[tied] Re: crows and the glottalic theory

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:24:13 -0000, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> The odd thing is that the spelling does not reflect the lenitions,

so

> we have <t> for what is later t- / -d-, and <d> for what is later d-

/

> -dd-. Perhaps this reflects [th-]/[-t-] vs. [d-]/[-D-] (there is
> also -tt-, later -t- for aspirated medial [th]).

Is this so odd? I would expect the lenitions to apply to the Old
Welsh pronunciation of Latin, whose spelling should not change, and
so what we see would also be natural for writing Old Welsh itself.

> The Latvian broken tone represents an old acute (rising) tone in an
> initial syllable, where the stress used to be on another syllable in
> the word (in Latvian the stress has been always retracted to the

first

> syllable). So Lith. líepa, galvà = Latv. lie~pa (long tone =
> originally accented acute), gal^va (broken tone = originally
> unaccented acute). The Baltic circumflex (~) is continued in the
> Latvian falling tone (`).

Unfortunately, I can't locate a description of the Latvian broken
tone. Is it like the Danish stød?

We don't seem to have found an example of tone (or stress)
glottalising a word-initial consonant. The only example I could dig
up of a tone producing glottalisation is the low falling tone (21 on
a pitch scale of 1 to 5) of the Lungchow dialect of Southern Zhuang,
historically the development of Tai tone class C (mai tho in Thai)
after proto-Tai voiced consonants. Words with this tone end in a
glottal stop; the preceding segment is a vowel or nasal. (Words of
tone classes A to C end in vowels or nasals in proto-Tai.) After
proto-Tai unvoiced consonants Tai tone class C is realised, in this
dialect, as a rising tone 24, without a glottal stop. Even if the
glottal stop in the falling tone 21 is not proto-Tai, it still isn't
word initial.

Richard.