reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) (LONG)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"Alan R. King" <mccay at redestb.es> wrote:

>In "Polish" Yiddish
>there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in
>the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and
>voiceless consonants contrast.

It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to
Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless
ditinction word-finally.  Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or
an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by
Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to
begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention.  I don't
know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced
consonants.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam