Re: Celtic and Afro-Asiatic?

Ph.D wrote:
> Patrick Littell wrote:
> >
> > . . .  Malagasy (VOS) exhibits initial consonant mutation.
>
> Do you have any examples?  I've been reading a textbook of
> Malagasy. I'm about halfway through it, and I don't recall seeing
> any examples of initial consonant mutation.
>
There are morphophonemic and sandhi changes that affect certain initial C--
usually in prefixation and compounding, as well as certain finals in
suffixation.

Here are some examples cited in the intro. of Abinal & Malzac's dictionary
(sorry, I didn't look up the glosses...)

n+b > mb or m: man-babo > mambabo, mamabo

n+f > mp or m: an-o > ampo; man-fantsika > mamantsika

n+h > ng or nk: man-harona > mangarona; (compd.) voa ny hazo > voankaz(I
don't recall offhand, but suspect "ng, nk" = [Ng, Nk] since the spelling is
French based.

n+l > nd: man-lany > mandany

n+z > nj: man-zehy > manjehy

There may be cases where a word with /f-/, say, may have a related form with
/m-/, but it would be in all likelihood be due to a lost derivational prefix
of some sort.

Final -a in many cases is (historically) epenthetic, and deletes in
suffixation. (e.g. fantsika and harona above = underlying /fantsik/,
/haron/and are stressed on the far- and ha- syllables).  S0--

tapaka+hazo > tapa-kazo
mitarika+lalana > mitari-dalana
etc.

The prefix changes, allowing for sound changes (in particular Malg. n < *N),
are comparable to the morphophonemics of Malay and many other AN languages--

(e = schwa in Ml,Jav,Bug. exs.)
meN+putar > memutar 'to turn around' (note Javanese puter ~muter, and Malg.
has cognate fótitra 'id.'~fa/motérana 'caus.' ?/fa-fotitr-an/)
meN+beli > membeli 'to buy' (note Bugis base form melli)
meN+surat > menyurat 'to write' (cf. Tagalog sulat ~manulat)

So these are "mutations", yes, but not at all equatable to those seen in
Celtic languages, IMNSO :-))))