Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:
> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > Rules wouldn't be any fun if there weren't exceptions. Could this be
> taken as
> > evidence in favour of the idea that Germanic [sp-], [st-] and [sk-]
> are
> > monophonemic?
>
> In that light, it's interesting that in OE and ON (but not Old Saxon)
> alliterative verse, each of these alliterated only with itself and not
> with other words in s-.
Frikken Saxon deviants! ;-)
I was told this was universal in Germanic alliterative verse. Well, see my
first sentence in the bit John quoted above.
Conscripty idea; in some alternative time-line, whomever creates the first
Germanic orthography do take these as monophonemic, and write them with single
letters. When *sk- goes haywire in West Germanic, we'll have decent
representation of /S/!
> In Goedelic these also exist and have a
> special
> status as the only full consonant clusters with no epenthetic schwas,
> AFAIK.
>
> --
> The Imperials are decadent, 300 pound John Cowan
> <jcowan@...>
> free-range chickens (except they have
http://www.reutershealth.com
> teeth, arms instead of wings and
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> dinosaurlike tails). --Elyse Grasso