Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 20, 2006, 19:53 |
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On 8/19/06, Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...> wrote:
> See, here's my difficulty with ablaut -- this will mirror your own
> comments. In all of the cases I'm aware of, ablaut is synchronically
> arbitrary. There are examples where it makes sense historically, but
> none that I know of where it is a principled synchronic alternation
> (though I'd be happy to be corrected).
Not sure whether this counts, but - the diminutive suffix -chen causes
ablaut in the preceding syllable (if that means what I think it
means). So that's something that's synchronically principled.
(Except when it isn't; the most famous example being "Frauchen" =
"mistress/owner (of a dog)", instead of the expected *"Fräuchen". This
giving the near-minimal pair "fauchen/Frauchen" for [ç] vs [x].)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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