On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:46:47 -0000, "aquila_grande
<
aquila_grande@...>" <
aquila_grande@...> wrote:
>I think there is a tendensy in modern Germanic languages to shift
>from a voised - unvoiced -opposition to an aspirated -unaspirated -
>opposition.
>
>I think English is in this transformation process.
>
>In Scandinavian, Danish, has by now an aspirated - unaspirated
>opposition.
>
>In Norwegian that is more conservative, the opposition is still
>voiced-unvoiced, and aspiration or not aspiration counts very little.
I'm pretty sure this isn't anything recent, and has been a feature of
Germanic for thousands of years, since the beginning: the Grimm shift
(p > f, t > รพ, k > h) and the High German shift (p > pf, t > ts, k >
kx) can be explained in no other way. If aspiration is not a strong
feature of Norwegian, that's surely an innovation. The most
conservative Nordic language, Icelandic, has no voiced stops at all
(the inventory being: weak unaspirated /b./, hard unaspirated /p/,
weak aspirated /b.h/, hard pre-aspirated /hp/, and hard aspirated
/ph/).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...