Re: THEORY: Reduction of final consonants

2007/8/31, ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>:
> Just FWIW-- The South Sulawesi langs. of Indonesia allowed proto finals *t k
> n N r l s, and probably *p m and maybe *G (> r mostly).
>
[snip much interesting info]
>
> James Matisoff had a nice name for the gradual loss of finals in SE Asian
> langs-- "continuum of consonantal attrition"
>
All these variegated reductions of final consnoants is indeed
intriguing, though I wonder what sort of new theory or classification
might just possibly be derived from this data! Does anyone know of a
language which used at an earlier time to lose final consonants but
now adds vowels (what do you call epenthesis at the end of a word?) to
make them conform to a CV syllable structure, or the other way round?

2007/8/31, Douglas Koller <laokou@...>:
> I'll weigh in, FWIW.
[snip Chinese info]
> Eugene, care to opine?
>
In my experience the time 1.30 is generally not said with the "-r"
suffix (could one call it that?), because "ban" is not a substantive
here. "Yíbà(n)-r" for "half" does otherwise for the opposite reason,
while "ban ge xiaoshi" does not take the "-r" either because it does
not come phrase-finally.

[start rant](Personally I find the Beijing tendency to append the "-r"
very irritating, and that it ruins the sound of the language, giving
it a retroflex-full sheen by which Chinese is stereotyped by not a few
people. I find that the southern languages sound easier on the
ear.)[end rant]

Eugene

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