Re: A sound change question...
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, August 7, 2003, 0:54 |
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Steg Belsky scripsit:
> /w/ to /gw/ (some spanish dialects, Germanic borrowings into Romance)
I don't think this is so much a sound change as a rule for borrowing.
Spanish didn't have initial /w/, so it used /gw/ to represent foreign
[w]. Similarly, when English borrows a word with [x], it represents
the [x] with /k/, but that does not mean there is or was a sound change
from /x/ to /k/ (more like /f/, zero, or zero with compensatory
lengthening.
--
BALIN FUNDINUL UZBAD KHAZADDUMU jcowan@reutershealth.com
BALIN SON OF FUNDIN LORD OF KHAZAD-DUM http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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