Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, December 11, 2005, 15:13 |
|---|
Thomas Hart Chappell wrote:
Just two points:
1. I explicitly said that I was using the terms as they were used by the
Greeks (they after all invented the terms); in the ancient usage, *it
was a difference of spelling*.
2. Dictionaries, at least on this list, are not prescriptive; they are,
or should be, descriptive. They are not, however, infallible even as
descriptive documents.
>
> They seem to be poetic terms, having to do with variant pronunciation;
> pronouncing "seest" as [sist] instead of [sijest] would be synizesis;
NO! [sist] has only _one_ vowel. It is crasis. It does not even conform
to the www.bartleby.com definition of 'synizesis - and certainly not
common modern use of the term. The definition www.bartleby.com gives is:
"The union in pronunciation of two adjacent vowels into one syllable
without forming a diphthong."
NOTE: it says, into one _syllable_, *not* one vowel. If it meant one
vowel, it would surely have said so.
No body, as far as I know, has suggested that either syn(a)eresis or
synizesis is anything other than the pronunciation of two vowels in a
single syllable. My problem is that I do not see how this can happen
phonologically except by the formation of some sort of diphthong (even
if in the phonology of a particular language it is analyzed as a glide
or approximant + vowel).
> pronouncing the "-dience" of "disobedience" as [djens] instead of [dijens]
> would be syneresis.
Not according to ancient usage, nor AFAIK according to modern usage.
> They are kinds of metaplasm, as are crasis and elision.
Eh??? Once upon a time metaplasm referred to the formation of cases of
nouns which lacked a nominative case, or to the formation of tenses and
other verb forms of verbs which lacked a present tense. When did it get
this new meaning? And why?
>
> One dictionary has syneresis operating between the final vowel of a word
> that ends in a vowel and the initial vowel of the next word which begins in
> a vowel; it uses a different term, synaloepha, for the same kind of
> phenomenon occurring word-internally.
Does it, indeed? And there were those ignorant ancients thinking
synaeresis could occur with words as well as across word boundaries.
Darn, I'd better build a time machine quickly and go and enlighten them.
So they are. But I am, shall we say, less than impressed by
www.willamette.edu/~blong/Words/MetaplasmIII.html.
When two vowels come together, they can either remain disyllabic (what
the ancients called 'hiatus') or 'blend' into a single (synaloepha,
i.e. ancient (Attic) Greek /synalojp_hE:/). I give below the table set
out by Sidney Allen on page 92 of "Vox Graeca" - except that I have
replaced the parenthesized Greek words by their conventional Latinized
spellings that we use in English. (You will need a monospace font to
read it properly!)
Disyllabic ------------------------------------------- hiatus
|Contraction
|(crasis)
|(a) marked ---|
| |Combination
| |(synaeresis)
|(i) coalescence ---|
| |(b) unmarked -- (synizesis)
Monosyllabic -----|
(synaloepha) | |Elision
|(ii) Loss ------------------------|
| (thlipsis) |Prodelision
| (aphaeresis)
Admittedly, some of the terms are not exactly the same as I would used.
but from what he goes on to say it is clear that he means what i have
been saying. And I think that anyone who has read my mails and is of
goodwill (and this supposed to be the season of goodwill, is it not?)
will follow.
> ---
>
> Question;
>
> When two words occur together, the first ending in a vowel and the second
> beginning in a vowel, and the pronunciation of the vowels influences each
> other, isn't that called "sandhi"?
Yes, but the two sounds are not necessarily vowels. Consonants may also
be involved in _sandhi_. Sandhi is term used in syntax and morphology,
and Charlie seem to want to know the phonological definition.
> For that matter, why did no-one bring up "mutation"?
Because its use would be misleading, I guess. As far as I know it has
two uses in linguistics:
1. In historic or _diachronic_ linguistics to refer to the influence of
a sound's quality owing to the influence of sounds in adjacent morphemes
and words.
2. Probably the one more commonly used on this list, in _synchronic_
contexts to refer to consonant changed in the modern Insular Celtic
languages which, tho once phonologically conditioned, are now purely
grammatical.
Neither, as I understand it, would be appropriate for the Senjecan
feature described by Charlie.
> Perhaps neither word would have been adequate. But would neither word have
> been appropriate at all? It seems to me they both would apply, even if not
> well enough.
Sandhi applies, but is too unspecific IMHO for the particular feature
Charlie was asking about. Mutation IMO would not have applied, for the
reasons I give above.
--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY