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Re: [saweli] NSM and other questions

In a message dated 4/9/2009 20:55:01 Eastern Daylight Time, veoler@hidden.email writes:


> y = subtract F
>
> a = no change in P, AP, A/P
> i = change to AP

Am I correct in my assumption that they combine vowel + semi-vowel,
"iy"? Isn't that a problem to distinguish /ij/ from /i/ if you don't
have vowel lenght? You could easily change it to having "a" as change
to/keep as AP. (Or maybe you have it to be /ji/ which contrasts with
/vi/? That may explain "used when only the vowel changes" better. But
in either case.)


The "y" comes first, then the vowel: yi.  I dislike "yi", as well as "wo" and "wu", so if I have to use "yi" on the one hand, or "wo/wu" on the other, I choose the single "yi" rather than double "wo/wu".

The choice of which vowels to use for the four options of 'no change', P, AP, and A/P and is really arbitrary, with the only constraint being that they stay in that order.  For a while I had a different order.  I want to keep the four in increasing order of complexity and to reflect that in the alphabetical order of the suffixes. There are five possibilities, depending on which vowel is not used:
a e i o (u)
a e i (o) u
a e (i) o u
a (e) i o u
(a) e i o u
I just chose the first in the list. Since I do not want to omit the "a" or "e", that leaves only the first three options.  If I omit "i", then I'm left with both "wo" and "wu".  If I omit either "o" or "u", then I'm left with "yi" and either "wu" or "wo".  Since I don't want both "wo" and "wu", I keep "i", leaving me with a toss-up between omitting "o" or omitting "u".  If I omit "u", then the vowels have no break in the sequence a/e/i/o, whereas if I omit "o", then there is a break (between "i" and "u").  
It basically comes down to subjective choices, and these are the ones I like best.  

stevo