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Re: Lenition or Elision or What?

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Friday, December 9, 2005, 15:20
And Rosta wrote:
> caeruleancentaur, On 08/12/2005 17:46: > >> 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 >> >> Is there a proper name for this phenomenon? It doesn't seem to me to >> be either lenition (as David Crystal defines it) or elision. > > > 'Synizesis' is the collapse of two heterosyllabic vowels into a > homosyllabic sequence of vowel + glide or glide + vowel.
Gosh, that takes me back nearly 50 years till the time I was a young classicist in the 6th Form :-) Yep - I had forgotten the term, but I've checked it out in my Greek grammar. I note that Crystal does not list the term in his "A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics".
>Also 'synaeresis'.
Phonetically, synizesis and synaeresis and the same thing - and they certainly describe the feature Charlie gives. The difference is in the _written_ form. If the collapse or coalescence of the two vowels is marked in writing it is _synaeresis_ (which I guess our LeftPondian cousins spell _syneresis_); if the coalescence is not shown in writing then it is called _synizesis_ - so strictly whether Charlie refers to this as syn(a)eresis or synizesis will depend on how Senjecan is written. Tho it must be said that in modern terminology, synizesis is often used to denote the spoken phenomenon, no matter how it is written. I quote Sidney Allen (Vox Graeca): "In modern terminology 'synizesis' is often used in the sense of a reduction of the first vowel of a sequence to a semivowel (as e/g. [u] --> [w] in colloquial English _How do I look?_ --> trisyllabic [haudwailuk]"
> Samprasarana' is alternation between glide and syllabic > forms of a vocoid.
Not Greek this time - I assume it's Sanskrit. Yet another term not listed by Crystal in his 'dictionary'. But in any case this does not apply to the feature Charlie's Senjecan.
> 'Coalescence' is when a sequence of two segments > fuses into a single segment. So the Senjecan phenomenon might be called > 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic coalescence'.
Um - excuse me if I seem a bit thick (I have a bit of a cold), but does both synizesis and synaeresis imply coalescence by their very definition. There seems to be a bit of redundancy here. ================================== caeruleancentaur 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 > > Is there a proper name for this phenomenon? Yep - synizesis (or syn(a)eresis), see above. >It doesn't seem to me to be either lenition (as David Crystal defines iit) In fact in Crystal's rather vague definition "A term used in phonology to refer to a weakening in the overall strength of a sound...." it would seem to cover your feature. But, quite rightly, he goes on to talk about consonants. The term is most frequently used as an alternative term for the 'soft mutation' of the insular Celtic langs, and of conlangs such as Sindarin & Brithenig. It would certainly be misleading IMO to use it to denote synizesis. >or elision. Indeed, not - otherwise the [i] or the [u] would disappear completely. -- Ray ================================== ray@carolandray.plus.com http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>