[tied] Re: Monovocalism: sequel

> > BTW, I have a general question about loans in Semitic: if the

loan is

> > vowel-initial in the donor language, does the loaning Semitic
> > language add a suitable (ie. matching the vowel) laryngeal in

front

> > of the vowel?
>
> You're making something out of thin air.

No, I'm asking a question of whether the Semitic-speakers do.

>If a vowel is initial in a
> donor language, a preceding glottal stop would suffice in Proto-

Semitic

> unless the recipients misheard initial aspiration, in which case a
> corresponding aspirate sound would be added. In fact, we often

pronounce

> a glottal stop before a word with initial vowel and aren't even

aware of

> it. Yet, in Semitic, it's a real phoneme.

"We" here meaning those who speak a Germanic language (except
possibly Dutch). You try doing that in French. There's a generalised
non-vowel-dependent Knacklaut in front of word-initial vowels in
those languages. That's why you can sing jazz and rock'n'roll in
those languages, but not opera, since the priority in them is on the
attack (in the musical sense) of the tone (perhaps you could say the
speakers (listeners) thereof are edge-triggered, not level-triggered,
in the electronics sense. Cf, also Tacitus' remark of the 'murmur
fractum' being sought as an ideal for singing in Germania. My
question was whether the Semitic languages substituted more that one
laryngeal?

>

Torsten