Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Natlang Help: Do you know of a language that...

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Thursday, October 2, 2003, 23:16
Estel Telcontar wrote:

> --- David Peterson wrote: > > vs. /-Eg/, > > Not a minimal pair, I know, but what about "egg" [Eg] or [Ejg] vs > "vague" [vejg]. Definitely a different vowel for me, though at the > moment I can't think of other words like "vague".
I strongly suspect that all examples of _tense_ vowel before /-g/ will be loans, especially those spelled -gue, as they probably all are. intrigue, fatigue, already mentioned. vague, vogue, rogue, plague. Perhaps one reason there are so few -Vg word in Engl. is that in many cases the *g shifted (via a [G] stage?) to "y" [j] in several environments. If that was the _native_ development, it leads to the question, where _do_ written-final-g words like bog, bag, sag, lug etc., come from? (I'm too lazy to go to the dictionary just now....)

Reply

Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@...>