Re: Too Many Too Little Possible Roots!!!

Mathias wrote:


> 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.
Not true, as far as I know.  The final /a/ is really there.  You can hear
it quite clearly when the Malagasy speak slowly and carefully.

Malagasy orthography is pretty close to being perfectly phonemic - except
for the peculiarity that /i/ is spelled "y" at the ends of words and "i"
everywhere else.  To the best of my knowledge, the spelling conventions
were established by the 19th century English and French missionaries.
The use of "y" at the ends of words is generally attributed to English
influence.  Why /u/ is spelled "o" and /dz/ is spelled "j" I don't know.

>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 ?
The Malagasy I know devoice all unstressed vowels, with the following
exceptions:
        (1) /e/ is never devoiced.
        (2) /a/ does not devoice between two consonants.
In some cases the devoiced vowels are pronounced as genuine voiceless vowels.
In other cases, their vocalic quality is lost, but they leave phonetic
colouring (rounding, palatalisation, etc.) on surrounding consonants.  And
in other cases, they appear to drop away entirely, or to merge with adjacent
vowels.  I wrote a paper a few years ago where I tried to describe the entire
system.  Unfortunately, I didn't have access to phonetic measurements, so
in many cases I had to make subjective judgements on how the devoiced vowels
were being realised (vis a vis acoustics and articulation).

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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