From: Eric Christopherson (christopea28@uww.edu)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 06:50:26 EST
On Friday, May 03, 2002 1:03 am, Adam Walker wrote:
> Okay, here I am back with another quandry. I'm trying to decide how
> L-clusters develop. I'm looking at CL, PL, and FL and I've come up with
> three possible senarios. Are any of them inherently implausible? Any of
> them especially appealing? At present I'm leaning toward the third choice.
>
> 1st option
>
> CL > /kl/
> PL > /pj/
> FL > /S/
I like the last two, but I'm having trouble with /kl/ staying as is. Granted,
you could have a native development of /kl/ > /cj/ or whatever, but have
learned borrowings use /kl/; this happens at least in Spanish, as in the
doublet llave (native) : clave (borrowed from CL).
>
> 2nd option
>
> CL > /kr/
> PL > /pr/
> FL > /fr/
>
> 3rd option
>
> CL > /pl/
> PL > /fl/
> FL > /S/
I actually like /kl/ > /pl/, but once again I'm having trouble with the fact
that the last one involves a palatalization and the others don't. As for the
/k/ itself becoming /p/, it's unusual but I think it could work since you
also have /kt/ > /pt/ (and velars and bilabials are supposed to be
acoustically sound much more similar to each other than either is to dentals,
so occasional switches between them are not unheard of).
[...]
> I'm also trying to decide what to do with initial S-clusters. I know
> Spanish, Portuguese and French (and I assume Catalan and Occitan?) add an
> epenthetic vowel. I know Italian (and IIRC Romanian) doesn't. What does
> Romansh do? Sardinian? Sicilian? Does anyone know if North African
> (Algeria & Tunisia) Arabic likes initial "S", "F", etc. or no? What about
> "R"?
I think Arabic in general dislikes initial consonant clusters, both with and
without /s/; usually a prothetic /i/ is used. Not sure what you mean by "R",
but I assume you're referring to the second option. In that case, that's the
ordinary outcome in Portuguese.
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