Re: Hospitable/hostile (Was: Dipping my toe in the water)

> Date:         Mon, 28 Jan 2002 08:56:10 -0000
> From: jogloran <exponent@...>
> Christophe:
> > But hey, if two words like French deux /d2/ and Armenian erku
> > /Erku/, or English five and Greek pente can be related, I
> > shouldn't be surprised by that one :))) .
> Hehe, it seems like the more contrived ones are always explained by
> the mysterious addition of a suffix or prefix (or both!) :)
But not in these cases...

French /d2/: not too weird, but I'm too lazy to look up how it came to
have a front rounded vowel.

Armenian /Erku/: /d/ and /r/ can both be realized as a flap [4], /w/
often has some velar constriction, and then an epenthetic vowel:

    */dwo/ > [4wo] > [4ku] > /rku/ > /Erku/

(This is _not_ the only example of these sound changes in Armenian).

English /faiv/: /p/>/B/, /e/>/i/ before nasal+stop, assimilation of
labio-velar to a labial in the same word, and syncope are all regular
in Proto-Germanic. English then has assimilation and loss of the nasal
with compensatory lengthening, voicing of the final fricative, and
finally the Great Vowel shift:

    */penk_we/ > /BinB/ (PG) > /fimf/ > /fi:f/ > /fi:v/ > /faiv/

(Classical) Greek /pente/ has the change of labiovelar to dental
before a front vowel, which is totally regular.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)