Re: English [dZ]

On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 14:56 +0200, John Vertical wrote:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> >Quoting Tristan McLeay:
>
> > > In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
> > > Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
> > > understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
> > > vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
> > > with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
>
> Say, how does this fit together with the MnE soft g as in "ginger" etc? A
> 2nd wave of palatalization perhaps?
Borrowings from French. By the form of French that supplied us with
borrowings, k > ts (borrowed as /s/) and g > dZ in palatalising
environments. So "ginger" has always had /dZ/ in English (well actually
it comes partly from OE _gingifer_ and partly from Fr. _gingivre_
dictionary.com informs me... I expect the OE would've been pronounced
[jindZiv@r] so perhaps that particular case isn't completely true ...
but for other words of the sort you're talking about...). The
orthography's not always a reliable guide; the word "jelly" comes via
French from La. _gelare_ (cf. "gelatin", "congeal").

And yes, that also makes me have to speak of another source of /dZ/ that
I forgot of: In addition to palatalised /gg/ becoming [ddZ],
palatalised /g/ following /n/ became [dZ], thus "singe" from OE _sengan_
[sendZan], and my guess at the OE pronunciation of _gingifer_.

Some other cases of /dZ/ crop up from earlier /dz/. I think this change
sometimes happened upon borrowing into English, and other times happened
during Old French or before. In fact, I think "ginger" is one such word
ultimately deriving from a Greek word beginning in z- which I think was
at one stage pronounced [dz]. Ray probably knows?

And the last source of /dZ/ that I can think of now that I forgot to
mention before is that in "graduate" or some pronunciations (like mine)
of "dune", "during" etc. Related to two sources of /j/ I forgot to
mention in words like "cute", and words like "pew".

And of course miscellaneous borrowings.

So perhaps a more complete more summary summary:

/j/: Inherited (year). From OE palatalised /g/ (yard). In "long
u" (cute). In reflex of /ew/ (new).

/dZ/: Borrowed from Fr. /dZ/ which came from La. /j/ (gin),
palatalised /g/ (gelatin). From OE palatalised /gg/ (bridge) and /g/
in /ng/ (singe). From foreign [dz]. From earlier /dj/ (graduate).

> > > > Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> > > > /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
> > >
> > > I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
> > > palatal fricative...
> >
> >Still makes more sense than Spanish, which went something like
> >[j]->[dZ]->[Z]->[S]->[x] (->[h] in many dialects).
And given the Spanish's affinity for [h], I would expect that some
dialects either have deleted it or will shortly...

>
> Whoa. Didn't know Spanish <j> went thru [dZ] too; I lived under the
> impression it was simply something like [j]>[C]>[x].
Languages aren't meant to be simple. They're meant to sneak up on you
from behind when you've let your guard down. It makes life much more
interesting, when you're a language.

--
Tristan