Re: USAGE: OE pt was Re: USAGE:Yet another few questions about Welsh.
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, July 12, 2004, 17:38 |
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On Sunday, July 11, 2004, at 08:42 , David Barrow wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> It was, and the voicing would be regular for the reasons I've given.
>>
>> Ray
>
> Would the voicing have happened automatically ie as soon as they coined
> a new compound or would it have evolved over time?
Automatically as soon as the compound was made, I guess. I don't imagine
that most OE speakers were any more aware that /f/ had two allophones [f]
and [v] (or that /T/ had allophones [T] and [D], and /s/ had allophones [s]
and [z]) any more than most English speakers are aware that /l/ in
English has two environmentally conditioned allophones, e.g. leaf /lif/
[li:f] ~ field /fild/ [fi:Ld].
Ray
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