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A language without lexical category distinction
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 11:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Short answer: I'm designing the prefixes (categorizing morphemes and root modifiers) to produce a single syllable before the root.

There are maximum two prefixes before the root anyways: compounding and other processes involving lexical morphemes occur after the root. I don't know what the theoretical limit to how long a word can be yet, but the syllable stress pattern technically has no limit. It just keeps adding secondary stresses every two syllables after the primary stress.

Further, all compounding processes are head-initial, so technically in all cases it's the head root that receives primary stress (since in lexical items which aren't compounds, the root is the head root).
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks!


Aert wrote:
... I'm designing the prefixes (categorizing morphemes and root modifiers) to produce a single syllable before the root.
There are maximum two prefixes before the root anyways: ...

So that simplifies and combines some of my questions into the following:
If there are two prefixes (i.e. two syllables) before the root, does the first of them get secondary stress?
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Sat Dec 14, 2013 7:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
So that simplifies and combines some of my questions into the following:
If there are two prefixes (i.e. two syllables) before the root, does the first of them get secondary stress?


The prefixes don't have to be full syllables. But more importantly, prefixes occurring before the root do not receive stress at all: it's more important in this language to have the stress indicate where the root starts than where the word starts. Since the prefixes are maximally a single syllable anyway, this isn't much of a problem, because the point of stress (from what I understand of it) is to indicate word boundaries: being one syllable away from the word boundary is very common (eg. penultimate stressed languages like Spanish), this one just has many words with one initial syllable that is unstressed.

Back to the 'prefixes don't have to be full syllables' bit:
The nominalizing prefix is just s-

And I'm thinking about making one of the verbalizing prefixes as ?(a)-, where ? is the glottal stop, and (a) is optional. I don't have the formalism down yet, but when a glottal stop and some other consonant are immediately adjacent, there is a repair strategy so that the sequence can be pronounced more fluently. One potential is that the feature of the glottal stop ("constricted glottis") merges with the features of the adjacent consonant, producing ejectives when next to [p,t,k,q,ts,ch] and maybe some others; and glottalized resonants when next to [m,n,l,y,w]. When next to some other sound, then the (a) is used as a last resort.

Other prefixes I'm not sure about yet, but one of the things I've been working on is a constraint to maximize the onset of a syllable, such that if there is a sequence across a syllable boundary, eg. [sut.sa], if the sequence is an allowable onset, then it should be an onset, producing [su.tsa] where [.] is a syllable boundary. So this sort of ties in to the glottal stop cluster producing complex segments.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 15, 2013 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Aert wrote:
The prefixes don't have to be full syllables.

I guessed that was probably so. I just simplified my question.


Aert wrote:
But more importantly, prefixes occurring before the root do not receive stress at all:

Well, that answers my question.

Nevertheless I'm still curious; do some words have two syllables before the root? Or do the up-to-two prefixes never add up to more than one syllable (and sometimes not even one)?


Aert wrote:
it's more important in this language to have the stress indicate where the root starts than where the word starts.

Makes sense.


Aert wrote:
Since the prefixes are maximally a single syllable anyway,

This is what I'm not clear about.
Is it each individual prefix that's maximally a single syllable? Or is it, instead, the maximal total of all (two of) a word's prefixes that are maximally a single syllable?


Aert wrote:
this isn't much of a problem, because the point of stress (from what I understand of it) is to indicate word boundaries: being one syllable away from the word boundary is very common (eg. penultimate stressed languages like Spanish), this one just has many words with one initial syllable that is unstressed.

This would seem to imply that even if a word has two (or more, but you said at most two) prefixes, those can't add up to more than one syllable.

Is that correct?


Aert wrote:
Back to the 'prefixes don't have to be full syllables' bit:
The nominalizing prefix is just s-

And I'm thinking about making one of the verbalizing prefixes as ?(a)-, where ? is the glottal stop, and (a) is optional. I don't have the formalism down yet, but when a glottal stop and some other consonant are immediately adjacent, there is a repair strategy so that the sequence can be pronounced more fluently. One potential is that the feature of the glottal stop ("constricted glottis") merges with the features of the adjacent consonant, producing ejectives when next to [p,t,k,q,ts,ch] and maybe some others; and glottalized resonants when next to [m,n,l,y,w]. When next to some other sound, then the (a) is used as a last resort.

Other prefixes I'm not sure about yet, but one of the things I've been working on is a constraint to maximize the onset of a syllable, such that if there is a sequence across a syllable boundary, eg. [sut.sa], if the sequence is an allowable onset, then it should be an onset, producing [su.tsa] where [.] is a syllable boundary. So this sort of ties in to the glottal stop cluster producing complex segments.

Thanks!
Keep us up to date?
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Aert



Joined: 03 Jul 2008
Posts: 354

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 3:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Nevertheless I'm still curious; do some words have two syllables before the root? Or do the up-to-two prefixes never add up to more than one syllable (and sometimes not even one)?


No, I'm (working on) designing it so that the total number of syllables making up prefixes to the root does not exceed 1. Therefore, each individual prefix is maximally one syllable, and the combination of prefixes (maximally two, as there are only two prefix slots) is restricted to one syllable (which can require syllable reduction/simplification).

Quote:
This would seem to imply that even if a word has two (or more, but you said at most two) prefixes, those can't add up to more than one syllable.

Is that correct?


Correct (see above).

Quote:
And I'm thinking about making one of the verbalizing prefixes as ?(a)-, where ? is the glottal stop, and (a) is optional. I don't have the formalism down yet, but when a glottal stop and some other consonant are immediately adjacent, there is a repair strategy so that the sequence can be pronounced more fluently. One potential is that the feature of the glottal stop ("constricted glottis") merges with the features of the adjacent consonant, producing ejectives when next to [p,t,k,q,ts,ch] and maybe some others; and glottalized resonants when next to [m,n,l,y,w]. When next to some other sound, then the (a) is used as a last resort.


I'm still not entirely sure about this, but I think the 'feature-merging' aspect of it might only occur if the consonant being modified is NOT the onset of the root (to maintain the form of the root). So eg. if there's a prefix ta- which modifies the root, the <t> can take the glottal feature and become the ejective <t'>, but only when there's an intervening morpheme.

Otherwise, (eg. if there is no root modifier) the (a) will be inserted as a last resort, producing eg. ?a-tuk rather than t'uk. This gets around the potential confusion of having an allophone which is also phonemic in onset position, such that you don't know which root the person is actually using.
In actual practice, since at least the root categorizing marker (eg. a nominalizer or verbalizing marker) must appear on a root, then if someone says just <t'uk> then you know it has to be the allophonic form, and that the underlying form is <tuk>, which has the ?(a)- prefix.

So still not sure, but there are thoughts swirling around on the matter, at least!

Quote:
Thanks! Keep us up to date?


I'll try! I haven't been able to work on it too much lately, but I might do some more once the holidays start (I'll be with family most of the time, but there will be lots of travel time, so that will have to be filled somehow!)
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