Re: another silly phonology question
| From: | Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, December 4, 2000, 3:53 |
|---|
On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 02:35:34PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Keith Alasdair Mylchreest wrote:
>
> > In the English East Midlands we used to say /'s@m@t/ for "something", where
> > does that come from? "Anything" and "nothing" were usually /owt/ and /nowt/
>
> "Somewhat", "aught", and "naught" in conventional orthography. This represents
> the combination of a lexical difference and and a phonological difference.
So /"s@m@t/ doesn't come from *some+wiht? And is "something" an older
meaning of somewhat (rather than its current meaning of "to a certain
extent")? It seems to me that would be logical, since we have somewhere and
somehow.
--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo