From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 53176
Date: 2008-02-14
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> --- Richard Wordingham <richard@...> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" wrote:
> > > Word stems with initial vowel are automatically
> > > preceded by
> > > a glottal stop: <aus> [?aUs] 'out', <beirren>
> > > [b@'?iR@...]
> > > 'disconcert', <enteisen> [Ent'?aIz@...] 'de-ice,
> > > defrost' (where <be-> and <ent-> are prefixes).
> > The prediction depends on identifying morpheme or
> > syllable boundaries.
> > What happens when morpheme boundaries become
> > obscured as words go out
> > of use?
> Can you give me an e-xample bef-ore my thoughts go
> aw-ry? I don't want to be misl-ed.
_Enteisen_ above is a good example - without the morpheme boundary, it
would be *[En'taIz@...]. I couldn't lay my hands on a good minimal
pair, but taken from
http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~hr/lang/dt-vowels.html we have:
'There is no glottal stop between two vowels in the same morpheme,
e.g. Theater [te'A:tEr], nor between root and ending (compare Malerei
[,mA:l@'rae] and Osterei ['?o:stEr,?ae]). Some compositions are so
common that they are now perceived as a single root so that the
glottal stop between the morphemes is lost: vollends ['fOlEnts],
reagieren [reA'gi:r@...], but reanimieren [re?Ani'mi:r@...] (the standard
suggests no glottal stop for the first of these and an optional one
for the other two).'
Not everyone tells the same story - I also found:
'/?/ The[?]ater, [?]Apfel (glottal stop)' -
http://www.spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de/~thies/HTHS_WiSe2004-05/bente_letkemann_van-der-most.pdf
This is not the only case in German where morpheme boundaries may be
interpreted as triggering different allophones - another example cited
elsewhere is:
<Kuchen> 'cakes' [kux&n] v. <Kuhchen> 'little cow' [kuç&n]
(/&/ = schwa).
However, some Germans claim that /x/ and /ç/ are distinct phonemes.
Richard.