6.176 Sum: C gemination (syntactic)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-6-176. Thu 09 Feb 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 236
Subject: 6.176 Sum: C gemination (syntactic)
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Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 21:20:52 +0200
From: Claude.Boisson at mrash.fr (Claude Boisson)
Subject: Sum: C gemination (syntactic)
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Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 21:20:52 +0200
From: Claude.Boisson at mrash.fr (Claude Boisson)
Subject: Sum: C gemination (syntactic)
Content-Length: 10885
Summary of data on syntactic gemination of consonants
A couple of weeks ago I posted a query on what I termed "syntactic
gemination", for which I got information from no fewer than 15 respondents.
I am very grateful to them all. Here they are, listed in alphabetical order
:
List of the 15 respondents:
Prathima Christdas (prathima.christdas at um.cc.umich.edu)
Vincent DeCaen (decaen at epas.utoronto.ca)
Lance Eccles (Lance.Eccles at mq.edu.au)
Maik Gibson (llrgbson at reading.ac.uk)
David Gil (ELLGILD at NUSVM.BITNET)
Ralf Grosserhode (Afrikanistik2 at uni-bayreuth.de)
Jacques Guy (j.guy at trl.OZ.AU)
Marcia Haag (haag at monk.nhn.uoknor.edu)
Mark Robert Hale (hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca)
Bruce Nevin (bnevin at LightStream.COM)
John Phillips (john at ccyi.ccy.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp)
Mari Siiroinen (SIIROINEN at cc.Helsinki.FI)
Norbert Strade (lingnost at hum.aau.dk)
Mark Verhijde (Mark.Verhyde at let.ruu.nl)
Caroline R. Wiltshire (wiltshir at minerva.cis.yale.edu)
The term "syntactic gemination" was not specific enough, as I had in mind
only gemination at word boundaries, and not word-internal gemination at
morpheme boundaries. Nevertheless I will mention such cases as have been
pointed out by respondents. Besides, in my haste, I had forgotten to
mention Classical Greek, which I had also taken into account in the
preliminary version of my paper.
Here are the data:
A Syntactic gemination at word-boundary
A.1 - Italian
This is the "raddoppiamento sintattico" of Central and Southern Italian.
Nevertheless the conditions under which this appears seem to vary
considerably among the dialects (and the speakers ?). For instance, the
example "a casa" [a 'kkasa], taken from Lepschy & Lepschy (1981) is not
accepted in the dialect of an Italian colleague at my university.
A.2 & A.3 - Biblical Hebrew and Phenician
In these languages the definite article /ha/ triggers gemination of the
initial consonant of the following word (except for certain consonants).
For instance, in BH, we have /su:s/ (horse), but /ha ssu:s/ (the horse).
The same would seem to apply to Phenician (see the grammars by Segert, van
den Branden), although we have only one epigraphic attestation in Punic.
The explanation is that a proto-article is reconstructed as */han/ or
*/hal/, so that */hal su:s/) */has su:s/, then reinterpreted as /ha
ssu:s/. This hypothesis has been connected with the Arabic data : the final
C of the article /?al/ is assimilated to the initial C of the following
word (at least for the socalled "sun" Cs). For instance: /?as samak/ (the f
ish).
46or Arabic, Gibson adds this:
In Tunisian Arabic there is a clearer case (@ is schwa):
shaaf- at t 'saw-3SF' "She saw"
shaaf- at tt-u 'saw-3SF-3SM' "She saw him"
The doubling is done to maintain syllable structure, but this is not the20
normal way. We would normally expect the elision of @, to shaaf-t-u, but20
this does not happen in the 3S Feminine past.
A.4 - Classical Greek
In Attic Greek word-initial /r-/ goes to /rr-/ under certain conditions
after a word ending in a short final V. In epic texts, or in other
dialects, this gemination is extended to other sonants: /l-, m-, n-/. We
even find /pp-/ attested in Boeotian
These four languages were the only instances known to me when I posted the
query. Incidentally, note that they are different from the cases of Latin
"hic" and "hoc", which were pronounced /hikk/ and /hokk/ before a word
beginning with a V. The form /hokk/ is original (and /hikk/ analogically
modelled after it), so that diachrony forces us to say that /hokk/ is
simplified into /hok/ before a C-initial word.
Here are now the additional data kindly supplied by my respondents, which I
paste freely.
A.5 - Finnish (Eccles, Siiroinen, Strade)
There is consonant gemination at word boundaries in certain cases in
Finnish. It is morphologically conditioned though it is "syntactic".
Several morphemes or forms trigger it: imperative 2nd person singular (ota
'take'/ otas se 'take it'), allative case (annan sinulle 'I-give to-you' /
annan sinullek kirjan 'I-give to-you a book'), most of the nouns ending in
-e (kirje 'a letter'/kirjet tuli 'a letter arrived') and so on.
Other examples:
In some negative forms: *en mene sinne* (I don't go there), pronounced20
*en menes sinne*
negation +V-stem +there
verb (go) 20
1.sg.
The same in imperative:* a"la" mene sinne* (don't go there!),20
pronounced: 20
*a"la" menes sinne*
neg.verb
imp. 2. sg.
