Re: Lenition or Elision or What?

Henrik Theiling, On 09/12/2005 15:46:
>>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.
>
> Hmm, but that's not exactly it.  It is not [mjat_da] but [m_jat_da].
> It's not a glide, it's become palatalisation (or velarisation for
> /u/), so not /i/+/a/ have combined into [ja], but /m/+/i/ into [m_j]
> in this case.
>
> What about 'yer-mutation' or 'yerization' :-)))?  It happened in
> Slavic, no (hence 'yer')?  [u] > [_w] and [i] > [_j] under certain
> constraints (cf. 'yer-y' ond 'yer-u').
& Ray asks:
>> '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.
The answer to Henrik & Ray is that there is both synizesis &
coalescence: the i/u loses its syllabicity (= synizesis) and coalesces
-- as a secondary articulation -- with the preceding consonant.
Without coalescence, one would have simply [mj], [mw], and not the
palatalized & labialized articulations. Hence my suggestion of the
terms 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic coalescence'.

I think my suggestions are the most accurate/apposite for the
phenomenon, but Charlie will have gathered that they would need
a clarificatory gloss, given that Ray reports that _synizesis_
is not in Crystal's dictionary of phonetics.

--And.

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