Re: Droppin' Ds

On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:

>CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>>It's just odd to drop esses in only one position. But I suppose you
>>could formulate a special sub-rule for the group esC- (where C is any
>>consonant). Thus -> epaa (<espada); etao (<estado); equela (<escuela).
>>But tesorero, carros, etc. Like "S remains unchanged except when found
>>in initial clusters (i.e. esC-), where it originally became H, then
>>dropped out." though using a wording closer to what you find in the
>>book.
>
>Ahhh......i think I may use that as the rule :). Thanks for that idea
>there!
Not as famous as Werner's Law, perhaps, but I like the sound of it:
Brown's Law.

>>
>>
>>>Oh yes, another rule I was thinking of is:
>>>
>>>- nn becomes /Nj/: anno > añgo  /aNjo/  . Of course I have absolutely no
>>>reasoning for that change, it's mostly just a fun sound, I think.
>>
>>I've heard Spanish speakers do all sorts of wierd things with nasals
>>(whether they should be in a place or not); so this rule may not be
>>too far out after all!
>
>There is a girl in my conversational Spanish class who is a native speaker
>(well, she can speak very well, but forgets some. Her family is San
>Salvadorean i believe), pronounces her name as /aNhela/ , where i would
>expect /anhela/.
Yes, this is one of them. I may be wrong, but I hear this sort of
thing as a very close or tense sounding /N/.

Padraic.

>
>I thought that rule up because it seems like with it being /nj/, it
>would
>be easier on the mouth to cause n to become an /N/ (maybe not, since /nj/
>is palatal anyway...).
>