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Re: Mutations in General

From:Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...>
Date:Monday, October 21, 2002, 18:52
At 10:25 PM -0500 10/19/02, Anthony M. Miles wrote:
> >Malay has an interesting feature in the prefix me [m@.(C)means the consonant >vanishes >me >me-layang >me-masak >me-nanti >me-nganga /ng/ = [N] >me-nyanyi /ny/ = [n^] >me-rampas >mem >mem-buang >mem-(p)ukul >men >men-dukong >men-(t)ipu >men-chabut >men-jawab >meng >meng-ajar >meng-eja >meng-isi >meng-ukor >meng-gulang >meng-hantor >meng-(k)enal >meny >meny-(s)impar > >I wonder why the voiceless plosives disappear rather than the voiced? And >maybe the [s] of simpar is etymologically a palatal voiceless plosive [c]?
I don't know about the [s] being an etymological *c; Roger might have some ideas on that. On the deletion of the voiceless stop. There is a universal tendency to avoid nasal/voiceless stop sequences (often abbreviated *NC); this tendency is expressed in different ways in different languages and to different degrees. For instance, Malay will allow morpheme-internal NC, as your list shows. But in derived environments, the prohibition is enforced by deleting the voiceless stop (at least with this prefix; this alternation has been the source of a lot of controversy in (morpho-)phonological theorizing in the fairly recent past). In Shoshoni, *NC is enforced by voicing the stop; in Comanche, it is enforced by deleting the nasal (this is a historical rule, though, not one of the synchronic phonology). Dirk -- Dirk Elzinga Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu "It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of fact." - Stephen Anderson

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Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>