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Re: CHAT: Historical linguistics, and soundlaws

From:FFlores <fflores@...>
Date:Thursday, March 25, 1999, 21:01
Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

> Approximatization?: I'm not sure if this is a real term, but fricatives > sometimes become approximates. Most common is rhoticization, wherein > /z/ becomes /r/. So that, for instance, pre-OE *waese became waere > (modern were).
PIE (or Italic, or whatever) /s/ became /z/ and then /r/ in Latin also. But I don't know what Latin <r> was. Was it an approximant, a flap, or a trill? How did Spanish end up with both sounds? I know a lot of Spanish words have the trilled <rr> in borrowings from Euzkadi (Basque), but that can't be the only source. Anybody knows? --Pablo Flores * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labour: People are always available for work in the past tense.