Re: More Þrjótran

Henrik Theiling skrev:
> Hi!
>
> Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> writes:
>
>>Question: how comes EGÔ becomes _é_ and not _ég_?
>>The latter would be tremendously cool for obvious
>>reasons!
>
>
> Yeah.  (But I still have 'ert' and 'er' for the 2nd and 3rd person
> singular of 'to be', which creates similar fun. :-))
>
> Anyway -- 'ego:' would regularly come out as 'eu' (disyllabic,
> i.e. [E:Y]), which is a bit strange.  The reason is probably missing
> rules in the sound change history file since I did not encounter a
> Germanic word with a similar structure.  Maybe it could have become
> 'jo:' by a hiatus preventing accent shift rule.
>
> Anyway -- the 'g' would probably not survive, it is often shifted to
> /h/ and later lost in most cases (sometimes triggering further sound
> changes before vanishing, though).  Compare _vega_ and past tense
> _vo:_.  Final -g in Icelandic is usually from final -k in Old Norse
> (e.g. _ek_).  And -k would be hard to produce from 'ego:'.
>
> (Ok, ok, some -g do survive, e.g. in verb forms (_flaug_ 'flew'), so I
> might find a way...)
>
> At this point, I modified history and decided that a pronoun does not
> necessarily adhere strictly to general sound shift rules since its
> usage frequency is different.  So I shortened the final 'o' of the
> Latin source and 'e:' is the result, which I found quite cool,
> too. :-)
I've been thinking of this.  In this particular word
EGÔ the G probably disappeared early in Romance, since
all Romance languages point to *EÔ or *IÔ, so you
would probably end up with _jó_, but I don't think
intervocalic G should disappear generally: in North
Germanic *x disappears in most positions (e.g.
*slaxan > _slá_) but intervocalic *g remains: (e.g.
*slaginaz > _slaginn_, *dagaz > _dagr_.  Where did
you get the idea that intervocalic *g should disappear?
If you are thinking of Verner's law I don't think
you should apply that, since it clearly antedates
your timeframe.

>>FWIW I think it is a mistake to say that _au_
>>is *phonemically* /9y/, although there can be
>>no doubt that it is *phonetically* [9y], since
>>there is no /y/ phoneme in Icelandic.
>
>
> But the whole diphthong is the phoneme -- it does not need to consist
> of parts that are phonemes.
What can I say?  _Sententiae inter se differunt._
I guess you can guess the possible arguments in
favor of identifying the parts of diphthongs with
existing monophthongs of the language, so I won't
hash them out. :-)

>>...
>>native speakers make: when they want to spell this
>>diphthong "as it is pronounced" they invariably
>>write it _öí_ -- i.e. the rounding of the glide
>>[y_^] is perceived as an assimilation to the
>>rounded [9], the diphthong being *phonemically* /9i/.
>>...
>
>
> Sure.  Just like Germans do for /OY/, which is written _oi_.  In fact
> _oi_ in the German pronunciation of _Khoisan_ is essentially the same
> as _eu_ is _heute_.
Of course.  It is a common and natural assimilatin.
In fact it would not surprise me if many speakers
of English have [OY] in words like _choice_, yet it is
phonemicized as /OI/ just because the language has /O/ and
/I/ monophthongs, but no */Y/.  The reason for having some
depth in a phonology, as opposed to a broad phonetic
transcription, is exactly that native speakers' intuitions
normally point in that direction, rather than economy of
description.

>><rant value="Benct's Icelandic transcription beef">
>>FWIW I notate _ö_ as /9/ since *phonetically* it is
>>clearly [9], and also it corresponds to _e_ which is
>>best regarded as /E/.
>
>
> This is a good idea, I think I will adopt this.  (BTW, I
> perceive Icelandic long /E/ as [e:E)] for the speakers I
> heard.)
That's quite possible.  The same type of realization is
AFAIK the rule in Faroese and common in Swedish and Norwegian
too, e.g. in the speech of yours truly, at least in closed
syllables -- I have long /i/ [i:e], long /e/ [e:E] and
long /E/ [E:e].  Go figure out the rule! :-)


> **Henrik
>
>

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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