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Re: USAGE: syllables

From:Daniel Andreasson Vpc-Work <daniel.andreasson@...>
Date:Friday, June 13, 2003, 10:41
Jesse Bangs wrote:

> What's weird is that [l] patterns with the obstruents, adding to the list > of things about [l] that's funny in OY. I'm still puzzling over that one.
Interesting. What are the other funny things about [l]? And I mean apart from probably being derived from a stop. What are the consequences of that? And a comment on John Cowan's Latin -> Sardinian example. Swedish had the opposite development in some words. 'hårde' [ho:d`E] --> [ho:l`E] --> 'håle' [ho:lE] which should support the Old Yivrian development. And Nik Taylor wrote:
> I'd analyze that grouping of [l] as proof that [l] is descended from > something else. It's in the same group as nasals, so one possibility is > that [l] is derived from [n]. Yoruba, for example, uses [n] and [l] as > allophones.
Yes, [n] and [l] are very similar. It's almost impossible to tell them apart on a spectrogram for instance. And I can't tell you how many times I've misheard _juni_ 'June' and _juli_ 'July'! :) Daniel Andreasson

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
BP Jonsson <bpj@...>