Re: Arabic Questions
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 27, 2004, 6:14 |
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On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:38:03 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> I was aware of the Tongan situation, cited by Philip Newton-- there, /?/
> goes all they way back to Proto-AN *q (it may well have been *[?] by the
> time Proto-Oceanic developed); I'm pretty sure it's lost in all other
> Polynesian langs., but some (like Hawaiian) have developed /?/ < *k.
Samoan has phonemic glottal stops AFAIK, though I don't know whether
they derive from *q.
> Digressing a bit, there are Austronesian languages (and surely others) that
> have automatic [?] onset to vowels, but when you add a CV-prefix, some words
> show /?/, while others have smooth transition-- e.g. of two homophones with
> initial [?]i... one may go to **ma?i... the other > **mai.... One is always
> suspicious of [?] between like vowels.
Sounds a bit like French "h muet"... (though I don't know whether,
say, "le héros" is [l@eRo] or [l@?eRo]).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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