Re: Sound Change Susceptibility
| From: | Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 20:02 |
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At 20:28 4.11.2003, John Cowan wrote:
>In Latin already the underlying form is /in/, but the /n/ assimilates to the
>following consonant. If it is /l/ or /r/, we get full assimilation and the
>nasal character disappears, as in the English borrowings "illiterate" and
>"irresponsible". Otherwise, it is assimilated to the place of articulation,
>although the orthography indicates this only in the case of labials, where
>it becomes "im", as in "impossible". Before velars we know that it became [N]
>as in "incompatible".
You also have ignatus and ignotus from *ingnotus, *ingnatus,
with phonetic [iNn-]. English of course has mangled these!
>Italian, and probably also Latin though we can't be sure, even assimilates
>"in" to a labiodental nasal when /f/ follows, as "inferno" /iFfErno/.
>English doesn't go this far.
So does Swedish, so that _omforma_ and _informera_
both have [Ff]. Of course this happens also in
purely Germanic words like _införa_.
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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