Saturday 26 June 2010

Diacritics and stress paterns

I have worked out the vowel assimilation again, which I will post later today or tomorrow, and I realised I haven't said anything about stress paterns.

Please make sure to have read 'Alphabet and Phonology', which I edited today as well.

First of all, I have added some diacritics, although they are not used in regular writing, only in texts explaining stress, vowel assimilation or linguistics, and sometimes in academic texts when differences in pronounciation are invisible, e.g.: δαυcтε or δᾶυcтε, [dæʊstɘ] (the general imperative of  δαιн) as opposed to δάυcтε [da:.œstɘ] (the conjunctive general imperative).

These diacritics are:
The Acute,  ́, used to lengthen vowels: ά ό ύ, and ί
The Grave,  ̀, used to strengthen vowels: ὲ, ὸ and ὶ
The Circumflex,  ͂, used to indicate the assimilation of an α and an ο: ῶ

There are 21 different vowel types:


α, ά, ο, ό, ὸ, ω, ε, e, ὲ, ι, ί, ὶ, υ, ύ, ο͂ι, ᾶι, ῦι, ε͂ι, ε͂υ, ο͂υ and ᾶυ


We can organise these types on how much they attract the stress (from least to most):

ε
{all others}
e
ω
ὸ, ὶ
ὲ

Stressed syllables in roots
The penultimate (the next to last) syllable of the word's root is normally stressed, except when any ε, e, ω or ὲ is present in its root (ὸ and ὶ do not naturally occur in roots); in which case these vowels are stressed (when the same 'stronger' vowel occurs multiple times, the last is stressed).

Examples (the stressed syllable is underlined):
цιδοр ("wing");
ὑм- ("you" (pl)), when there is only one syllable, it is stressed;
πεπαᴧ- ("egg"), the ε is not stressed (except when it is the only syllable);
αнтрωπ- ("human"), the ω is preferably stressed;
ἁнδр ("man"), the ε is not part of the root in words ending on -εр;
ὁικε ("house"), the last syllable is stressed because it is a strong ὲ, thus actually  ̔ο͂ικὲ;
βοцαнтр ("minotaur"), is a combination of βοц- and αнтр;
φυгε- ("to flee");
φυгοр- ("to cause to flee, to chase"), here, the infix -ὸр- is used to indicate causing something.

However, these stresses can be altered by the following affices (from weakest to strongest):

-ὸр-, as above
e-, the past tense prefix
-ὶнт-, the diminutive infix
-ὸнт-, the substantivating infix
-ο͂υ, -ά -ωc, the genitive suffices

Phew, that took some time writing.

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