Re: Languages

Christophe Grandsire sikayal:

> En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:
>
> > Padraic Brown wrote:
> > > Actually, I find that a rather curious form of conjugation.
> >
> > Arguably, French has something like that at the end of adjectives, fem.
> > /gra~d/ masc. /gra~/, IIRC.  Essentially, it could be argued that the
> > rule is "to form the masculine, drop the final consonant".
> >
>
> I think there's nothing to argue about that! Even if in written language the
> rule is "add an -e to form the feminine", in spoken language the rule "drop the
> final consonnant to form the masculine" holds quite well (other examples than
> /gra~d/ vs. /gra~/ are /p@'tit/ vs. /p@'ti/, /vERt/ vs. /vER/, /mov'Ez/ vs.
> /mo'vE/, etc...). I once saw this rule taken as an example that grammatical
> rules of "deleting something" instead of "adding something" were possible and
> actually existed in languages, contrary to what was thought before. But of
> course, the written form of French long hid the actual rules...
Some silly transformative theories still try to implement this
rule.  Essentially, they had the underlying forms of [gra~d] and [gra~] be
/grande/ and /grand/ (like orthography), where the feminine is marked by
addition of -/e/.  This is followed by a phonological rule that drops all
final segments and realises nasal consonants as nasalization of the
previous vowel.  It's plausible, but IMHO too zealous in making obscure
underlying forms, as tranformationalists usually are.

Besides, saying that there's a grammatical rule of "drop final
consonant" is just so much more interesting!

>
> Christophe.
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change.  It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_