Re: Scientist's etymology vs. scientific etymology

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>
>
> >
> English acquired initial /z-/ and /v-/ from French.
> That's indisputable.

But that doesn't mean that English didn't already have /z/ and /v/ as
phonemes, just in a more limited distribution.

Gaelic acquired /p/ from Latin,

> French and English --although Torsten is trying to
> throw a monkey wrench into this by claiming a
> substrate /p/ or whatnot.

Could [p] have existed in a limited distribution in Gaelic, e.g. as an
allophone of /b/, and subsequently [p] become phonemicized by the
influence of foreign words? (Similar to the English story for /z/ and
/v/) I don't know anything about Gaelic I'm afraid.

> French /R/ has spead to Germanic languages.

Probably an independent development in these languages, not an
adoption from French. I have a Ukrainian friend who is unable to
pronounce the alveolar trill /r/ of Ukrainian and Russian so she
substitutes /R/, even though she has practically no knowledge of
French. A similar innovation could have happened in Germanic.

> English /S/ has spread to Spanish --most people now
> say /So/ and /SopiN/ instead of /CHo/ and /CHopiN/ for
> show and shopping.

But /CH/ is merely [t] plus [S], so they could have extracted /S/ from
this phoneme (i.e. the sound [S] already exists in Spanish, just in an
extremely restricted distribution).

/

> English glottal stop exists in hypercorrect Spanish
> and is widespread in Salvadoran Spanish where <Santa
> Ana> comes out as /santa?ana/ and not standard
> /santaana/.

Could be an independent development in Spanish.

> Porteño Spanish has /S/ for <ll> probably due to the
> influence of Portuguese --see Spanish lluvia vs.
> Portuguese chuva.

I thought that this /S/ was a devoicing of earlier /Z/ (postalveolar
sibilant) such as found in Argentinian Spanish, itself a (independent)
development of /L/ (palatal /l/).

>