Postby linguoboy » 2016-07-19, 21:45
Actually, I think it works if we think of it not as full-blown vowel harmony but as two forms of metaphony operating more-or-less simultaneously.
So first you have an i-affection rule which fronts /a/ to [æ] when it precedes /i/.
Then you have an a-affection rules which lowers /i/ to [e]~[ɛ] when it follows /a/.
So take a theoretical word *padik in you language. It would undergo the following changes:
padik > pædik [i-affection]
pædik > pædek [a-affection]
Given how I've formulated the rules, there's no reason why they couldn't apply in the reverse order (i.e., a-affection before i-affection). The way I've laid them out above seems more natural to me, but you could have reasons for doing it differently.
Some questions to answer:
1. What's the scope of each process? For instance, if you had a word *padasatarik, would every /a/ become fronted? (That would give more of a "vowel harmony" type result.) Or may just the /a/ in the syllable immediately preceding, i.e. *padasatærek
2. Is each process unidirectional? So, for instance, does *padik yield *pædek, but *pidak remains *pidak? Other possibilities would be:
i-affection bidirectional, a-affection unidirectional (progressive): *pidak > *pidæk
i-affection bidirectional, a-affection unidirectional (regressive): *pidak > *pidak
i-affection unidirectional (progressive), a-affection bidirectional: *pidak > *pedæk
i-affection unidirectional (regressive), a-affection bidirectional: *pidak > *pedak
Whatever you settle on, I would recommend applying the same processes to /u/ as well. So i-affection would yield [y] and a-affection would yield [o]~[ɔ]. And potentially both could apply and yield [ø]~[œ]. So going back to something like our original example:
padusik > pædysik [i-affection]
pædysik > pædøsek [a-affection]
You could indicate these changes orthographically as an aide-memoire, but it wouldn't be necessary as long as you knew what the rules were and could apply them spontaneously (which would be the case for any fluent speakers of this language).
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons