Ayleidoon notes
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A series of assorted notes and discoveries as I remember them.
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 6 Aug 2019, 02:40.
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This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
Notes on Ayleidi Linguistics
Agreement
Deficiencies in the Verb: By default, verbs have no mechanism for numerical agreement with the subject. This is true of all known dialects of the language at this stage. In some cases, when both the subject and the object are not dropped and either one or both is definitively marked for syntactic role, the verb will not mark for person either. This tends to happen mostly in phrases where the subject is first person, as second person subjects tend to be dropped more often.
Ayleidōn in the context of Aldmeric
Missing Cognates: Due to the heavy semantic drift that drives meric language change [as opposed to phonological, which is the primary drive for mannish tongues], words of very distinct meaning between two Meric languages can still be cognate. Less commonly, though, certain words will supplant the original Aldmeri word of the same meaning, and that word will not end up being reused. In this case, it vanishes from the lexicon. This is likely not the only reason for lexical replacement of some core vocabulary, but it is the most common*. Aldmeric words both attested and conjectured that have been lost this way are listed below.
mōr, mōrā - Replaced by lye and tar respectively, these very basic words were lost as derivatives of the latter two words replaced most of Ayleidi arboreal vocabulary.
Orthography and Free Variation
Gemination: Ayleidi presumably wrote in some variant of the Daedric alphabet, which is a true alphabet. Based on a sequence from the Ayleid Reference Tablet, representing gemination is optional and largely at the discretion of the scribe, but tends to be distinguished more intrasubstantively [with content words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives] and is thus far completely ignored when addition of inflections leads to momentary gemination, such as with the ART Line #7 "amaraldane". Amaraldane is translated as a verb, but if the script is taken at face value, appears to be a possessive noun. This is because the phonetic realization of the sequence is Amaraldanne, the 'optative' third person imperfect. Of course, it is entirely possible that the language does not tolerate suffix-triggered gemination and simply shortens the segment (this is especially popular with proponents of word-initial stress). Since gemination in languages with inherited ayleidi lexical items* was lost and re-innovated elsewhere, and an in-depth study of stress has yet to be done, this decision remains unsettled.
/a~e/ Variance: What few accurate descriptions of realization of the "a" /a/ and "ah" /aː~ax/ sequences in Ayleidoon and evidence from the realizations of modern inherited words in High Rock's Ayleidi* descendant dialects, Bretonic/Reachish*, and especially Tamrielic give strong evidence that there was already a free variation between these two sounds and their mid-front counterparts /e̞/ and /e̞ː~e̞x/. Unstressed short /a/ was known to regularly assimilate quality with mid-front vowels in the previous syllable provided it was an open syllable.
*A star denotes a headcanon, which is canon as far as this language is concerned.
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