A question about Tei

[WeepingElf]

I have a little question about Tei, the Čia-Ša language spoken so far away from the others. Did this language undergo the same typological transformation to an isolating language as the Čia and Ša languages, or did it develop in a very different way, given a completely different linguistic environment?

[zompist]

Well, the short answer is "I dunno" and the medium answer is "Oh lord, Čia-Ša..." Which is to say, it's one of the glaring holes in the Eastern family and I hope to fill it in someday.

The original idea, 30 years ago, was to play with monosyllabic roots, but that's never entirely fit in with the rest of the family. So my feeling is that a) it's probably not that strict, and b) it probably happened very long ago, before Tei got isolated. So Tei isn't strict about it either. (It probably doesn't approximate a triliteral system like Lenani-Littoral. Though that would be fun....)

A good analogy might be English, which descends from highly inflected languages; our native roots are mostly monosyllables, but that's not a strict rule, nor has it impeded borrowing loads of multisyllabic words.

[WeepingElf]

I wondered whether Tei constitutes an Almean analog of a lostlang side project of mine, a surviving Continental Celtic language in the Alps which shows none of the traits characteristic of the Insular Celtic languages. However, the inspiration for that did not come from Tei; rather it is meant as a reply on Dewrad's Arvorec, which, despite purportedly being a Continental Celtic language, looks like an Insular Celtic one (well, at least, Arvorec, being spoken on the Channel Islands, is close enough to Britain to be drawn into the Insular Celtic Sprachbund).

[mèþru]

Dewrad made Arvorec? Never knew that! Who else here made IB languages other than Geoff?

[WeepingElf]

Yes, Dewrad made Arvorec (a pretty nifty language, excellently crafted - but I always felt that a Continental Celtic language ought not to look like an Insular one). I don't know who else of the IB crowd is here, but I am a former member. Germanech was originally intended for it, and I also proposed another language of mine named "Nur-ellen", which was based on Sindarin; but then, I had disagreements with some important members, and withdrew. Nur-ellen was scrapped in favour of Old Albic, and Germanech quietly abandoned.

[Xwtek]

Well, the short answer is "I dunno" and the medium answer is "Oh lord, Čia-Ša..." Which is to say, it's one of the glaring holes in the Eastern family and I hope to fill it in someday.

The original idea, 30 years ago, was to play with monosyllabic roots, but that's never entirely fit in with the rest of the family. So my feeling is that a) it's probably not that strict, and b) it probably happened very long ago, before Tei got isolated. So Tei isn't strict about it either. (It probably doesn't approximate a triliteral system like Lenani-Littoral. Though that would be fun....)

A good analogy might be English, which descends from highly inflected languages; our native roots are mostly monosyllables, but that's not a strict rule, nor has it impeded borrowing loads of multisyllabic words.

Is the language around Čia-Ša also predominantly monosyllabic? If so, it justifies why is Čia-Ša also monosyllabic.

[zompist]

Well, the problem there is looking at who were their neighbors at what time. They've been literally all over the map.

They're now next to the Mgunikpe, who aren't defined at all, and so could have monosyllabic roots. But they didn't arrive to that spot till pretty late.

(Again, I'm not terribly worried about this... it's not hard to get mostly monosyllables from an inflected protolanguage.)

[Frislander]

They're now next to the Mgunikpe, who aren't defined at all, and so could have monosyllabic roots. But they didn't arrive to that spot till pretty late.

Monosyllabic roots doesn't mean monosyllabism, especially with a name like Mgunikpe (and how is that even pronounced? [mɣunik͡pe]?)

[zompist]

They're now next to the Mgunikpe, who aren't defined at all, and so could have monosyllabic roots. But they didn't arrive to that spot till pretty late.

Monosyllabic roots doesn't mean monosyllabism, especially with a name like Mgunikpe

That's why I've been saying "monosyllabic roots"— there's always compounding. People talking about monosyllabic languages are usually mis-describing Chinese.

(and how is that even pronounced? [mɣunik͡pe]?)

That's as good a guess as any! It could also be a syllabic [m]. Or [ŋ], with a morphophonemic spelling.

[mèþru]

I always heard it in my mind as [ə̃.ᵑɡu.ni.k͡pe̞] with stress on either the first or second syllable

[akam chinjir]

I was assuming ŋmgb. (I don't know how to put a tie-bar over four graphs.)

[mèþru]

If I understood what you meant, I would write it as /ᵑɡ͡ᵐb/ or /ŋ͡ᶢmᵇ/

[akam chinjir]

Yeah, something like that. Prenasalised gb, anyway, attested in a handful of languages. I guess another possibility is ^ŋ͡mg͡b.