Agustín Barahona wrote:

>
> El Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:22:44 -0400, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> escribió:
>
> >> >both the Spanish palatalization mark/Portuguese [...]
> >>
> >> I must insist again that -as I already said on 26 Sep 2005
> >>21:05:50- in Spanish writing there is no palatalization mark. As
> >>far as I was taught, the swung dash over the "ñ" is, simplifying,
> >>only a sign pointing out a Latin ancient double "n" abbreviation.
> >>It is not a sign used to indicate palatalization. Our palatal phonemes
> >>are those represented by "ñ" (eñe), "ll" (elle), "y" (i griega) and
> >>"ch" (che) and, as you all can see, no one but "ñ" uses the swung dash.
> >
> >The only function of the Spanish tilde is to indicate the palatalization
> >of n.
>
> And, taking in account what I've already said (i.e., that the swung dash, "tilde virgulilla", is in Spanish only a remainder of an ancient Latin abbreviation of the "nn" and that it seems logical enough it's not a palatalization mark because anyone can see that none of the other palatal phonemes are represented with that kind of sign), would yo be so kind as to say us what are your arguments to assert what you say above? Thank you in advance.

Spanish has a phoneme /ñ/, does it not? (Or maybe in your phonology it's
a sequence /nj/.) The only graphic distinction between that phoneme and
the dental nasal is the tilde, is it not? Thus the tilde indicates the
palatalization of n. (Its history is immaterial.) The tilde has no other
use in Spanish, does it? Thus, the only function of the Spanish tilde is
to indicate the palatalization of n. Not to indicate palatalization in
general; only to indicate the palatalization of n.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...