Re: Some suggestions

["Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@clara.co.uk>]

At 5:51 pm +1300 18/1/99, Andrew Smith wrote:
>On Sat, 16 Jan 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> [INDEFINITE PLURAL]
>> There seem to me three possible scenarios:
>>
>(a) is a rather hoary chestnut that I wouldn't want to sow again in this
>discussion.  Its not elegant and belongs to the Esperanto fringe of
>Romance languages.

I agree.

>(b) is the current indefinite plural in Brithenig unos/unas > yn (+H).  It
>is a _very_ indefinite plural as it is confused with the singular.

Yep.

>(c)
>>        SINGULAR                 PLURAL
>>    fem.  ddla  [Fr. de la]    ) ddlo [Fr. des]
>>    masc. ddill [Fr. du]       )
>>
>These are the best option in my opinion, with a bit of practice I might
>master pronouncing them without a schwa!

The modern Cymry manage it, as well tl- and dl-  :)

>I wonder if Brithenig would go
>as far as *da, *do?  These forms exist in Breathenach.

I understood that written 'di' is pronounced 'ddi'.  While I can imagine an
intermediate stage 'ddi lla' giving a softening of intervocalic -ll- to -l-
hence 'ddila' contracting to 'ddla' I don't really see why the -l- should
then cause the soft 'dd' to re-harden to 'd'; nor since Welsh happily
accommodates both 'ddl-' and 'dl-' do I see why the -l- should disappear.
But that's just my own opinion.

>> Then the question is: Would these also denote possession?  ;-)
>>
>I think that would be inevitable if we introduce them, at least in the
>spoken language.

I think so also, much as one would like to have different forms.  But we're
trying to recreate a possibly natlang not, as you rightly remind us, some
Esperantine Romancelang.

>> I think I favor (c) most and (b) less so.  I rank (a) as least likely.
>>
>> [FINAL AFFRICATES]
>> >And
>> >if anyone has any suggestions for spelling Feli[j] New An or resolving the
>> >final affricate problem - let me know!
>>
>> Now if final [ik] and [ig] never occur in Brithenig, then final -ic would
>> be [(i)tS] and final -ig would be [(i)dZ].
>>
>Brithenig voices final stops consistantly where it was followed by a vowel
>which was later lost.  This works happily for *brittanicu, brittanica >
>brithenig, but is problematic for pacem, felicem > pag, ffelig where the
>final -g should be affricate.
>
>Final -c in VL seems to have simply disappeared in Brithenig, although
>traces of it survives as aspirantation hoc, hac, lac > o, a, lla.
>
>Final -c was borrowed back into Brithenig for such words as bric, brick.
>
>I think I have managed to avoid using soft c as a final consonant off
>hand.

OK - let's leave the few final Cs as [k] and forget about final [tS].

>> If Brithening does have final [ik] and [ig] as well as [itS] and [idZ],
>> then we could start with final -ig = [(i)dZ] while final -igh = [ig] (since
>> /g/ before /e/ and /i/ is spelt 'gh').  Thus we can see that final -g by
>> itself denotes an affricate sound; we can then extend this so that -ic =
>> [ik] and -icg = [(i)tS] (this might be encouraged in that Old English also
>> used the combination 'cg' for an affricate sound, even tho there it was
>> [dZ]).
>
>Although I had looked at Catalan several times I never thought of using
>-gh as a final hard cluster!  This would mean we now speak Brithenigh -
>can we live with that?

Gosh - fancy my forgetting 'Brithenig' !!  I guess we're so used to
Brithenig it would be awkward to change it unless we really had to.  I've
already gone off final -gh.

>
>I'm not sure about adapting -cg into Brithenigh.  I just have an antipathy
>towards it from my neo-Old Englisc conlanging as one of the most
>antipathic digraphs I can think of (without trying to hard!) but I will
>keep in mind for further need.

I think your neo-Old English conlang must be kept separate from the
're-discovery' of the Brithenig _natlang_  :)
I was suggesting -cg for final [tS], but we don't need it.  However, we do
need a final [dZ] and that's about the sound Old English {cg} had!  I don't
think it unlikely that Brithenig scribes would've found this a very
convenient digraph for the final [dZ] problem.  (As you can guess, I've
never had any problem with the digraph; indeed, I've rather regretted the
Norman -dge :)

Ray.