Re: THEORY: derivation question

FFlores scripsit:

> What happened with "gh" in English? It's always puzzled me
> to have a digraph that is silent sometimes and a fricative
> some other times. After such patterns as seek > sought,
> think > tought, I'd say that (besides Ablaut) a final /kt/
> became /xt/ (<ght>) and then /x/ lengthened the previous
> vowel and disappeared, maybe becoming /h/ at some point.
> This could explain the long vowel in light, might, etc.
So far so perfectly correct.

> But where does the /f/ come from? Is it that final /xt/
> becomes /:t/, but /x.t/ (in different syllables as in laughter)
> becomes /f.t/, with /x/ shifting from velar to labiodental?
AFAIK there's no accounting for which /x/ became /f/: laugh /f/,
enough /f/, right /:/, laughter /f/.

There are some dialects of English that replace final /T/ with /f/:
math /m&f/, for example.  Some speakers of this have learned
the standard pronunciation, but hypercorrect in the word "trough"
/trO:f/ and say /tro:T/ instead.

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.