[Spellyans] redistribution of <i> and <y>
Jon Mills
j.mills at email.com
Thu Jul 24 09:54:19 BST 2008
I agree that Cornish has three reduced vowels: schwa, i-schwa and
u-schwa. This is an areal feature that Cornish shares with English. These
are allophones of various other vowels. They are not allophones of the
same vowel. When an affix is added to a word, the stress shifts to the
new penultimate syllable and the syllable containing the previously
unstressed schwa becomes stressed. This allows us to identify the phoneme
of which the schwa in question is an allophone. In order to simplify, in
the following examples, I have written all reduced vowels as [@].
[lag at s] > Ordinalia: 'lagasow'; BM: 'lagasek'; Jordan: 'lagasowe'; Kerew:
'lagagow'. Schwa is an allophone of /a/. We should write 'lagas'.
[ben at n] > PA: 'benenas'; Ordinalia: 'benenes', 'venenes', 'vynynes'; BM:
'benenes'. Schwa is an allophone of /e/. We should write 'benen'.
[gorhem at n] > PA: 'woromynnys'; BM: 'gorhemynnes'. Schwa is an allophone
of /I/. We should write 'gorhemmyn'.
[gal at s] > Ordinalia: 'gallogek', 'gallosek', 'galosek' ; BM: 'galosek',
'gallosek'. Schwa is an allophone of /o/. We should write 'gallos'.
[prof at s] > PA: 'brofusy'; Ordinalia: 'profugy'. Schwa is an allophone of
/u/. We should write 'profus'.
Thus we see that the reduced vowels are allophones of /a/, /e/, /I/, /o/
and /u/. Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: "nicholas williams"
To: "Standard Cornish discussion list"
Subject: Re: [Spellyans] redistribution of and
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:12:25 +0100
I have discussed the question of schwa to some degree in Cornish
Today.It seems that in MC there were three unstressed vowels: schwa,
i-coloured schwaand u-coloured schwa (in gallus and arluth, for
example). In LC all three had a tendency to fall together. One finds
Cornowok in 1572and Frenkock in NBoson.
Flehes x 14, flehys x 42, and flehas x 11 are all attested in Middle
Cornish, whichseems to me to indicate that schwa and i-schwa are
allophones, perhaps conditionedby the following consonant or by
vocalic harmony.
The word for 'one' is onen x 12, onan x 52, onon x 9 and onyn x 90 in
Middle Cornish.
In Late Cornish the verbal adjective in -ys is not infrequently spelt
with <as>, <az>:e.g. En Termen ez passiez thera Trigaz en St. Levan
JCH § 1.
Moreover in Middle Cornish itself benegas 'blessed' and malegas
'accursed' are common (x 60 and 10 respectively).
In Late Cornish forms like crenjah and venjah seem to suggest that
schwa in auslaut hada low allophone close to [a].
We write arlùth with <ù> in KS but in Late Cornish it appears as
<arleth> 54 times! And as <arlith> 10 times.Nicholas Boson writes
<arlyth> once.
The word profus 'prophet' is exclusively Middle Cornish, since it is
replaced by profet in Tregear and LC. The attested spellings are:
<profus> 13, <profes> 1, <profys> 1, <profos> 3.
<eglos> occurs 22 times in MC and LC, <egglos> 197 times (mostly in
Tregear who had a special interest in the church).<egles> occurs
twice in Late Cornish and <eglez> three times. <egglys> occurs once
in Sacrament an Alter.
The word cafus, cafos is written <cafes> twice in Origo Mundi.
The collapse of unstressed vowels into schwa is by the way an
indication that the prosodic shift has occurred by the timeof the
earliest MC texts i(late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries).
The specification of the SWF allows fora pre-shift phonology with
half-length and pure unstressed vowels. This again is an attempt to
salvage the underlying phonology of KK.It is inauthentic as well as
being irrelevant, since nobody uses it.
