Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2
Hardy, Frank
HardyF at gc.adventist.org
Mon Dec 17 14:23:47 UTC 2007
We have something similar to this in Hawaiian, where English "s" comes over into Hawaiian as /k/. A seasonally appropriate example of this is the word "Christmas" (Hawaiian /kalikimaka/), where "ch" = /k/, "r" = /l/, "t" = /k/, "m" = /m/, and "s" = /k/. This leads to a first hypothetical intermediate form *klikmak, where consonant substitutions have been done but nothing more. A second hypothetical intermediate form is *kalikimak, since no two consonants can appear immediately adjacent to each other. They must be separated by vowels. The final step in the derivation is to add an obligatory word-final vowel, thus /kalikimaka/, the correct surface form. This is not an isolated example within the language. English "s" routinely comes over into Hawaiian as /k/.
The reason for this in Hawaiian might be different from the corresponding reason in Udi, however. Hawaiian only has 12 phonemically distinct sounds, and five of these are vowels. So with an inventory of only seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w) one's choices are extremely limited. One strategy would be to let a letter simply drop. (English "r" sometimes does this, although more frequently it corresponds to Hawaiian /l/.) In such a context it might be a matter of searching for something - anything - that could serve as a counter to maintain a foreign sound's place within a word, whether it makes sense phonologically or not. In Caucasian languages, by contrast, where there might be 48 or so distinct consonant sounds, the reason for choosing a sound with so little intuitive support would require a different level of explanation.
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Today's Topics:
1. sound replacement in loans (Wolfgang Schulze)
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:29:10 +0100
From: Wolfgang Schulze <W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans
To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Message-ID: <4764D3C6.7060207 at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
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Dear friends,
Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally
addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.:
Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I
came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in
loans: A palatal voiceless fricative (<sh>) is (systematically?)
replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have
come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete:
What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound
changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has
a <sh> in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced
pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor
language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately,
I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as
long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian
Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect
the copyright of others....]
Thanks for any suggestions....
Best wishes,
Wolfgang
--
----------------------------------------------------------
*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang
Schulze
*
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/Primary contact:
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Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft
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Katedra Germanistiký
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