Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: k(w)->p

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 26, 2000, 21:18
At 11:13 am -0600 26/1/00, Matt Pearson wrote:
>Nik Taylor wrote: > >>/kp/ --> /kw/, on the other hand, I find hard to picture. Epenthetic >>vowel /k@p/ or simplification (/k/ or /p/), or even a click /p!/ I find >>reasonable descendents of /kp/, but not /kw/. > >If /kp/ and /kw/ are consonant clusters, then the change from the >former to the latter may not be that plausible (although /p/ -> /w/ >is found in some languages). However, if /kp/ is a doubly-articulated >stop and /kw/ is a labialised velar stop - i.e., if both are treated as >single segments - then the change seems entirely plausible to me.
And to me also. I don't see the difficulty. Clearly V.Latin 'quattro' (Classical: quattuor) _did_ become 'patru' in Romanian, and 'lingua' did become 'limb@'. The theory of intermediate fricativation ( /kwattro/ -> */xwatro/ --> */Watru/ */p\atru/ --> /patru/ and, presumably, /liNgwa/ --> */liNGwa/ --> */linW@/ --> */limb\@/ --> /limb@/) is not merely unsupported by any external evidence but is IMHO just too fantastical for words. The change /k_w/ --> /p/ and /g_w/ --> /b/ is what the evidence suggests and I personally see no problem. What is conventially written as /kw/ is not here /k/ + /w/ but, as Matt says, a _labialized_ velar stop, a _single_ segment. Likewise Latin -gu- (found only after -n-) was almost certainly a labialized voiced velar stop. Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================