Any attempt, however, to distinguish unstressed -en, -es from -yn,
-ys is, I think, doomed to failure.We have schwa, i-schwa and u-schwa
(if I may be allowed to use the terms) and that is all.And all three
are by the Late Cornish period (if not before) allophones of the same
phoneme.
Nicholas----------
On 23 Jul 2008, at 14:18, Craig Weatherhill wrote:
I would support Nicholas's view here. The place name
Langostentyn is
Langustentyn, Langustenstyn and Legostentyn in the C14. A final
-in
creeps in in 1447, followed by -en (1501) and -on (1574 twice)
and -n
again in 1574. The saint's name is S. Constantinus (pure Latin)
in
1086, 1284, 1287, 1291; then Costentyne 1468, Costentyn 1441.
Only in
the C16 does -in appear (note the lack of "saint" in these
examples).
For Constantine Bay, we have only two Cornish examples:
Egloscontantyne
c1525, and Constenton 1568.
Please note, too, that there is a place-name element <kegyn>,
"ridge"
(Pengegon), cognate with W. cegin. To avoid confusion, I would
recommend that "kitchen" is represented by <kegen>.
On the subject of <au> I find that I have to revise my advice to
Jon.
Nance gives chons, chonsya where I would expect to find chauns,
chaunsya
(chaunssya?). It looks as though most of the <au> words are loan
words,
although they extend to Celtic personal (saint's) names such as
Maunan,
Maugan and Maudet.
Craig
nicholas williams wrote:
In unstressed syllables there is no difference in
pronunciation
between, say, -in in kegyn and -yn in brentyn. Even KK (which
spells
"etymologically") admits that unstressed i and y are not to
be
distinguished. Moreover the texts always spell MC <brentyn>,
<bryntyn>. There are no exx of *<brentin>. The name for
"Constantine"
is common in BM, where it is spelt <Costentyn> at least 20
times. It
never has final <-in>. The only time the name has <in> is in
the Latin
form <Constantinus> in stage directions. To attempt to
distinguish
kegyn from *brentin, *Costentin in spelling is not wise. It
will make
learning the orthography much harder and with no phonetic
gain. It
will merely look like an attempt to salvage a feature of KK,
which was
misguided in the first place. The SWF should write kegyn,
Costentyn,
brentyn, melyn, gyllyn, etc.
Notice incidentally, that following KK the SWF at the moment
writes
gyllyn, gyllys, gyllyns but gylli!
Nicholas
-----------
On 23 Jul 2008, at 08:40, Daniel Prohaska wrote:
*I would like to hear everyone’s opinions on the
following idea for
redistributing <y> and <i> in the SWF. I would write <i>
where bother
Late and Middle Cornish have /i/ and /i:/, and write <y>
~ <e> (in
dictionaries <ÿ> ~ <ë>) where Middle Cornish has /I/ and
/I:/, but
Late Cornish has /e/ and /e:/.*
* *
*Examples:*
*SWF <brentin>; RMC /”brentin/, RLC /”brentin/;*
*SWF <kegyn>; RMC /”kegin/, RLC /”keg at n/;*
*SWF <tir>; RMC /ti:r/, RLC /ti:r/;*
*SWF <bys> ~ <bes>; RMC */bI:z/ = [bi:z] ~ [bIz] ~ [beIz]
etc., RLC
/be:z/;*
* *
*Dan*
* *
* *
*-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Everson
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:31 PM*
At 21:46 +0100 2008-07-20, Craig Weatherhill wrote:
Good question - if <y> is a short i and <i> a long
one, then this makes
no sense at all.
“That is the SWF (and KS) rule for monosyllables. In KS
we are making
an attempt to rationalize (and make teachable) the
distribution of
<i> and <y>.
Nicholas and I tried many times to have this distribution
dealt with
during the AHG meetings when we were asked our advice.
Our concerns
were not addressed. Not even acknowledged.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com”
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Dr. Jon Mills,
School of European Culture and Languages,
University of Kent
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