On 2008-09-27 04:55, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
> Isn't Polish like this, i.e. <e,> and <a,> are pronounced /En/, /Em/
> and /On/, /Om/ etc. before most consonants (plosives at least), where
> they originally were nasal vowels? (I think nasal vowels are preserved
> before spirants and maybe finally) Of course Piotr is the one to
> answer this question.
Yep, you are right. The phonemic status of <e,> in Polish is _very_
shaky, since a nasal vowel survives consistently only before fricatives
(word-finally most people pronounce it as /e/), and the pronunciation of
/en/, /en'/ with nasalised glides replacing nasal stops before
fricatives leads to their merger with /e~/. The vowel spelt <a,> (/o~/)
survives finally at least in the normative accent (substandard Polish
often has /om/ or /o/ instead), but as it's the only position where it
can really contrast with anything, it's probably doomed. Some
phonologists claim that all those instances of Polish nasal vowels that
can't be analysed as /Vn'/ should be treated as /VN/, with an underlying
velar nasal. This makes sense, since the actual pronunciation of nasal
vowels in Polish is diphthongal, i.e. either [Vj~] or [Vw~], and it's
possible to see the glides [j~] and [w~] as allophones of /n'/ and /N/,
respectively. Variant pronunciations of loans like <sens> 'sense' or
<szansa> 'chance' (where [en], [an] can be replaced with nasal vowels)
can then be analysed as /sens/ ~ /seNs/, /Sansa/ ~ /SaNsa/ etc.
Piotr