Re: Basque onddo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> > > You are an incompetent fool.
>
> > I agree. An Italian colleague of mine once said that the
> > British land didn't produce real linguists but only
> > *crackpots*.
>
> Irrelevant: I'm not British. Neither are a majority of my
> ancestors, for that matter. And neither was Edwin B.
> Williams, the Hispanicist whose views I was paraphrasing.
>

I think Trask would be good example of what my colleague said.

> > Mistaking Portuguese <n> for a "consonantal /n/" is an
> > example of sheer incompetence.
>
> I'm perfectly well aware of the use of <n> as a nasal
> diacritic in Portuguese orthography. The terminology
> 'consonantal n' is Williams's, not mine. He appears to take
> the view that a consonantal /n/ *did* develop in certain
> settings and subsequently dropped, leaving a nasalized
> vowel.
>

Actually <bento> *has* an etymological /n/ from the former <beneito>.
But in the case of <muito, munto> and <pento> nasalization would have
been triggered by the initial nasal.

On the other hand, /n/ in <muncho> is an *epentic* consonant, having
nothing to do with Portuguese nasalization.