Prefix Reform

Prefix Reform is a proposal by uakci to change how prefixes interact with the stems of words.

Note: the two parts of the proposal, the spelling changes and the pronunciation changes, could be considered independently of each other.

Reasons

Prefixes as done officially are subtle and hard to teach, especially in terms of pronunciation:

• They interact with vowel length in non-obvious ways: bộtao [bŏʔŏ] vs. bô'otao [boːʔo].
• They’re not computer-friendly to spell. Some combinations, especially ones involving ı̣ (that’s a dotless i with an underdot diacritic!), take a lot of effort to input (and Unicode normalizes that character to ị, which is not the same) and display poorly on many people’s systems.
• There's a gotcha involving vowel-initial stems: e- + ano is not ẹano [ˈʔĕʔĕano] but ẹ'ano [ˈʔɛ̆ʔɛ̆ʔaːno]. The latter decomposes as ea- + no! Looking at the IPA transcriptions, we may conclude that the language is actually sensitive to three vowel lengths, [ɛ̆~ĕ ɛ eː].

Spelling changes

Instead of putting the tone mark on the first syllable, put it on the first syllable of the stem. In the case of a word with , use as the diacritic. Examples:

	Official	Proposal
	mụfoaq	mufòaq
	lạ́maı	lamáı
	tọ̈ꝡa (invalid word)	toꝡä
	bộtao	botâo

The ẹano gotcha does not disappear per se. However, with the prefix reform, it is much easier to see that prefixes are not “special” raku that can be tacked on the front of a word willy-nilly: e'àno is spelled exactly the same as e'ano, just with the stress shifted away from the first syllable. Colloquially, the glottal stop could be omitted – eàno and buqùgı can only be understood in exactly one way – however, watch out for codal m: ramàno ≠ ram'àno.

Pronunciation changes

A chart showing the spelling and pronunciation changes. The pink segments are pronounced with unstressed, short, closed vowels (here [kʰʊ̌˧]).

• Stress the first syllable of the stem rather than the prefix. For instance, in puchumgòıchuq ‘was taking medicine’, stress the -goı-, no different than bugòıchuq ‘doesn’t/isn’t taking medicine’ or even just goıchuq ‘take medicine’.
• This stressed syllable should be louder and/or longer and/or more extreme in terms of the tone contour.
• The unstressed prefix syllables should use the weak forms of their core vowels: /u/ goes to [ʊ], /i/ goes to [ɪ], /o/ goes to [ɔ]. These contextual allophones are already used elsewhere in the language – namely, [ɔ] appears in oı /ɔj/, and the three are also triggered before q, e.g., bıq [bɪŋ] and not [biŋ]. Now imagine this is yet another context for them to be weakened. This leads to spicy phonoaesthetics not seen anywhere else in the language: jıa- [dʑɪa]!
• The unstressed prefix syllables should be shortened with regards to regular vowel length: bunúq ‘the non-snake’ could be [bʊ̌nʊŋ]. (◌̆, the breve, is used to signal “extra-short” vowel length in the IPA.) At any rate, they should sound shorter than the stressed syllable of the stem (so [bʊnuː] for bunú is fine).
• In terms of tone: always pronounce all prefixes with the mid level tone, [˧]. Extra care should be taken not to allow the tone to slide upwards or downwards as it’s pronounced – in other words, avoid *[˧˦] or *[˧˨].

Illustrative examples:

Official		Proposal
puchụmtao	[ˈpuː˥˨t͡ɕŭʔŭm˨˩tʰaw˩]	puchumtào	[pʊ˧t͡ɕʊm˧ˈtaːw˥˩]
jı̣achıa	[ˈd͡ʑĭʔĭa˥˨t͡ɕia˨˩]	jıachìa	[d͡ʑɪa˧ˈt͡ɕiːa˥˩]
lạ́maı bẹ́ıroı	[ˈlăʔă˨˦maj˦˥ ˈbɛ̆ʔɛ̆j˨˩rɔj˩]	lamáı beıróı	[la˧ˈmaj˧˥ bɛj˧ˈrɔj˧˩]
*tọ̈ꝡa	(invalid word)	toꝡä	[tʰɔ˧ˈja˧˨ʔa˨˩]
jụ̂aqjuaı	[ˈd͡ʑŭʔŭaŋ˧˥˨d͡ʑu˨˩aj˩]	juaqjûaı	[d͡ʑʊaŋ˧ˈd͡ʑuː˧˥˨aj˨˩]

The value of this proposal, apart from more flexibility and less ambiguity, is that stems no longer alternate between stressed and unstressed depending on whether they have prefixes attached to them (think juıtaq vs. bụjuı). As another pleasant side effect, polyrakuic words in are now possible (like äımu, which before was ambiguous with the mid-falling allotonal forms of ạımu and ạ́ımu).

Hoemaı's comments

Hoemaı commented on the proposal on February 11, 2024 in #general.

First of all, I agree with the motivation behind the proposal; the morphology isn't as simple as it could be, but there are reasons for this.

The two downsides I see with the prefix proposal

1) In Toaq beta, there were constructions like the following

Gı mu hâo súq

Bủ dủa jí hı râı ní.

where the "prefixes" mu and hı would appear outside of the clause that they belong to.

When I created the prefix morphology of Toaq Delta, this was something I wanted to avoid. The prefix proposal looks like it would lead to something similar, e.g. buháo. This is why the morphology is as complicated as it is; I wanted both the stress and the word-tone to be on the first syllable.

2) I see a great danger in the unstressed mid tone turning into a low tone in casual speech, making it very difficult to distinguish haobu háo and hao buháo. This is something that universal initial stress avoids. (I see that the most recent version of the wiki page has a rule about a change in vowel quality, which would help with this a bit. I'd have to mull it over)

Bottom line:

I wish I could just be 100% in favor of the proposal, because it's a good one. However, I want to be transparent about why I'm not and why the morphology is the way it is: it's not that I simply missed an easier alternative, but that I started with certain goals in mind (see above) and had to make the rules fit the goals. Are these goals worth the complexity? Depends on one's priorities.

See also

• uakci’s original message
• A “logical conclusion” of the proposal posits that prefixes could be treated as separate words carrying a special prefix toneme.