Also in the so called "1. infinitive":
*Ha"nen pita"isi tulla ta"nne* (he/she ought to20
come here), pron: *................tullat ta"nne* 20
inf.1 here
20
The background for this gemination is the historical loss of a final
consonant in the suffix-less verbal stem and in the mentioned infinitive
form. This consonant was assimilated to a following consonant. While it
disappeared without any trace in an end position or in front of a vowel,
the gemination of the following consonant was retained. This feature isn't
marked in orthography.
A.6 & A.7 - Tamil and Malayalam (Christdas, Wiltshire)
Tamil has gemination of word initial stops following words with some case
markings (accusative at least). A brief account can be found in Christdas,
Prathima (1987) "On constraining the power of lexical phonology: evidence
from Tamil" in McDonough, J. and Plunkett (eds) Proceedings of NELS 17,
volume 1:122-146.20
Syntactic gemination is also found in Malayalam, a closely related language.
A.8 - Celtic languages (Phillips)
The Celtic languages have "mutations", changes to the beginnings of words
due to their syntactic environment. Types of mutations include prefixing of
h or n to a vowel and voicing, devoicing, nasalising, etc., of consonants.
One of the mutations in Old Irish was gemination. The Welsh spirant
mutation is historically cognate with Irish gemination, e.g. ci "dog", but
tri chi "three dogs", cath a chi "a cat and a dog", though gemination in
Old Irish occurred in a much wider range of environments.
Some of the mutations in Breton are realised phonetically as gemination,
though spelt otherwise.
On other cases of C-mutation, see the mention by Verhijede below (Fulla,
Southern Paiute).
A.9 - The Kelantan dialect of Malay (Gil)
In the Kelantan dialect of Malay, agents of passive clauses (ie.
"by"-phrases) are marked not with a preposition (as in standard Malay),
but, rather, by gemination of the initial consonant.
CB: If I understand this correctly, the preposition has been ellipted?
B - Word-internal syntactic gemination
Word-internal syntactic gemination seems to be widespread, probably more
than gemination at word-boundary. As pointed out by Nevin, in many
languages, some phonotactic effects apply only in certain syntactically
defined domains, for example, in roots or in verb stems, but not in
affixes. Hale adds that the number of languages which show this process is
quite large. For instance there are some Oceanic examples. At any rate,
both Sanskrit and (if the meter is to be believed) and preClassical
(Homeric) Greek show such processes.
Here are a few specific instances:
B.1 - Classical Greek
Word-internal /r/ is geminated to /rr/ after the augment or after a vowel in
compounds, variably.
B.2 - Choctaw (Haag)
Choctaw (a Muskogean lg of N. America)has an inflectional form (for aspect
marking) that involves deformation of the stem such that a medial consonant
is geminated, or /y/ is inserted an geminated if there are not the
requisite number of syllables. So we have falama `return' becoming
fallaama `finally return' while ala `arrive' becomes ayyaala `finally arriv
e'.
B.2 - Sakao (Guy)
Sakao is a language spoken at Espiritu Santo,, in Vanuatu (formerly
New-Hebrides). When the direct object is incorporated in the verb, the
initial C of the verb is geminated.
Examples, with sOn 3D to hunt/shoot with a bow, EnEs 3D fish:
mOsOn EnEs 3D he is fishing fish with a bow (now)
but:
mOssOnEs 3D he fishes fish with a bow (generally), il peche a l'arc
Analysis:
mV- 3eme p. sg. realis
ssOn20
nEs (( EnEs with disappearance of the compulsory article V-,
then simplification of the two n's inro one n)
NB: O 3D open o (IPA "open o" in Pullum & Ladusaw, p. 117)
E 3D open e (IPA epsilon)
B.3 - Biblical Hebrew
Gil adds this on Hebrew:
In Biblical Hebrew the 2nd binyan ("pi99el") is formed by reduplication of
the 2nd root consonant, together with the appropriate choice of vowels.
Now in most part, the binyan system is considered "derivational" and hence
not, strictly speaking, syntactic; however, in some cases, the 2nd binyan
is the "transitive" or "causitive" of the first, in which case gemination
(plus vowel pattern) does have a syntactic function.
Let me end by a more theoretical note, quoting Verhijde:
Your question touches upon the fields of interaction between
morphology-syntax and phonology (prosody). Now as far as I know, all
C-gemination is in itself strictly phonological. Thus if I understand your
question correctly, you wish to find out whether there are languages that
appear have morphological/syntactic triggers for C-gemination. There is a
huge bulk of material on Sandhi-effects, as for example the Italian RS case
you mentioned in your query. Perhaps Ellen Kaisse (1985), _Connected
Speech_ may be of some help. Now with respect to your query: I was thinking
(from a phonological point of view) that C-gemination is really: share
melody. Or in more abstract terms: SHARE [X]. If this is correct, then for
example C-mutation (like in Fula, Southern Paiute and Celtic languages)
under syntactic considerations may become very interesting for you.
Thans again to all of you who generously answered my question.
Claude Boisson
Universite Lumiere,
Lyon, France
(Claude.Boisson at mrash.fr)
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