Re: beyond langauges

On Sat, 03 May 2008 11:27:11 -0000, "jouppe"
<jouppe@...> wrote:

>But in stark contrast when it comes to -Tl- the substitution would be
>=> *-kl-
>
>as in
>Gmc *se:thla- => *se:kla (Carelian > siekla) > seula 'sieve, siffer'
>Gmc *ne:thla- => *nekla (Carelian > niekla) > neula 'needle'

Might be an areal phenomenon, as tl > kl is also in Baltic
and Northern Russian (Pskovian I think).

>Another observation of a contrary development: Modern Icelandic
>treats Old Norse geminated -ll- in an odd fashion, it becomes
>devoiced and a precursory -t- is inserted into the pronounciation,
>for example <gull> [gutL] (where capital L is used for voiceless
>lateral). Maybe a Celtic substratum here, does not welsh have
>voiceless laterals?
>
>The interesting point is that AFAIK Icelandic has no
>contrastive consonant length, so the "affricate" must be interpreted
>as one phoneme, much as spanish -rr- or Catalan -tll-, not a sequence.

But Catalan *has* contrastive consonant length (l vs. l.l,
ll vs. tll (or ll-ll as in the PN Bell-lloc), n vs. nn, etc.
and also in b vs. bb, g vs. gg (the latter variant in the
sequences bl, gl).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...