More questions (was Re: General RFI)

[Geoff Eddy <geoff@morven.compulink.co.uk>]

John Cowan sgribhse:
> 
> Andrew Fferreir yscrifef:
> 
> > The Great Master Page exists, but only on a very worn page.

> Please, please, cough it up, Pedr o Andrew!  We neeeeeeed it!

Me too!

> > What's IPA for *, I'm trying to figure out how to pronounce Esp&r@n*?
> 
> There isn't any "*", unless you want to say by analogy that it
> means "-to"; it's just a way of writing "Esperanto" quasi obscenity,
> like "f***".

This, of course, was my original intention; I'm a bit surprised that I
confused one or two people - it wasn't meant to be IPA. (Or was Andrew
just being funny? :-) The point was that I've seen my name spelt in
several bizarre ways, but none quite so hateful as the one in
you-know-what.

Anyway, to kick off another non-Brithenig thread, here's a few questions
for everyone:

- Which features of a constructed language would you regard as being
*definitely*, or *partially*, Celtic-inspired? Aside from the obvious
ones like mutations and broad-slender consonants respectively, of
course.

- Do you know of such features in any constructed languages which are
used in interesting or unusual ways?

- On the subject of mutations, has anybody come up with a mutation
system which works along different lines to the standard Celtic ones?

To this last question, an earlier less Celtic version of Liotan featured
mutations of the final consonant before the plural suffix /-i/: /p t/
became /s S/, and I think /k/ became /x/.

And two more rather academic questions about mutations, which are a bit
on my mind at the moment:

- If consonant changes in a language cause one or more mutations to
cease operating, would this eventually bring about the end of the
mutation system, or would new mutations come into existence?

- What happens if an initial mutation creates a word which could also be
a different word which would not undergo mutation? E.g. if, as in Welsh,
mutated /g/ disappears, consider _gan_ mutating to _an_: what happens if
both of these are valid words? Would the ambiguity just stand?

Geoff
-- 
 [] My mission in life is to create original,    [] Geoff Eddy, in
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