Re: aspirated m?

On Friday, November 26, 2004, at 06:22 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]

> So it seems |mh| is potentially ambiguous in the
> romanization of Sindarin:
IMO |mh| isa potentially ambiguous combo to use whether romanizing
Sindarin or anything else (unless of course one actually means /mh/) as
this thread has shown.

> it *usually* denotes
> [v~], e.g. in _mhellon_ as a lenition of _mellon_,
> while it *may* also denote [m_0], although the
> latter is usually |mf|.
..and |mf| is even stranger   :)

I find the notion of long (presumably geminate) voicless sonorants
somewhat unlikely in a natlang.

The trouble was we know was that JRRT never finished 'discovering'
Sindarin or any other of his languages - he was always revising them and
in those days when everything was papar-based it invevitably meant that
some older bits hung around unrevised.

> It also appears that |ll|
> is ambiguous between [l:] and [K] -- only the
> etymology can tell which is which.
       :)

> A bit strange, since Old English would have suggested
> the spellings |hn, hñ, hm, hl| for the voiceless
> sonorants.
Yes - they are perhaps less ambiguous.

BTW do we have any evidence that the Old English spells |hn|, |hl| and |hr|
  did not indicate biphonemic groups, i.e. were pronounced something like
[Xn], [Xl], {xr]?


Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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