thy thigh etc. (external sandhi in English)

[Paul S. Cohen]

On Thu, 17 May 2001 12:31:14 +0300, Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
wrote:

[snip]
>'Through' is also often a function word, although not invariably
>since it is also used as an adverb and an adjective.
>Furthermore, it has a lexicalized stressed variant 'thorough'
>(always an adjective), something that is characteristic of
>function words.  I suspect that what keeps 'through' out of the
>group of function words with initial [D] is that it doesn't
>appear to be a word with a pronominal/deictic 'th-' base as the
>other members of the group do.
[snip]

I submit that what keeps _through_ out of all this is that, unlike the
other closed-class/function words, what follows the initial fricative is
not a vowel. That is, the word does not (and did not) afford the correct
phonetic environment.  In fact, I would posit that word-initial (and
syllable-initial) voiced fricative + /r/ (or /l/) are phonotactically un-
English.