Re: CHAT: liaison (was: Re: CHAT: Synesthesia and conlanging (was Re: The ConlangInstinct))
| From: | Grandsire, C.A. <grandsir@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, December 10, 1999, 8:48 |
|---|
Steg Belsky wrote:
>
> On Thu, 9 Dec 1999 09:39:15 +0000 Paul Bennett <Paul.Bennett@...>
> writes:
> > 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?
> .
>
> If i remember the 3 lessons in the _Teach Yourself Arabic_ book i
> attempted that i completed, i don't think the _a_ in _al-_ elides,
> because it begins with a hamza, /?/....
The hamza at the beginning of the article is called "mobile" or "sick"
if I remember correctly. It simply means that it is pronounced only
after a pause. In fact, all the words that in Arabic begin by a vowel
really begin by this kind of hamza. And all those words are elided, so
even the article gets elided. That's why the hamza is not written at the
beginning of those words and the article, whereas it is written when
it's a normal hamza always pronounced.
> only words that really begin with
> vowels get elided. The _l_ gets lost in a gemination of following
> letters called "sun (_shams_?) letters", because one of them is
> /S/....it's not just the emphatics, and i think that the voiceless
> pharyngeal fricative which is commonly romanized {H} doesn't assimilate
> the L. It probably has to do with alveolar consonants.
The famous "solar" vs. "lunar" letters, the "solar" ones assimilating
the 'l' of the article, whereas the "lunar" ones don't. You're right,
the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (I think it's the 'ayin) is lunar. I
don't remember all the "solar" and "lunar" letters though, and my "Teach
Yourself Arabic" is in France. :(
Just for
> comparison, the Hebrew cognate _ha-_ has no L, but it does geminate every
> following consonant, so it might have originally been cognates of /hal/ ~
> /?al/, differing in fricative vs. stop.
>
> -Stephen (Steg)
> "Eze-guvdhab wa'hrikh-a tze, / "zhoutzii wa'esh," i eze-mwe."
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