--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Sean Whalen <stlatos@...> wrote:
> Many languages lack sr- or str-. If a language
> allows s to be placed before a C in the onset less
> sonorant than it the language may have both (though
> perhaps only str-, as in English). Since for other
> reasons I added f, there's no reason not to think that
> fr- existed.
It wouldn't be a peculiar gap if it didn't exist, especially if the
origin of **f should lead it to have a limited distribution.
Siamese doesn't have initial fl- or fr-, though it has p(h)l-, p(h)r-
, thr- and k(h)r-. (I am also inclined to believe the thr- given by
dictionaries for English loans.) It was very interesting to see
that the name for Macdonalds' ice cream, 'MacFlurry', transliterates
back from Siamese as 'MacFurry' (the vowel used in Siamese is
conventionally approximated by the vowel of English 'furry', not
that of 'hurry'). This suggests that English loans (such as 'flat',
which is used in the name of at least one apartment block) are not
even having a marginal impact on this aspect of Thai phonology. (By
contrast, final /s/ has been established from English, and final /f/
has at least a marginal presence.)
They may not have existed in Proto-Tai either, which had a richer
collection of initial clusters. Fang-Kuei Li (or has he
posthumously reverted to Li Fang-Kuei?) 'uncertainly'
and 'unreliably' (his words) reconstructs _one_ word in fl- and fr-,
namely *fruuk 'tie, bind', but the Northern Tai dialects point to
Proto-Tai *vruuk instead. Li describes the reconstruction of the
cluster *vr- as merely 'uncertain'. As there is evidence of Proto-
Tai voicing alternations
Weera Ostapirat's research on the Kra dialects suggests that one
origin of Proto-Tai *f- is Proto-Kra-Tai (=Proto-Tai-Kadai = Proto-
Daic) is *l(&)p-, in which case one would not expect to see *fr- or
*fl-.
Richard.