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Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 26, 2004, 11:10
John Cowan wrote:
> Roger Mills scripsit: > > >>>>Incidentally, what languages _do_ allow /N/ initally? Offhand, I can >>>>only think of Vietnamese and Tibetan, and it's a tricky thing to look >>>>up. >>> >>>Thai is one that comes to mind, as well as Cantonese. It looks like >>>Indonesian also has a few words with initial ng-. I'm sure there must be >>>others; I assume that Nganasan, at least, is pronounced with an initial >>>/N/ or /Ng/. >> >>Many Indonesian/Philippine/Oceanic languages have /N-/; not many of the >>forms are reconstructible all the way back, however. > > > Middle Chinese had /N-/, and several Sinitic languages retain it, although > in Mandarin it's become /w-/. It makes me wonder about a possible > Sino-Tibetan/Austronesian/Tai-Kadai Sprachbund effect, along with the > more well-known ones.
Didn't /N-/ become zero or /R/ in Mandarin? /BP 8^) -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus)

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Douglas Koller, Latin & French <latinfrench@...>