Probably too late, now

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:23 PM -0400 9/29/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On 9/29/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>  At 4:41 PM -0400 9/29/07, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>  >Well, until someone comes up with a phonological analysis of English
>>  >that can account for the occurrence of [-rkt-],
>>
>>  Maybe it has something to do with the stress pattern.  I have no
>>  trouble with, say, "Mark Twain" or even "Arcturus", but I've never
>>  pronounced the /k/ in "Arctic", even though if I had to guess, I'd
>>  have guessed it was there historically.
>
>It's not just anticipatory/regressive dissimilation?
>
"lactic" should sponsor such dissimilation (and has the same stress
pattern) but I've never heard "latic", so maybe we need to invoke a
combo of dissimilation and -rkt- cluster avoidance?

LH

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