Re: Word-initial sound changes

dirk elzinga wrote:

> Perhaps it is just splitting hairs, but I have always preferred
> to use the term 'lenition' to refer to consonant alternations
> which are  triggered by phonetics/phonology, and reserve the
> term 'mutation' for consonant alternations which mark
> morphological categories. It's a useful distinction to make.
Well, okay.  Historically, the term "lenition" has been applied to
what is also called soft mutation in Welsh, Irish, and (obconlang) Sindarin.*
Celtic mutations originated in (your sense of) lenitions, so the answer
to the question "Can lenition occur at the beginning of a (lexical)
word?" is "Yes, at least if preceded by a clitic."

* While researching this claim, I came up with the following
interesting site:  http://www.vaxxine.com/straylight/cpt/, about
Penguinean.  Penguinean claims to be a Goidelic language, parallel
to Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx.  Its orthographical conventions
are those of Irish, but I am not learned enough to tell if it
is simply Irish as-is or a true relative.

The Penguinea home page is www.penguinea.cx.  There is another
Penguinean language, supposedly a Japanese-Icelandic hybrid:
it is written in Gothic script (and Latin script too).

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