lenis and glottalic

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

>JER (now): Do you mean that the Dutch voiced d comes from a voiceless
>lenis d - how can that be known?

In theory, it's also possible that only Dutch maintains the
original situation and all the other Germanic languages have
changed the voiceless/voiced opposition to fortis/lenis or
aspirated/non-aspirated.  But that would be no help at all in
explaining phenomena like the High German consonant shift.  I
believe the evidence from the Dutch dialects also indicates that
the loss of aspirated stops in standard Dutch is secondary.

>And that English lenes are voiceless??

They are in initial and final position, and generally whenever
preceded _or_ followed by voicelessness.  They are fully voiced
only when preceded _and_ followed by voicedness (e.g.
intervocalically).  The defining characteristic of the English
lenes (and I believe that goes for Scandinavian and High/Low
German as well) is not voice, but lack of aspiration.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam