Re: USAGE: writ [was Re: Here, *Here*, and There, *There*]

Quoting agricola <agricola@...>:

> yscreus il Th. Weir:
It's <Wier>.

> >Quoting agricola <agricola@...>:
> >
> >> Also, it'd be pronounced /wrItiN/. :)
>
> > What? In all my experience, a <writ> (as in "of habeas corpus") has
> > always been [rIt]; the onset cluster [wr] is complete disallowed for
> > me, not surprisingly, since it flagrantly violates sonority contour
> > principles.
>
> Different strokes for different blokes. Are you one of those [hw]less
> people, too?
No, I do have [w_0].  Don't get me wrong:  I'm not condemning your usage,
but I'm rather shocked because I was under the impression that the onset
cluster [wr] had died out in just about every English dialect... oh,
over 800 years ago.

> Wot's a "sonority contour principle"? And how does it apply in this
> case?
All sounds can be arranged along a "sonority hierarchy" according
to how loud they are relative to other sounds with the same length,
stress and pitch.  This hierarchy is usually represented schematically
something like this:

MORE SONORITY
  vowels
  glides/semivowels
  liquids
  nasals
  stops
    - voiced
    - voiceless
LESS SONORITY

(In fact, voicelessness is always less sonorous than voicedness.)

There is a very strong crosslinguistic tendency to have
peaks of sonority at the syllable nucleus (namely, the vowel in
most languages), having sonority fall off to either side.
Languages can and do violate this principle, but usually only
when there is some other demonstrable principle with which this
one is in conflict (epenthesis, deletion, etc.).  Also, many
languages go further and prescribe how quickly this fall-off may
occur.  In English, onset clusters need to be at least two spaces
distant from the first of the cluster to the second, such that
[kr] and [ny] are licit onset clusters, but *[pt], *[pn] and
*[nl] are not.  In the case of [wr], there is no distance at
all (although historically <r> was a trill), which is why I'm
surprised that you would have it.

The other structure that you mention, [w_0], is only the voiceless
version of [w].  Voiceless glides are also, for entirely separate
reasons, marked structures, and so it is not surprising that
historically many languages have gotten rid of them.  In fact, the
only Germanic language IIRC that retains them is English, and at that
only some dialects, mainly in parts of North America, Scotland
and parts of rural England.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers

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