Re: A few phonetics-related q's

On Tuesday, September 14, 2004, at 05:03 , Muke Tever wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 19:30:31 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
>> Trebor wrote:
>>
>>> In a word like /anta/, would it be more likely that it's pronounced
>>> [anda]
>>> or [an_0ta]?
>>
>> It might depend on other tendencies in the language.
Yes, I think this is an important consideration. Phonological changes don'
t develop in isolation.

>> Does assimilation in
>> general tend to be progressive-- i.e are there clusters of the sort
>> /-bk-/ >
>> [-bg-]-- or regressive, i.e. the cluster /-bk-/ > [-pk-].
>>
>> Nasal clusters however tend not to behave like stop clusters; the voicing
>> predominates, so I'd say [anda] is a more likely outcome.
Yes, this has been my experience. I first came across this more than 50
years ago in Tamil and then discovered it also occurred in Modern Greek.
Since then I've discovered this type of assimilation occurs in languages
of both the 'old' and 'new' worlds.

> And [anda] is what happens in Modern Greek, IIRC.
Yes - tho I understand that in some dialects the nasal is lost entirely, i.
e. /anta/ is pronounced [anda] or [ada] according to dialect.

[snipped lines quoted below]]
> Or [a~ta], of course?
......or, of course, [a~da]    ;)
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On Tuesday, September 14, 2004, at 05:30 , Elliott Lash wrote:

> --- > > But there are cases where nasals are lost or
> changed before voiceless
> sounds, so even your [an_0ta] is not impossible.
> It would more likely lead
> over time to something like [ahta] or [a?ta] or
> [at:a].
>
>
> In Nindic, I have /anta/ becoming [at:a] first and
> then, diachronically, /aTa/, but that takes a while.
Exactly as in Sindarin nasal mutation, e.g. tiw "letters/marks" ~ *in tiw
--> i thiw "the letters/the marks"

The change /nt/ --> /tt/ is attested in natlangs and the change /tt/ -->
/T/ happened in the Brittonic languages.

It also depends whether /t/ is [t] or, as in English & Welsh [t_h]; in the
latter language, nasal mutation has given [nh], e.g. tad [t_ha:d] "father"
  ~ fy nhad [v@n'ha:d] "my father".

But no one so far has noted the way /nt/ is commonly pronounced in modern
British English, i.e. /n?/

I leave it to my American cousins to explain the various US pronunciations
of /nt/ in "twenty" (Colloquial Brit ['twEn?i])

No doubt this is all very confusing, but I am reminded of Yuen Ren Chao's
observation:
"If /ni/ can change into /a/, then practically anything can change into
anything."

What it boils down to is that it's not simply a question of /nt/ -->
either [n_0t] or [nd]; all sorts of other developments do occur. It
depends, to return to Muke's opening observation, it depends on other
tendencies in your language.
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=======

BTW for the curious, /ni/ was archaic Chinese for "two". In the modern
Yangzhou dialect it is /a/. The changes can be traced through other
dialects; it appears to be:
/ni/ --> /nz\i/ --> /z\i/ --> /z`1/ --> /r\=/ --> /@r\/ --> /ar\/ --> /a/

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004

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