and
>>having it encoded in the following consonant seemed a natural choice, for it
>>also helped the mechanics of sound changes in suffixes to be in some
>>conformity with those working on non-initial root consonants.
>
>Why was preserving the differences between conjugation classes a priority?
>(Or is there no reason beyond artistic licence?)

Yes, there are some reasons for that. My scenario preserves several
declension classes (and therefore at least two genders) for
nouns/adjectives; but the same vowel distinctions in verbs differentiate
conjugations; preserving these distinctions in such forms where the thematic
vowel is not part of the final syllable (original or contracted) looks
natural, and may also help to retain some additional tense forms (and more
patterns in lexical derivation, of course). The resulting system looks
nicely conservative in terms of morphological *categories* (it can be
probably less innovative than e. g. Spanish in this respect).

Sure, there are other options available. I could abandon the declension
classes and retain some cases instead. Or ruin all morphology in nouns and
add articles. Or have all vowels merged before final /(n)t/ and eliminate
all the remaining differences in conjugations by analogy. Or, to the
contrary, preserve several cases and two or three genders. Basically, we
have a cluster of partly similar tasty scenarios to design a group of
related languages, but only one lazy conlanger to implement them :) 

>>>Relatedly, for things like getting rid of potential quadriliterals, [...]
>>
>>This wasn't a high priority; Semitic languages allow for a lot of
>>quadriliteral roots, and C4 in my Semitoid language will very often look
>>like a dummy suffix, due to lots of phoneme mergers (with reflexes of
>>consonants and clusters that do indeed occur in suffixes).
>
>Fair enough.  I had assumed that quadriliteral elimination was the reason
>for the existence of your change 4 in the 2001 thread.  

Yeah, this one:

||4. Non-initial consonants (and clusters), if not adjacent to a stressed
||vowel, are weakened (partly to zero, partly to glides, and rarely to
||other types of consonants).
|
|This stage forms the triconsonantal skeleton: initial CV:C-, CVCC- and
|CVCVC- are not affected by the consonant weakening.

But it does its job making *most* words look like derivates from
triconsonantal roots, and the resulting system has less troubles with
quadriliteral (and longer) roots than an average Semitic language. 

A Semitic language typically has a lot of forms either unavailable or
falling together with some other forms in quadriliterals. But in my language
there are no such restrictions; the only difference is that quadrilaterals
have an additional slot for vowel, and that vowel does *not* encode an
inflexion (but can be part of a dummy suffix, or encode a former
derivational suffix). 

With my sound changes, vowels encode the orignal inflexions in only 3 slots:
between C₁ and C₂, before the last consonant of the lexical stem (which can
be part of the root or a derivational suffix), and in the final syllable;
all other vowels inherit the quality of a glide which either was in the same
position relative to the retained consonants or used to be part of the next
suffix to the right, in a nearly-concatenative fashion. This is very
un-Semitic, but allows shorter and longer stems to be treated in a uniform way.

The language is only statistically triconsonantal, three being the optimum
number allowing for enough lexical roots with a naturalistic level of spare
redundancy. 

>If not that, then
>was it rather meant to erode more consonants in inflectional material away
>so that the daughter could have more vowel contrasts in inflection?

This, too. The two sets of glides.

>>[...] >it feels
>>>more Semitoid to me to approach the problem not phonologically but rather
>>>with morphological reshapings.  E.g. for one, frequent Latin suffixes could
>>>just stay in place in the templates, like the Semitic m- prefix does, and
>>>retain the root / suffix division.  After setting those aside, and after
>>>your cluster reductions, there probably aren't very many Latin bases that
>>>are quadriliteral, so I'd want to let morphological analogy just truncate
>>>them to fit the root canon as needed (starting with dropping a glide / weak
>>>consonant if there is one in any position).
>>
>>I am not sure I understand your idea without examples. Can you give a couple?
>
>Well, perhaps not good ones: at least I'm drawing a blank on nat-Semitic
>ones.  But the idea is that if there was some strong analogical pull to
>eliminate quadriliterals, and e.g. a root like ?\-w-d would have forms like
>/?\Vd/ with no w manifest, then it would seem likely that a hypothetical
>*?\-w-d-r would get cut down to ?\-d-r.

Sure, this seems to have been common in Semitic. But a prerequisite for such
reanalysis seems to be short and long vowels co-occurring in one alternation
series, which my SC's don't produce immediately. There is only a limited
potential for some analogical diffusion due to a short vowel after C₂
potentially representing the "zero-grade" of a secondary glide. 

>>>Oh yeah, and that vowel change you called artificial?  It's totally
>>>artificial :-p
>>
>>You mean, this one?
>>
>>>> u: {... I} > o": > Iw
>>>> i: {... U} > u": > Uj
>>
>>Honestly, I think it's totally plausible by itself (think of possible
>>diphthongizations at the early stages); what may look artificial is that the
>>result fits so nicely with the whole vowel alternation machinery.
>>
>>But maybe I should change this bit, indeed, to include just one very
>>predictable irregularity :)
>
>Sure, it's not ridiculously implausible enough by itself, though I would've
>tried to used [y M] or the like rather than [y 2].  You have a height
>difference arising ex nihilo and then a breaking sensitive to it, two
>unexpected height dependences where one might have zero.  

An alternative I'm considering is just to merge the two vowels, with both
underlying //uj// and underlyng //iw// surfacing as /uj/ in the resulting
system.

But note that the two changes could be separated in time; for example,
i-coloring comes first and produces e. g. [uj] > [oj] > [ow], and *then*
u-coloring triggers [i] > [y].

And the next stage, where the morphological distribution of /iw/ and /uj/
nicely matches the already existing one of /i/ and /u/, may be not so
unnatural for another reason (see also my comment below).

>I guess it's
>stranger for [M] to break, but not impossible (modern Russian can be said to
>have done so, can't it?)

I'm not sure I understand... the default realization of /ɨ/ is perfectly
monophthongic, I think; but sure, Russian vowels tend to become diphthongoid
in lots of environments, accomodating to palatalization and/or (different
degrees of) velarization of adjacent consonants; and besides, the contrast
/ɨ/ :: /i/ is tricky and somewhat inconsistent, so e. g. an artificially
lengthened /ɨ/ can be *optionally* realized as something like
/ɨɨɨɨɨɨɪɪɪɪɪɪ/.... did you mean the latter?

>But, yeah, the artifice I was protesting was using sound change to get
>morphological uniformity.  That's unfairly teleological sound change --
>situations like this are the very reason morphological analogy was invented!
> (As it were.)

I understand this objection, yes, but I'm not sure about "teleological"
changes looking always unnatural.

Think of sound changes deleting most inflectional endings in nouns *but not*
in the least marked case in plural (English); or mostly killing all
morphological oppositions in regular verbs *except* past vs. non-past
(English again); or neatly destroying nearly all morphology in nouns but
preserving a lot of essential bits in verbs (French); or else, of phonemic
mergers, morphological rearrangements and analogical levellings craftily
ordered in such a way that plural miraculously comes out mostly looking like
singular + /s/ (Spanish)...

I believe that a language is, to a degree, a self-regulating system that
serves a purpose (which is, BTW, communication among *sentient* beings whose
choices can certainly be meaningful). Therefore, I wouldn't superstitiously
reject all scenarios where some bits may appear to develop "purposefully".
Sure, such a system cannot *foresee* a non-immediate consequence of an
ongoing change, but diphthongs drifting towards greater conformity with
alternations *already existing* in monophthongs wouldn't strike me as
something really improbable.