Re: Terkunan > Trekunan?

>In my current project Terkunan, I am thinking about further working
>with the r/l stuff.  I am kind of fond of what Sardinian and Calabrese
>do to r/l: Sardinian has a lot of metathesis:
>
>      VL  capra   >  Sard.  kraBa    'goat'
>etc.
>
>And both languages have frequently switched r with l, depending on
>phonological context, e.g. 'volcano' is 'vurcanu' in Calabrese.
>
>Terkunan has r/l switches, too, mainly l > r, e.g.  'ultimum' >
>'urtime'.  Sometimes, it switches r > l if another r precedes:
>'arborem' > 'arbul'.
>
>Now, I am thinking about doing more shifts to 'r', namely to define
>that r+consonant is not tolerated by phonology, some time after
>the l>r shifts, so a resolving strategy has to be invented. My current
>idea is to let metathesis with the previous vowel happend when stop +
>r is the result or r becomes word-initial:
>
>    gardin     > gradin         'garden'
>    eternitat  > etrenitat      'eternity'
>    Gran Karle > Gran Kral      'Charlemagne'
>    parle      > pral           'to talk'
>    portu      > protu          'habour'
>    karkin     > krakin         'lime'
>    arbul      > rabul          'tree'
>    urtime     > rutime         'last, ultimate'
>    ornali     > ronali         'ordinary'
>
>This happens in Sardinian (and in the Sardinian dialect of Catalan).
>  **Henrik
Do the Sardinian / Calabrian instances of metathesis include words where the
/r/ derives from an */l/? Seems awfully convenient that first -lP- is
declared forbidden and changes to -rP-, then that becomes forbidden also and
changes further… Doing metathesis first, l>r 2nd to re-introduce the cluster
would also seem like an interesting choice to me.

John Vertical