*gwh in Gmc.

Gabor Sandi g_sandi at hotmail.com
Tue Feb 6 12:44:56 UTC 2001


>From: Thomas McFadden <tmcfadde at babel.ling.upenn.edu>
>Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 14:02:32 -0500 (EST)

>> we would expect /m/ before /p/. But the Gmc. languages have mostly the
>> reflexes of /n/, which is possible before labiovelars like /kw/ (probably
>> being realised as (ng)), but not before true labials. Later occurences of
>> /m/ in Gmc. languages can be easily explained as assimilations.

>Although I favor the assumption of *penkwe over *pempe, i don't think
>this an be used as an argument in its favor.  German is the only place
>where I can find -n- in Gmc. words for five, ON. having fimm, Goth. with
>fimf and OE OFris OS with fi:f (unless I'm missing something).  And in
>fact OHG has fimf next to finf and funf, and I think the fimf might be the
>older.  The change to -n- in HGer. would be an instance of a common
>dissimilation of m to n before f (or at least of a constraint that n is
>the only nasal allowed before f).  Consider Kunft, which is derived from
>some pre-form of kommen.

At the risk of being accused again of not knowing the difference between a
phoneme and a phone, may I suggest that whether we have <m> or <n> before an
<f> (or <v>, for that matter) is a purely orthographic matter?

What we actually have in the case discussed here is a labiodental nasal,
written as an <m> with a right hook in IPA. It does not really matter
whether we assign this phone to the phoneme /m/ or /n/, since we have a
typical case of neutralization in a specific phonetic context (assimilation
to the place of articulation of a following consonant). Therefore, a
language without a highly standardized orthography (such as OHG) could
easily fluctuate in spelling between, e.g., <fimf> and <finf>. We are
certainly not in a position to deduce anything about the earlier nature of
the nasal from what we see in spelling.

It is interesting that, even in contemporary languages, how we spell this
particular nasal is usually determined by the spelling of the following
consonant. In English, we write <information> and <symphony>. There must be
such a strong innate preference for the Latinate convention of <n> before
labiodentals and <m> before labials, that in Spanish (which pronounces <b>
and <v> identically as [b]) we find <invalido> and <cambiar>.

Gabor Sandi



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