Re: THEORY: Could Vowel Harmony be a Universal?
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, January 23, 2000, 17:31 |
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At 22:25 -0600 22.1.2000, raccoon@ELKNET.NET wrote:
>
>Sanskrit had something similar to this. I don't remember the exact rules,
>but retroflex consonants and high vowels tend to make dental/alveolar
>consonants such as /t d t_h d_h s/ in the same word become retroflex.
>However, the assimilation is halted if those consonants are separated from
>the original retroflex ones by nasals, or something like that. It seems
>pretty complex to me, and I don't quite grasp how high vowels cause coronals
>to become retroflex. I could understand if they became palatal, but Sanskrit
>has a separate series of palatals, separate from retroflexes.
There are two different rules:
(1) An /s/ following /r/ /u/ /k/ /i/ becomes /.s/ -- called the "ruki" rule!
(2) An /r/ turns an /n/ following in the same word into /.n/, if no
non-labial consonant intervenes.
/BP
B.Philip Jonsson <mailto: bpj@...> <mailto: melroch@...>
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