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Re: Cein

From:daniel andreasson <daniel.andreasson@...>
Date:Monday, June 4, 2001, 17:23
Keith wrote:

> /i/ might be expected to cause lenition (soft mutation). /ir/ might > just possibly cause germination leading to a spirant mutation and > maybe doubling of /l r m n/. The original /r/ of ir would be lost > except perhaps before vowels.
I might have already replied to this, but I got a new idea from reading about the plural and spirant mutation in Brithenig. The idea is that the plural def.art. _ir_ for some reason underwent rhotacism, turning it into _is_. Then following the regular sound changes final /s/ became /h/ and finally disappeared leaving only spirant mutation on the following phoneme. The spirant mutation after the pl.def.art. was then associated with the plural itself and spread by analogy to indefinite nouns in the plural as well. So this leads to nothing new, except that a) I have a credible explanation and b) the obvious consequence that plural nouns beginning with a vowel get a [h] attached to them. So the pl.def.art. is now only _i_, just like the sg.def.art. So nouns beginning with a phoneme that don't undergo spirant mutation looks the same in both plural and singular, which isn't really a problem. And for every phoneme except /p t k/ the spirant and the soft mutation are the same, but that's hardly a problem either, despite all the clashes. Examples: SG: PL: DEF.SG: DEF.PL: ENGLISH: ammar hammar i ammar i hammar 'inhabited world' [vowel] coll choll i goll i choll 'cloak' [no clash] llir lir i lir i lir 'song' [soft/spir clash] ffein ffein i ffein i ffein 'white cloud' [no mut.] ||| daniel -- <> Mad llammgalf! <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <> <> Ond llamm! <> www.geocities.com/conlangus <>