French <ai> vs. <oi>

[Martha Ratliff]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

John and all --

When dealing with unwritten languages we do not have the luxury of
confirming textual evidence, but I have recently appealed to the
French development of e > oi in my reconstruction and account of the
development of certain vowels in the Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) family of
Southeast Asia.  I find that for three correspondence sets there is
no other way to link the vowels of one side of the family, Mienic,
which is very conservative with respect to rimes but shows no
evidence of rounding, with the rounded reflexes on the Hmongic side.
So I reconstruct just such a "post consonantal [w]" which I figure
must have disappeared in Mienic.  If anyone wants details, I can
supply them.

Martha


>
>Perhaps others have noticed the instability of post consonantal [w] in
>other languages. It would be good to get further confirming data.
>
>Best wishes,
>John
>

--
Martha Ratliff
Associate Professor
Linguistics Program
Wayne State University
51 W. Warren Ave.
Detroit MI  48202 USA

(313) 577-7646 (office)
(313) 577-0404 (fax)
martha_ratliff at wayne.edu