Re: CHAT: liaison (was: Re: CHAT: Synesthesia and conlanging (was Re: The ConlangInstinct))

Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> What about Arabic doing all those wonderful things to <al->?
>
> ISTR the <a> assimilates to the preceding vowel (if present), and the <l>
> assimilates to the following consonant for certain consonants (ISTR it was all
> the ones romanised with capitals, but that's prolly way off).  Isn't the
> <a>-assimilation a kind of liaison?  Depending on your opinion of the
> "boundedness" of <al->, the <l> assimilation might be as well?
>
        Liaison refers clearly to the adding of a consonnant (for instance:
grand /gra~/ and homme /Om/ leads to grand homme /gra~tOm/, the /t/
appearing to liaise those words because the first one ends with a vowel
and the second begins with a vowel), whereas in the case of <al->, the
/a/ disappears after another vowel. It's called elision and is the
reverse process (even if from what I said before, in some case the
distinction is more about the way the process is seen than a real
morphological difference). As for the <l> assimilation, it is what it
is: assimilation :).

        Of course, all those processes have all the same result which is to
"link" words together and make the language difficult to master for the
foreigner :) . But they are different morphological processes even if
the result is the same.

--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
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        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com