Vadi: Difference between revisions

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-The entire corpus of the Scriptum is written in the indigenous Minhast [[Minhast#Orthography|''Širkattarnaft'']] script.  While the ''Širkattarnaft'', an abugida, works quite well for the Minhast language, it has presented a major challenge to Vadists in determining the phonology and phonotactics of Vadi.  There are several spelling variants or inconsistencies, and numerous occurrences of digraphs appear in both litigants' texts.  Many of the digraphs combine one of the few surviving ideographs in the ''Širkattarnaft'' with an ordinary character.  These and other unusual usage of the ''Širkattarnaft'' characters in the texts, while not completely regular, do follow recurrent patterns, an indication of phonological differences between Vadi and Minhast, and as demonstrated by Iyyaħmi, evidence of sandhi processes occurring between syllable and word boundaries.  Schumann has argued the texts indicate dialectal differences between the litigants; Iyyaħmi does agree that some of the spelling anomalies in the texts do indicate dialectal differences, but that this argument alone is too simplistic: there are other anomalies that are highly indicative that the writers were trying to indicate sandhi processes not reflected by the standard ''Širkattarnaft'' characters.  He statistically backs up this argument by presenting frequency distributions of certain types of spelling anomalies found in ''both'' litigants' texts, differences which can only be explained by morphophonotactics.[[Vadi#Footnotes |<sup>1</sup>]]
+The excellent condition of the texts from the Scriptum were a veritable gold mine for understanding Vadi phonology and phonotactics and led to the conclusion that the phonemic inventory was underestimated. The texts from the Scriptum also eventually dispelled earlier views that Vadi phonotactics were simple. Rather, Vadi phonotactics were far more complex than earlier thought.
-Today, most linguists have come to a general consensus of the Vadi phonemic inventory.  The language does appear to be  largely CV, although CVC, initial and final CC syllables can arise due to the application of sandhi processes, as demonstrated by statistical evidence Iyyaħmi has presented.
+The texts were written entirely in the tndigenous Minhast [[Minhast#Orthography|''Širkattarnaft'']]. While the ''Širkattarnaft'', an abugida, works quite well for the Minhast language, it has presented a major challenge to Vadists in determining the phonology and phonotactics of Vadi.  It became immediately apparent that there were several spelling variants and inconsistencies, and numerous occurrences of digraphs appear in both litigants' texts.  Many of the digraphs also combined one of the few surviving ideographs in the ''Širkattarnaft'' (e.g. the <min> character), with an ordinary character.
-Gemination[[Vadi#Footnotes |<sup>2</sup>]] occurs among a restricted set of consonants, particularly /k/, /n/, /l/ and /t/.  Consonantal mutations occur, with evidence of both lenition and fortition.  Metathesis also occurs with certain consonantal combinations, traceable to Minhast influence.
+Tashunka, who was working on Minhast dialectology at the time of the discovery of the Scriptum, was among the first scholars to examine the texts. He immediately realized, based on the aforementioned anomalies, that there were phonemes that were not accounted for in previous Vadists' works. Based on these anomalies, he posited additional phonemes in Vadi.  From his analyses, he proposed that either the phoneme /β/ or /v/ was part of the phonemic inventory of Vadi, based on the digraph <bi><f> found in the Scriptum's texts.  These digraphs coincided with the alternation of <ba> and <wa> in the Aħħur texts. So while the Aħħur texts' spelling for "Vadi" alternated erratically between <ba><di> or <wa><di>, the texts from the Scriptum consistently spelled "Vadi" as <bi><f><'a><di>. Similar correlations of the anomalies the Scriptum with the Aħħur materials led him to conclude there was also a /ð/, and another albeit indeterminate sibilant, perhaps /ɕ/. Several years after Tashunka returned to his work on Minhast dialectology, Iyyaħmi took up where Tashunka left off and determined that the sibilant was the apico-alveolar fricative /s̺/.
+Iyyaħmi grouped several of the spelling anomalies shared by ''both'' litigants into different categories, and via various statistical analyses, he was able to establish frequencies of these anomaly classes which demonstrated that the litigants' spellings were anything but random, but followed discernible patterns that were  statistically significant.  These patterns led Iyyaħmi to conclude that only underlying sandhi processes could account for these spelling patterns.
+Schumann has argued, and continues to maintain, that the spelling anomalies in the texts simply indicate dialectal differences between the litigants.  Iyyaħmi does agree that dialectal differences may account for some of the spelling anomalies. However, this argument alone is too simplistic: his hypothesis that mutations and other sandhi processes were occurring in the texts was statistically significant, with a ''p''-value of less than .05.[[Vadi#Footnotes |<sup>1</sup>]]
+Based on Iyyaħmi's statistical analyses, most linguists have come to the current consensus of Vadi phonology and phonotactics.  While the language is predominantly CV, but once sandhi processes are accounted for, other patterns such as CVC and CC syllables can arise.
 ===Consonants===