Re: Question: 'mperie' < lat. 'imperium'

On 2/27/07, Henrik Theiling <ht@...> wrote:
> My question is: how would the syllable structure most likely behave?
> Will 'mperie' be two syllables: /mpe.rje/ ({i} in {ie} looses one
> syllable anyway, that's not my question)?  Or will it be three:
> /m=.pe.rje/?  What this be different if the nasal stems from the previous
> word as in 'n'Talie': /n=.ta.lje/ or /nta.lje/?
I would expect a separate syllable in both cases.

My question would rather be whether the separate syllable is a pure
nasal or whether it gets a weak prothetic vowel.

> And if a vowel precedes a word with an initial nasal+stop, will the
> nasal be moved to the previous syllable: 'ku mperie' /kum.pe.rje/ or
> /ku.mpe.rje/ or /ku.m=.pe.rje/?  The decision is influential since
> open and closed syllables select different vowel allophones:
>
>    /kum.pe.rje/   =  [kUm.pe:.rje:]
>    /ku.mpe.rje/   =  [ku:.mpe:.rje:]
>    /ku.m=.pe.rje/ =  [ku:.m=.pe:.rje:]
That's a good question. I was trying to think of what the case is in
Maltese, which has words with a similar structure, e.g. ndirizz
"address"; in the definite form, it becomes l-indirizz with an extra
-i-. I _think_ that the n- in ndirizz is a separate syllable and that
it might even have a slight "i" in front of it (and there are words
which take an initial i- when following a word ending in consonant but
don't when following a word ending in vowel -- for example, (i)nkiteb
"it was written", where you might have "jew inkiteb" (or it was
written) but "u nkiteb" (and it was written), if I am not mistaken).

However, I'm not sure of the rules and don't have books handy.

Also, the case of things such as skola/l-iskola "(the) school" make it
less straightforward to assume that the initial letter is a separate
syllable: I imagine those two words are syllabified sko.la and
lis.ko.la, respectively. I've asked my informant for clarification :)

> I don't know what has happened in Sicilian.  I only see that they
> *write* initial nasals -- I have never heard it, nor have I seen any
> descriptions of this level of detail.  So if you know more, please
> share!
I wish I knew more about Maltese; a fair number of words with the
properties you describe were borrowed from Sicilian. (Now I also know
what the Italian language is "it-Taljan" in Maltese; I had wondered
where the initial i had gone, and didn't know this about Sicilian.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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