Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2019 3:47 pm
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Wed Jul 03, 2019 1:59 pm
Your first step might be expunging the expression "triconsonantal root language" from your thoughts entirely, the same way we've mostly managed to stop all talking about making "a polysynthetic language".
Why would I expunge a useful term/concept?
Because it's not a useful term. "Semitic-like" would be a useful term, but "triconsonantal" really isn't.
Anybody who hears me say it understands what I'm referring to.
But the five thousand topics we've had over the years of people asking "is this triconsonantal??" demonstrate that, no, they don't. And since you know all the facts about your language, if you're still asking if it's really a triconsonantal language by definition means that YOU don't know exactly what you mean by it either!
And it's very clearly distinct from what proto-Indo-European does (mostly because it took it farther).
But taking things "farther" isn't something that lends itself to objective labels. If A is only farther along than B, then you're talking about a continuum, not discrete categories, which makes the question of definition arbitrary.
The goal is that root vowels of words are supposed to be eroded and analogized away from existence... And THAT is what I mean by "triconsonantal enough"
OK! That's something concrete we can work with (albeit something rather depressing). That's something we give a concrete answer to. Except...
and I don't think my current set up is allowing that.
...you already know the answer!
Have the root vowels of words in your language been eroded and analogised away from existence? No, clearly they haven't, as you say repeatedly. And you say explicitly that you recognise that they're not and can't be under your "current set up".
So the question you think you're asking is one you've already answered for yourself, definitively and unambiguously. If your goal is to have a language in which vowels have no phonemic weight in distinguishing roots, then we all know that you have not met that goal*. So what answer are you looking for?
*indeed, at present you seem to have LESS ablaut than, say, Germanic has. Although admittedly I don't understand your description.
I want more ablaut but I don't know how to add more. The only things that create ablaut effects so far are the active and passive voice. I also want vowel mutations to extend beyond just one vowel. At the moment my verb system is more or less just a polysyllablic version of "run vs. ran" rather than "katab vs. katiib vs. kutub". Only one vowel is being mutated or alternated. Not more. Triconsonantal languages mutate more than just one vowel at a time, likely by analogical and morphological processes that I simply cannot imagine or figure out. And that's my major problem.
Now THIS is a much more fruitful line of inquiry, but it's got nothing to do with the question you asked. So instead of asking something vague and unanswerable like "is this a triconsonantal language enough?", ask something concrete and specific like "how can a language reduce the phonemic load of root vowels?"
A good start would be reading the post on the old board that you linked to. [You may also want to check out Mak's old thread in the L&L Museum on how semitic languages actually work] It pretty much answers your questions.
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But to put it in a few bulletpoints
- your goal is to reduce the number of phonemic vowels in roots to zero, or at most one. So obviously it helps to begin with as few vowels as possible.
- if you have too many vowels, you could reduce them by moving some properties to adjacent consonants. For example, you can easily reduce vowel inventories by introducing palatalisation and/or labialisation.
- you then need to have the realisation of the vowel in the root be influenced by affixes and/or stress movement. The most obvious ways to do this are vowel harmony and reduction. Although there are also other ways (eg harmonic effects triggered by consonants).
- this establishes ablaut patterns. You then just need to reduce the number of ablaut patterns to one, by having rarer patterns analogise (and/or by continuing to reduce the vowel inventory per se).
- to draw attention to the nonconcatenative morphology, you may then want to erode and merge some of the triggering affixes.
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For example, let's say we have four vowels, /a e i u/, and most words have the shape CVCVC. Important affixes for verbs include:
-aq (past tense)
-i(j) (imperfective aspect)
-in (agent derivative)
-ak (patient derivative)
-uns (locative derivative)
-et (plural subject agreement, also plural nominal marker)
We might (and this is only an example!) then....
a) before even adding the suffixes, reduce the number of vowel combinations through harmony. Before /u/: /a/ > /o/; /e/ and /i/ merge as /y/. Before /i/: /e/ > /i/, /a/ > /e/, /u/ > /y/. Before /a/: /e/ > /a/, /u/ > /o/. This leaves only one front-back pairing and no /y/ in final syllables, so some progressive, allophonic harmony: /u/ > /y/ after /y/.
b) put stress on initial syllable, reduce unstressed vowels slightly (y>i, e>a). This gives us the following pairings: a-a, e-i, i-a, i-i, y-i, o-a, o-u, u-u.
c) raise /o/ to /u/, which only merges two pairings. Also, /y/ and /u/ are no longer phonemically contrastive, so front all /u/ to /y/.
d) labialise consonants adjacent to /y/ (the only rounded vowel), and merge /y/ with /i/. This gives you the pairings a-a, e-i, i-a, i-i. Specifically, you'll note that of the 16 possible initial vowel pairings, 13 of them now have /i/ as the second vowel and only three have /a/ as the second vowel. So, the few remaining exceptions analogise to have /i/ also.
e) stress moves to the final syllable. Pre-stress vowels reduce to schwa.
f) now add the suffixes.
g) umlaut (throughout word): before /e/ or /i/: /a/ > /e/, /u/ > /i/. Before /a/: /i/ > /e/, /u/ > /o/. Before /u/: /i/ > /u/.
h) stress moves to penultimate mora; secondary stress projected two morae earlier.
i) as you can see, of the initial 16 pairings, 14 have merged into a single vowel pattern, so the remaining two do likewise.
j) unstressed /a/ raises to /e/
k) unstressed non-final vowels reduce to schwa; unstressed schwa drops outside of bisyllabic words, except where this would create a cluster within a syllable, and remaining schwa merges with /e/
l) tongue root harmony triggered by uvulars (which merge with velars), followed by vowel mergers to yield /i/ > /e/, /e/ and /o/ > /a/, /u/ > /o/.
n) loss of coda /n/
m) assorted consonant changes, including /s_w/ > /S/
o) Vje > V:
Thus, if we an example word, we have:
supak > S-P-K, "to sleep":
spik - he sleeps
spakak - he slept
spiki - he is sleeping
spekeki - he was sleeping
sepki - sleeper
spekek - period of sleep (that that is slept)
sepkush - bed (kw>k by analogy)
spiket - they sleep
sapkakat - they slept
sepki:t - they are sleeping
spakfatat - they were sleeping (kk>kx>kf)
sepkinet - sleepers
sepkeket - periods of sleep
sepkishet - beds
And the same pattern obtains for all other triconsonantal roots. And so forth.
[obviously I'm not saying this is either the specifi root Semitic took, nor the simplest root you could take, just an intereting one that was on the top of my head]
