Re: Lenition or Elision or What?

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@Y...> wrote:

>There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
>personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed
>to a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
>m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
>1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
>I go.
>This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
Something similar, if not identical, happens in Swahili.  In the
KITU class of nouns, ki- is prefixed to the root for the singular
and vi- for the plural, e.g., kikapu, basket; vikapu, baskets.
However, sometimes before a vowel these prefixes are altered to "ch"
and "vy" respectively.  Thus ki-umba, room, becomes chumba, and vi-
umba, rooms, becomes vyumba.  My text doesn't give a name for this
phenomenon.  I would imagine that the spelling "vyumba" indicates a
palatal consonant.

I do not know why this doesn't occur in all such situations.  E.g.
kiatu, shoe, and viatu, shoes!

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur

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