Plosive-liquid clusters in euskara borrowed from IE?

Nik Taylor fortytwo at ufl.edu
Tue Apr 27 04:55:00 UTC 1999


Inaki Agirre Perez wrote:
> I wonder how is it that a language which rejects clusters and plosive
> initial words is so kind to produce imitative or expresive words within
> these parameters. Not to say the 'm' problem. I would bet that less of
> 10% of imitative/nursery/expresive words commit the well-established
> phonotactics of Pre-Basque. Is this normal? Or Basque got its quite rich
> expresiveness just in modern times?

Well, I can think of a number of onomotopoeic (sp?) words in English
which violate normal phonotactics, such as "pshaw" /pSa/, "tsk tsk"
which normally indicates the dentalveolar click, "baa", /b&/, where /&/
is normally not allowed in open syllables.

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