Accent evolution in English

Damian   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 11:49 GMT
addendum:

JORDI: Looks like you've sussed out the drinking capacity of both the Scots and English! :-) I admit to sharing your limitations.
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 14:29 GMT
greg, with the version of IG that I was using at the time, that meant En <The city of Boston must still have a dialect with rhoticism then, I (would) see.> The reason why I used IG <den stad Boston> is because that's one of the two general manners in which things are named in, stay, German; the other way would be to form a compound, like IG <den Bostonstad>, but the reason why I avoided doing that is that such a compound usually becomes the name of something altogether. However, though, in my current version of IG, I would instead write <De stad Boston muut een dialekt med rootskisme nok dan hevven, ik wurt sien.>, which has a slight change, the replacement of <den> with <de>. And why IG <stad> rather than IG <sted>? Because IG <stad> means En <city>, and basically corresponds to most other Germanic languages' terms for cities, such as Du <stad> and Ge <Stadt>, whereas IG <sted> means En <stead> (as in En <instead>), and basically corresponds to Du <stedde> and Ge <stelle>.
greg   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 16:20 GMT
Travis : do you know the origin of <statt> in Ge <stattfinden> ? (a separable verb : Ge <es findet statt> = En <it takes place>, if my memory is good)

I agree with <den> being replaced by <de>. Shorter in writing and in speech.

I don't feel comfortable with IG <Stad> [xtat] or [stat] = En <city> because it's phonetically to close to IG <Stat> [xtat] = En <state>. Thta's why I favour IG <Sted> [xtet] or [stet] = En <city>.

I'd favour IG <Stede> for the equivalent of Du <stedde> or Ge <Stelle> or En <stead>.

We could also use syntactical variations to gain various meanings. IG <Bonstonsted> = En <Boston city> (the municipality ot the geographic city stricto sensu). IG <Sted Boston> = En <the city of Boston> (the administrative body enjoying legal personality, as opposed to the county or region or state). IG <de Sted fan Boston> : a variant of the former with a less legal connotation and a more urbanistic, economic meaning (or something else).
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 16:34 GMT
Actually, I should have mentioned: Du <stedde> is related to Ge <statt> it seems, as En <instead of> is in Du <in stedde van> and Ge <(an)statt>. So hence I figured that IG <sted> would be a good compromise between En <stead>, Du <stedde>, and Ge <statt>. I wouldn't use <stede> because that implies a long/tense vowel where Dutch and German have a short vowel, and English has a lax vowel.

There is less difference though, yes, between IG <stad> (En <city>) and IG <staat> (En <state>), as IG <stad> is /stad/ --> [stat] and IG <staat> is /sta:t/ --> [sta:t]. However, their plural forms are IG <stadden>, which is /"staden/ --> ["sta.dn=], and IG <staten>, which is /"sta:ten/ --> ["sta:.tn=], which are more differentiated from each other. Still, IG <stad> and IG <staat> are differentiated only by vowel length in the singular, but the reason why I chose them is that those choices are consistent with what are used in both Dutch and German. Mind you that other Germanic languages also use forms similar to IG <stad> for En <city> as well, with a vowel written <a>, and IG <staat> is just obviously the right choice for En <state> (along with IG <riek>).

As for IG <de stad Boston>, forms like this are simply the common way of assigning names to given things, where at least in West Germanic languages, typically if a compound is not being formed, the name is placed *after* the noun, rather than acting as an adjective or part of a compound word, but before the "main" noun if it is forming a compound. Hence, I seeked to go the same way as, say, German on this one. As for IG <de stad fan Boston>, I would use that to refer to the administrative bodies and like of Boston, whereas IG <de stad Boston> would just refer to a city which happens to be named Boston.
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 16:46 GMT
Anyways, you already have this problem in the first place with Ge <Stadt> (En <city>) and Ge <Staat> (En <state>), and I haven't heard much about the Germans having problems with such in practice.
greg   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 19:31 GMT
Travis : "Their plural forms are IG <stadden> (...) and IG <staten>".
[For IG <Stad> = En <city> and IG <Staat> = En <state>]

I forgot you build noun plurals with <en>-suffixation and consonant doubling or vowel truncation. That's one of the drawbacks brought about by phenotyping vocal length or tension.

I'd favour <s>-suffixation and the absence of any further orthographic modification. This is an additional reason why I stick to a spelling that doesn't seek to manifest how long or tense vowels are.

Would be really great to use <Bostonsted>, <de Sted Boston> and <de Sted fan Boston>.

By the way, how are you going to write 'New York' ? <Njujork>, <Nju Jork>, <Nju Yok>, <Njuyork> or <New York> ?

How will you render the alternance between <City of New York> and <New York City> ?
greg   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 19:35 GMT
Erratum : <Nju York>, sorry for that apparent non-rhoticism...
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 19:43 GMT
As for En <New York>, I would nativize it as IG <Nju-Jork> myself, as I am treating it as a compound, as IG <nju> in it is used as part of such, not just as an independent adjective. As for the alternation between En <City of New York> and <New York City>, I would render such as IG <Stad fan Nju-Jork> and <Nju-Jork-Stad> respectively.
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 19:51 GMT
Note though that the normal way to make compounds would be to simply concatenation them, not to use hyphens, but hyphens are an alternate method which is supported, following the pattern of German, and which may be used in places where simple concatenation would not be appropriate or not work out well. For example, back in the days when there was an East Germany, Ge <Chemnitz> was officially called Ge <Karl-Marx-Stadt>, which parallels IG <Nju-Jork-Stad>.
Travis   Tuesday, May 03, 2005, 23:15 GMT
By the way, plurals are only formed with -<en> (if a word ends in a consonant) or -<n> (if a word ends in a vowel). The consonant doubling and vowel trucation is simply an orthographic effect these two suffixes being attached to a given word, but does have the effect that it does make singular and plural forms more distinctive with respect to each other, and thus make the making of a word plural more noticable, even though such alone, besides the suffix, specifically *does not* match any change in the phonemes in question.