Saturday, August 7, 2010

Some new words and rules

I've been playing around with some new words, and by extension, new rules.  I added a rule to "Mora Loss" (which is really just a sort of catch-all bucket for about 30 other rules) to include long vowels:

V [+long]→[-long]/_______## (i.e. a long vowel becomes short at the end of a word or word segment.)

I also added an early rule which may be somewhat superfluous, as I think this already happened in Gothic, but not in the orthography:

b,d→v,ð/V_______V (i.e. intervocalic stops, not including g, become continutant.) 

I think g did this in Gothic as well, but I'm imagining something a little more interesting for g as time goes on...

I also added a bunch of new words, which are in the lexicon, mostly for the purpose of examples in the rules:

dōr n.st.n. door.
dūn v.t. to do.
fūts n.st.m. foot.
gangan v.i. to go. Also gīn.
gēts n.st.f. goat.
gīn v.i. to go. Short form of gangan.
gum n.w.m. man.  
haus n.st.n. house.
hōhs adj. high.
ja itj. yes, yea(h). 
kwīns n.st.f. woman.
lōmyna n.st.n. lightning.
man n.w.m. man, person (not gender-specific).
nī itj.  no, not.
standan v.i. to stand.  Also stēn.
stēn v.i. to stand.  Short form of standan.
þȳþs n.st.m. person.
werðan v.i. to become, to turn into.
wilen v.t. to want.
wisan v.i. to be.

I've also decided that syllabic sonorants can just sit there and be syllabic sonorants, icelandic style (e.g. sivn - "seven", unsr - "our").

2 comments:

  1. Would I be right in constructing a Gutc word "mȳstrings" for bat?

    Also, while searching for more specifics on the Northwest Germanic rhotacism, I stumbled upon a similar change in South Slavic languages - /ž/ becomes /r/ when between two mid vowels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism). Could this have some bearing on the realization of Gutc /ʒ/? (I personally prefer the voiced palato-alveolar fricative realization, but I can't help but consider potential influences)

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  2. Hmmm... I would be tempted to consider that Gothic mūstriggs might be considered a compound word, and that i-umlaut would not occur across word boundaries, so you'd probably end up with "maustrings."

    I don't know if Slavic languages would have influenced Gytc, but sure, why not? I haven't really thought a lot about it in cultural terms yet, as far as where it developed and who spoke it.

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