That durned î, re-revisited

[Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun]

I mean, “Latîneu” sounds wrong to me, too. And since both are of one stem ultimately, maybe that is an exception to the rule?

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Perhaps î is only a regular allophone of i when before n and unstressed? The vast majority of words with î have it in unstressed position.

Even if that is the case, I'm not sure how much it helps us. We'd have to know which cases of unstressed î are phonemic and which are merely allophonic, in order to tell which ones remain î when stress shifts to that vowel and which ones become just plain i. For example, amînar ('to procrastinate', a word with which I should be well familiar). The î is unstressed due to stress falling on the infinitive ending, but could become stressed when the verb is conjugated. So if î could be either an unstressed allophone of i before n or a phoneme in its own right, should "he procrastinates" be amina or amîna? If the latter, presumably it should continue to be written with a circumflex even in the infinitive so you know it's a phonemic î rather than merely an allophonic one.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial]

Sept 26, 2019 6:57:10 GMT -6 Sir C. M. Siervicül said:

should "he procrastinates" be amina or amîna?

I suppose the only two people who'd be able to answer that question definitively would be Ben and Tomás.

[Magniloqueu Épiqeu da Lhiun]

Not sure, whether this will make sense because it occurred to me during a state of being half asleep and half awake, but if I do not write it down now, I’ll forget it:

What if the allophony of /i/ into a retracted phone before nasals works only if:
a) unstressed, OR
b) stressed in a closed syllable?

It would not solve the problem with Ladintsch, but that could just be an exception to the rule that might be explained by way of etymology (La•ti•neu, etc.)