Your question, Arnaud, is not relevantly put to challenge the phoneme
*/ü/. If the issue of irregularities was the only point you were
trying to make I don't think you broke big news. Sound irregularities
are particularly tricky in Uralic due to the many borrowings in the
more centrally located languages, such as Moksha, Mari and Udmurt.
You should be the first to know, Arnaud, how the comparative method
works, since you are devoting your expertise and effort to look for
regular correspondences between Moksha and Chinese. You don't start
with the irregularities.
First you are supposed to establish the regularities. Only after that
homework properly done, you are able to look at conditioned or
spontaneous deviations from the rules and test your rules. I will
help you only with the first bit although Finno-Ugrian is not the
easiest case in point because of the many sound irregularities.
So i ran through the material for */ü/. The regular correspondence
for Moksha is e. You will find it in words like
*külmä/*külmi `cold'
*künc^i `nail'
*kün'ärä `elbow'
*mün,ä `with (after, behind)'
*nüc^ä `prop'
*n'üktä `pluck, rip, harvest linen'
*nüdi `handle, grip'
*südämi `heart'
*süli `lap'
*sülki `saliva'
*s'üdi `charcoal'
*üli `over, above'
Irrgular ones for Moksha (conditioned?) you will find in words like:
küs'i `ask'
*küji `viper'
*pün,i `hazel-grouse'
*s'üklä `wart, nipple'
*s'üks'i `autumn'
*ükti `1'
*üji `night'
*vüdimi `nucleus, marrow'
And for the benefit of those who don't know the challanges of Uralic:
this modest list is more or less exhaustive for words with original
*/ü/ occuring both in Moksha and Finnish.
The more critical question is that of the uniqueness of the series
and the existance of minimal pairs. The series of correspondences for
*/ü/ resembles somewhat the series for */i/. E.g. Moksha has mostly e
for both. The systemic differences seem to appear at least in Permic
and Baltic-Finnic (I have not looked at Samoyed here). Permic quite
regularly shows a close central vowel where Finnic has /y/ albeit
also vowels like u occure in Udmurt in some words and e in Komi in
others. When Permic has /i/ also Finnic quite regularly has /i/. But
again there are exceptions, some but not all due to spontaneous
i>y in Finnish.
The more particular question, Arnaud, that you put to me about the
deviations in Moksha is for somebody who has studied the sound
history of Moksha in general and borrowings from Mari, Permic and
Finnic in particular. Maybe yourself?
Jouppe
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: jouppe
>
> Could this system do away with ü and ï then??
> Jouppe
>
> ==================
> Hello again, Jouppe !
>
> Read again message 53881
>
> süks'i : Moksha çjokçja
> künci : Moksha kenzhä
> nüdi : Moksha näd
> kün'ärä : Moksha kener
> küji : Moksha kuj
>
> First explain me :
> How is it possible that
> supposedly *ü can become
> any of jo e ä e u
> in Moksha.
>
> First do that.
>
> Arnaud
>
> =================
>