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NATLANG: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?o_0?_re:=A0cons?=onant clusters

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, December 9, 2002, 19:19
En réponse à Muke Tever <mktvr@...>:

> > I thought these European sC-clusters violated the sonority hierarchy?
Indeed. But lots of languages can live with that violation, even languages which couldn't before (look at French, which used to dislike sC- clusters, prefixing e- and finally making s disappear. But borrowings dating from the 16th century on show no sign of such dislike. Hence all those words like "station", "stade", "strapontin", etc...)
> so [ksV] > is more normal than [skV] (hence things like many IE langs dropping the > [s], or > the Romance prosthetic vowel)... and [knV] beats [nkV], etc. but on > the other > end, [Vld] is more normal than [Vdl], right.. so it should be 6 > 1 > > 6. > > (right?) >
Yes indeed. Which shows how strange English is, which keeps untouched clusters like /sk-/ and /st-/, but simplified clusters like /kn-/, /ks-/ or /gz-/, and still does synchronically :)) . Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>NATLANG: o 0? re: consonant clusters