CHAT: Epenthetic vowels (was: RE: chat: weird names)

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,
> as in Japanese where it's normally /u/, or /o/ (/o/ with /t/, /d/, /s/,
> /z/)
I think short Latin /i/ changed into /e/ in Spanish, but I'm not
sure epenthetic vowels appeared so early. Italian doesn't have
them AFAIK (certainly not orthographically), and Brazilian
_*scolas* do samba_ come to mind too.

As for Japanese epenthetic vowels, /u/ and /o/ I've only seen
in foreign imported words (/o/ before /t/ and /d/, since /u/ changes
them to [ts] and [dz]). I hear that the /e/ in the negative polite
suffix <-masen> is epenthetic (the negative being <-n> only). Though
that could be to avoid changing [s] to [S] by using /i/.

I've heard of epenthetic vowels that simply echo the surrounding vowels,
no matter their height. Not as an example, but maybe Kristian or Barry
could tell us if the first /a/ in /ma'Na/ (written _mga_ in Tagalog) is
this kind of echo vowel. Or is this vowel harmony?


--Pablo Flores