Re: Orthography

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

Hi everyone,

I've recently been investigating "proto-Proto-Liotan", and have
come up against a problem with mutations in the middle of words. To
recap: Word-initial consonants undergo lenition (or soft mutation,
depending on your P and Q) if the preceding word ends in a vowel,
and nasal mutation (aka eclipsis) if the preceding word ends in a nasal.

The problem is: If intervocalic word-medial consonants undergo lenition
/ soft mutation, would a medial stop preceded by a nasal undergo nasal
mutation? This seems to be the case in Irish (Thurneysen's Grammar of
Old Irish gives "caraid" from "karantos") and Welsh ("canu" vs Latin
"cantare"), and also in Breathanach LF ("cadairr" < "cantare",
although this hasn't reached the "foil" yet). But looking at the
Brithenig page I find "cantar" with medial /nt/.

So, I find myself either having to disallow final -/n/ in PL or change a
great many words with medial /n/ + stop; either way would mess up the
language rather too much for my liking. Alternatively, since there is
clearly a reason why Brithenig retains medial /nt/ but nasalises
initial /t/ to /nh/, I could save myself a lot of trouble. Could
someone explain this to me? I have a feeling it might be something
to do with stress, but I'm not sure.

Regards,

Geoff
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