More invented words

I am up late completing my phonology problem set, as usual on a Monday night. It's my last one, however - amazing how I managed to make it this far in the semester without figuring out how to properly manage my time so I could work on them without stressing out. Oh well, I guess it's one lesson I won't learn.

I will, however, miss writing sentences like these:

"For a few lexically marked words, Ident(length)-BR dominates NoGeminate, and instead of vowel lengthening a geminate coda consonant is inserted to create a heavy (bimoraic) syllable."

"Ikolano requires syllables to have onsets. However, when redpulicated, the epenthetic onset consonant is not copied, even to serve as the reduplicated coda consonant."

"Ilokano will occasionally resyllabify words to ensure that the reduplicant is a closed syllable. This behavior is only possible in words with initial C-glide clusters where the glide is underlyingly a vowel, as in (4)."

"RED=σ(μμ) can be satisfied either by lengthening the first underlying vowel in the reduplicant or by copying the surface glides. Which option a speaker chooses will depend on the ranking of Ident(F) and Ident(length)-BR."


There's a lot about linguistics writing that appeals to me - no mess, no fuss, the value placed on coherency and conciseness above all else, the organization, not to mention the awesome topics (my paper is called "Heavy Syllable Reduplication in Ilokano") - but sometimes I read back over what I write and wonder what the hell I'm even talking about. I find it fitting that linguists have invented their own language and alphabet to talk about language, but sometimes the levels of jargon are ridiculous.