Salmoneus wrote: ↑24 May 2020 13:40Frogalicious wrote: ↑24 May 2020 07:10What is a good lexical source for an obviative marker? Yønsen has a proximate/obviate system but I don't know how to derive it in the protolang.
I would assume msot often a demonstrative, like 'that' or 'yon'. An interesting route would be from a possessive, as possession is often associated with deixis and definiteness ("so my man says" can = "so the man I mentioned says"; c.f. the use of "your" in Irish English, which I don't really understand the details of, but has something to do with deixis and definiteness.
Would you say some European languages developed such a distinction in demonstratives? Especially in written language. I'm thinking of the use of Latin
hic 'this' for 'the one I just mentioned' versus
is or
ille for the one I mentioned before (or that I'll mention soon). Written French uses ceci and celà much in the same way. English has basically the same thing but not from demonstratives: "the former" and "the latter".
Mándinrùh wrote: ↑26 May 2020 04:48
CarsonDaConlanger wrote: ↑26 May 2020 01:54
How likely is it for prefixed subject/object clitics to not interact with vowel harmony
Not very, I think, but certainly it's not unheard of to have affixes that ignore harmony.
Hilariously, I know of one example of the opposite, where clitic pronouns are the
only ones that have vowel harmony. In Standard Arabic, inflectional affixes (like na-, -na, -u, -tu, -tum, -tunna, -aani) and derivational affixes (like mu-, mi-, ta-, -iiya) do not undergo vowel harmony, but a few of the clitic object/possessive pronouns do. -hu '3SG.MASC', -humaa '3DU', -hum '3PL.MASC' and -hunna '3PL.FEM' become -hi, -himaa, -him and -hinna if they attach to a word ending in /i/, /i:/ or /j/, e.g.:
katabta=hum ("wrote.2SG.MASC=3PL.MASC")
'You (man) wrote them.'
katabti=him ("wrote.2SG.FEM=3PL.MASC")
'You (woman) wrote them.'
li=kitaabai=hi ("for=books.DU.GEN=3SG.MASC")
'for his two books'
Note that the phonologically similar clitic pronouns -kumaa '2DU', -kum '2PL.MASC' and -kunna '2PL.FEM' do not have this vowel harmony.
Salmoneus wrote: ↑26 May 2020 13:49It's certainly possible for a morpheme to be aggregated to a word afte a process has ceased to be fully productive, and thus create exceptions, yes. I'm sure you could probably find examples in English, for example, of derived words that lack trisyllabic laxing because the derivation happened too late (although TL is still partially active in English, in perceived classical loanwords).
I wonder whether some of such words have actually had the tense ("long") vowel restored in recent times due to the influence of a related word. "Diplomacy" seems to retain /oʊ/ (SSBE /əʊ/) thanks to "diploma", and while "prosody" usually has /ɑ/ (SSBE /ɒ/), also varyingly with /s/ or /z/, it is sometimes pronounced with /oʊ/ probably due to (recent?) contamination of "prose".
As an opposite example, older dictionaries seem to generally list "amenities" with /i/ (SSBE /i:/), but in more recent ones, and nearly 100% of the time in my personal experience, this word has /ɛ/. Of course, it helps it's a pretty uncommon word you don't get to hear much, so the larger pattern can be applied on it.