Re: Celtic Consonant Mutation

   That's only partially right.

   Originally, a lot of sounds lenited intervocalically (t > th /T/ > th
/h/ in irish, m > f /v/ in Welsh, and so on). And since the feminine
article ended in a vowel, you got lenition on the noun, which came to be
grammatically conditioned.

   What mikes talks about does explain nasalization / eclipsis / u/ru though.

   Aidan


At 02:17 PM 5/3/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>The mutations in Celtic langs are due to the process of assimilation (one
>sound changing to resemble a preceding one, in this case) earlier on in the
>history of the languages. The process itself happens all the time in
>everyday speech - if you say the phrase 'London Bridge is falling down" you
>will find that you pronounced the final n in London as an m. Why? Because it
>is followed by a bilabial sound; the alveolar nasal n becomes a bilabial
>nasal m. It's just that in the Celtic langs this process occurs under
>conditions which have now come to be defined grammatically. Some time in the
>history of Cornish the article defining "female singular" must have ended
>with a sound that caused certain following sounds to be affected.
>Mike
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joe" <joe@...>
>To: <CONLANG@...>
>Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 10:08 PM
>Subject: Celtic Consonant Mutation
>
>
> > Can you guys help me?  I'm wondering how Celtic Initial mutation happens,
>as
> > in Cornish:
> >
> > mam
> > mother
> >
> > an vam
> > the mother
> >
> > I'm just curious as to how the mechanism works, and under what
> > conditions...maybe the Bretons on this list can help :-)