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THEORY: Reduction of final consonants

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <melroch@...>
Date:Thursday, August 30, 2007, 8:29
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.

/BP

--
/ BP

Replies

David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
Kate <snapping.dragon@...>