† † † Re: Historical realis m and prenasalized stops

Christophe wrote:

<<I have various ideas actually ;)) . The first one is to get a syllable more
by
having the nasal syllabic. Thus /VlmbV/ would be pronounced [Vlm=bV]. Various
languages do such kind of things to break difficult clusters (it may not be
make a consonant syllabic. It may be simply adding a schwa, like it's often
done in Irish Gaelic and Dutch). A second possibility would be the loss of
the
nasal. Thus /VlmbV/ would become [VlbV]. Or you could lose the liquid
instead,
and get [VmbV] or [V~mbV]. The nasal would stay, which would allow to
differentiate /VmbV/ from /VlmbV/. Finally, postvocalic [l] often vocalises
to
[w] (it happened in French, Polish, etc...). So maybe in this position /l/
could behave like /w/.>>

     I've been thinking, and I'm rather fond of the idea of losing it
completely...   The lateral, that is.   And then keeping the nasal as a
reflex, so that you would get that [V~bV] [VmbV] distinction.   That'd be
neat.

     However, taking a cue from Roger Mills, I also like the idea of /l/
showing up as [w] or [u] to form a diphthong.   So, /VlmbV/ would become
[VwmbV], to be distinguished with /VwmbV/, which would be [Vw~bV].   Awesome!
  Thanks, guys!

-David

"imDeziZejDekp2wilDez ZejDekkinel..."
"You can celebrate anything you want..."
               -John Lennon