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....)
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