Re: Mutations in General

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

Reply