natlang stuff: vowelless words
From: | Danny Wier <dawier@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, April 20, 1999, 15:45 |
Since I've been studying this, I'll mention something that might
interest you, and one or more of you might have this in a conlang...
Russian (and other Slavic languages) have a few words made up of one
consonant and no vowel. These are all prepositions:
_v_ "in; at; to"
_k_ "to; toward" (with dative)
_s_ "with, accompanied by" (with instrumental); "from" (with genitive)
And I think there's a _z^_ /Z/ used in literary registers; I believe
it's an emphatic particle. It also appears as _z^e_.
Again, these are considered independent words, but functionally
they're more like prefixes, since they always occur before nouns,
pronouns, and adjectives. Rules of assimilation cause _v_ to be
devoiced before words beginning with voiceless consonants, and _k_
and _s_ to be voiced before voiced stops. Also, longer forms of
these words exist with vowel; they are used before words with complex
initial consonant clusters: _v_ < _vo_; _k_ < _ko_; _s_ < _so_.
Any other natlang examples of this, and also conlangs?
Danny
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