Re: THEORY: Reduction of final consonants

On 8/30/07, Benct Philip Jonsson <melroch@...> wrote:
> As some of you may know Tolkien's Quenya doesn't allow any
> non-alveolar consonants in word final position. Underlying consonants
> with another point of articulation are changed into an alveolar with
> the same manner of articulation as the underlying consonant; at least
> this is the theory, while AFAIK only m > n and k > t are actually
> attested in Tolkien's writings.
>
> The constraint itself is not surprising, being attested in Finnish and
> ancient Greek, which in addition allows only r n s and disallows even
> t l finally. The problem lies in the way the constraint is enforced:
> in these natlangs disallowed final consonants are simply deleted,
> although in Finnish there was -k > ? > zero or assimilation to the
> initial consonant of the following word. So the questions are: what
> other natlangs have a similar constraint? Are there natlang instances
> or ANADEWS for an assimilation rule like in Quenya? And are there any
> examples of what migu happen to underlying p in Finnish or other
> langs, other than deletion? The reason I ask is of course that my
> conlang Kijeb has such a constraint.
I'm still in my first week of Koean classes, so I may be way off-base,
but it seems that in Korean, final -s or -s' (tense s -- sorry, don't
know X-SAMPA) becomes -t. Wikipedia lists allowable final consonants
as p, m, t, n, l, k and ng.

Other patterns I've noticed: The tense and aspirated stops become
their plain counterparts. The alveolo-palatal affricates and -h become
-t.

I haven't hit upon the right keywords to find out how this originated, yet.

--
Katya