Re: CHAT: Epenthetic vowels (was: RE: chat: weird names)
| From: | Matt Pearson <mpearson@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 8, 1999, 1:36 |
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> Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> >
> > Actually, wasn't the /e/ of other Romance Langs originally /i/? It's my
> > understanding that, for instance, schola --> iscola --> escola -->
> > escuela (in Spanish). Aren't epinthetic vowels generally a high vowel,
Epenthesis rules generally insert the least marked vowel - where "least
marked" is determined on a language-by-language basis (sometimes
there's variation within the same language, depending on the phonological
context for epenthesis). Typical epenthetic vowels are /i/ and /a/, which
seem to be the least marked vowels in a lot of languages. In Malagasy,
/a/ is the most common epenthetic vowel in loanword phonology,
which makes sense, since /a/ is arguably the least marked vowel in
the language (French "la table" and "la loi" become "latabatra" and
"lalana"). Epenthetic /i/ and /u/ are sometimes found as well. The
English loanword "book" becomes "boky" /buki/, while "doctor"
becomes "dokotera" /dukutera/. The epenthetic /u/ in /dukutera/ is
arguably due to the stressed /u/ in the previous syllable.
Matt.