Metathesis

[De Reuse, Willem]

There is s and d metathesis in Western Apache.  In certain positions  in the verb word, a sequence ...dis... becomes ...sid...  We are assuming that the ...i.. is epenthetic.  Now on another analysis, this could be rearrangement of the prefixes d- and s-...  I discuss such stuff a bit in a paper in Proceedings of the 2005 Athab. Lgs Conference, ANLC Working Papers, 2005.  This prefix variation is also noticed for Navajo in Keren Rice's "Morpheme Order and Semantic Scope" book (2000:356-357).

Willem de Reuse
________________________________________
From: ATHAPBASCKAN-L [ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on behalf of Seth Cable [scable at LINGUIST.UMASS.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 3:00 PM
To: ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Metathesis

Hi James,

>  As far as I know it's extremely rare in Tlingit, though that could
> be just because I've never looked for it.


That it exists at all in Tlingit is news to me!  What cases do you
have in mind?

> Is there any literature which addresses metathesis in the Athabaskan
> family?


The only thing which comes to mind that's vaguely related is the work
by Joyce McDonough and others on how prefix position in (I think)
Navajo and (I think) some other languages sometimes varies depending
upon the surrounding prefixal material.  If I recall correctly, the
common view on this phenomenon is that the underlying positions of the
prefixes are switched to make a better sounding syllable in the end.
That's certainly kinda like metathesis, if not a definite case of it.
(but, it's got nothing to do with lateral affricates and fricatives
per se, though...)

I wish I could remember the references off the top of my head, but I
think looking through Joyce McDonough's book on Navajo phonology might
put you on the right track...

Best,

-- Seth.

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Seth Cable
scable at linguist.umass.edu
Department of Linguistics
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