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Re: Capraian diphthongs and vowel shifts



--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Älvard J. te Kraamlep <kraamlep@z...> wrote:
> Sorry for delay...
> 
> 
> Muke wrote:
> 
<snip>
> <<
> 
> The /a/ would change too, to /o/, giving */oe/. As I've mentioned, I have
> reasons to avoid that as a diphthong. But I suppose /9/, already present due
> to u-umlaut of stressed /e/, could also come in as a development of /ai/ >
> /oi/ > /oe/. Is /9/ is valid development of the /oe/ diphthong? I don't want
> to just assume that, despite appearances. The other alternative, I think, is
> /o:/.

This change ([oi] > [9]) is believed to have occurred in Boiotian Greek, along with the more 
familiar [u] > [y] (hence the speeling /u/ for [y] and /ou/ for [u:] in Attic Greek). Since 
Boiotian Greek appears to be the first Greek dialect to monophtongize its diphthongs, th
the change seems perfectly plausible.
> 
> So aesthetic matters come into play. Which will feel better, that the word
> for 1 is _oyns_, _oens_ or _óns_? 11: _oylf_, _oelf_, _ólf_? "My": _moyn_,
> _moen_, _món_? "Oak": _oyscu_, _oescu_, _óscu_? "Very": _soy_, _soe_, _só_?
> What looks right for a Med. language? Hmmm.
> 
> Remembering that all the "oe"s above are actually oe-lig (curse you, email
> encoding glitches), I'm inclining slightly towards the _oe_ solution, i.e.
> that *both* vowels shifted, but that conflicts with what I did with /au/ and
> /eu/ (to /ou/ and /au/ respectively). /ei/ is rare enough in Gmc that I can
> probably just shift it to /a:/, so I'll worry about that later.
> 
> Any comments gratefully received.
> 
> Jamets
> 
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> Älvard J. te Kraamlep     Vorquichtat, Binertglobakläi Jameld Zolidaton
> kraamlep@z...                 BJZ Wabplaz: http://www.zolid.com/zm
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --