Re: Phonological questions, bunch 2

>Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting John Vertical:
> >
> > >And I'd be somewhat surprized if stop _phonemes_ other than /?/ were
>created
> > >by epenthetic stop insertion.
> > > > Why? omre > ombre > o~bre > obre seems easy enough to imagine ...
>
>One doesn't just have to imagine it. In ancient Greek, the accusative of
>"man" (adult male) was _andra_ <-- *anra (cf. Nom. ane:r, Voc aner).
>
>In the modern language, the 'official' form is [andra] /antra/ but in some
>dialects it is [adra]
>
>The phonemic status of [d] in MG is controversial; but arguably those
>dialects have [d] without preceding nasal do have phonemic /d/.
>
>--
>Ray
An interesting example. But nasal stops are stops too, aren't they?

Now, creation of nasal stops from nasal vowels would be more like it... even
if I have never heard of nasal vowels developing from something else than
oral vowel + nasal stop. Which leads me to another question on long-term
results of sound change: how is nasalization created? One obvious solution
are voiced (oral) stops, but are there any others? I could theoretically
imagine nasal vowels evolving from a tonal system, eg /V_m/ -> /V~/. But
again, I've never heard of this occuring.

John Vertical

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