Re: Too Many Too Little Possible Roots!!!

Matt wrote :


> Malagasy, an Austronesian language with African step-parents, is an
> interesting example of the kinds of pendulum swings you're talking about.
> Proto-Malagasy, like Malay and the Philippine languages, allowed word-final
> consonants and word-medial clusters (CVC syllables, in other words).  But
> then, probably under the influence of the Eastern Bantu languages, it
> developed word-final and word-medial epenthetic vowels, leading to
> exclusively CV syllables.  Compare the Tagalog word for moon, /buwan/,
> with its Malagasy cognate /vulana/. The ancestor of these words was
> probably something like /bulan/, CV-CVC
= Indonesian *bulan*

 but in Malagasy an /a/ was
> added after the final nasal to give CV-CV-CV.  So here we have
> simplification of syllable structure leading to longer roots.
>
I read that the final *a* was just there because otherwise the Portuguese (who
gave their orthography to Malagasy) would pronounce it nasalised otherwise. The
Malgaches I know never pronounce final *a* as you state below but do pronounce
final *y*. I wonder how they could pronounce *olona* with mute second *o*
though ?

> In contemporary Malagasy, however, certain unstressed vowels are
> normally devoiced in rapid speech, and in some environments almost
> completely disappear.  Thus for instance the word "olona" /uluna/,
> which is stressed on the first syllable, is normally pronounced more
> like /uln@/ or even /uln/.  If radical devoicing persists in the
> language, these unstressed vowels might eventually disappear altogether,
> leading to shorter roots but more complex syllables (CVC, CVCC, etc.).
>
> Matt.
>
Interesting. Until now I thought that these muted vowels corresponded to Indonesian often
muted inter-consonant-al *e*.

Mathias




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