Re: Consonants as source of vowels

On Friday, January 14, 2005, at 06:04 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
>> Now, a more interesting correspondence seems to occur in some frequent
>> mutations, like in French, where e.g. |ct| -> |it| (as in |fait| <
>> |factum|).  This also happened in Portuguese (|leitor| < |lector|).
Also Old Spanish, but [jt] became palatalized /t/ and now [tS] in modern
Spanish, e.g
VL |octo| /Okto/ --> */ojto/ --> /ot_jo/ --> /otSo/ |ocho|

> I suspect this had to do with (1) gemination (factu- > fattu-), then loss
> of
> gemination but the lost mora is replaced by a high vocalic glide viz. [j]
No, no. In the central & southern part of the Italian peninsular, Latin
/kt/ and /pt/ were indeed subject to regressive assimilatiion, giving /tt/
  in both cases. But this was not at all universal.

Elsewhere in western Romance in the combo /kt/ the first element was
fricativized, giving /Ct/. The /C/ later combined with the preceding vowel
to give diphthongs ending in [j], thus: /faktU/ --> */faCto/ --> /fajt/.

Things were different in eastern Romance, cf. Romanian:
opt (eight) <-- octo
fapt <-- factu(m)

>> I might, therefore, use
>>    /i/ ~ /k/
>>
>> And I could also have
>>    /u/ ~ /k/
>> as in Portuguese |doutor| < |doctor|.
This is a later borrowing - I am not sure what has happened in Portuguese.

> It's a possibility, but I wonder if that particular word is in the same
> category. It may be a late learned loan, since every other *-Vkt- sequence
Yes, I am sure this correct.

>> -Vit- AFAIK; muito < multu-, oito < octo, feito < factu- etc.
_muito_ is interesting; Spanish _mucho_ is also from older _muito_.  The
change of /lt/ --> /Lt/ --> /jt/ seems to be peculiar to the Iberian
peninsular. Elsewhere -lt- is preserved:
Old French: molt, moult, mout
Italian: molto
Romanian: mult

[snip]
>> Question 4: More generally: what interesting phonological phenomena
>> have you seen in languages?
Gaelic is a good example of consonants that have become vowels. The
consonants |dh| was once [D] but has now fallen together with |gh| [G];
both these are now often vocalic or semi-vocalic, being I understand
either [i] ~ [j] or [u] ~ [w], depending upon neighboring vowels. Also |bh|
  and |mh| have I believe become [u] in some words.

But as Yuen Ren Chao once observed: "If /ni/ can change into /A/, then
practically anything can change into anything"  :)

His example is of archaic Chinese /ni/ "two" which turns up as /A/ in the
modern Yangchow dialect. the changes are:
CSX  /ni/ --> /nZ\i/ --> /Z\i/ --> /z`i\/ --> /r\=/ --> /@r`/ -->
/Ar`/ --> /A/
IPA  /ni/ --> /nʑi/ --> /ʑi/ --> /ʐɨ/ --> /ɹ ̩/ --> /əɹ/ --> /ɑɹ/ --> /ɑ/

Apparently all the intervening steps above are reflected in parallel
changes, both geographical and historical.

So, just about anything goes   :)
===============================================

On Friday, January 14, 2005, at 12:07 , Paul Bennett wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 00:37:03 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> wrote:
>
>> In order to achieve part of this, I thought that for each of the three
>> interesting vowels, /a, i, u/ and possibly for /@/, too, I should find
>> one or two corresponding consonants for each one.  In certain
>> phonological contexts, the vowel will appear, on others, the
>> consonant, and yet in others, the consonant will generate interesting
>> mutations in clusters.
>
> Gah! Looks like PIE laryngeals. Could get tricky.
	:-D

> Have fun!
Amen!

Ray
=======================================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"

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