LIN376H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Homorganic Consonant, Celery, French Language
Document Summary
Chapter 2 early changes in syllable structure and consonants. One development that demonstrably dates back to popular latin speech is the word- initial support vowel (prosthetic vowel) added before /s/ + consonant. Clusters of /s/ + consonant have special properties in the western languages. In latin, they cannot begin a syllable word-medially; festa is syllabified. This same prohibition began to apply to word-initial onsets, thus works like. Spata, /s/ could no longer syllabify in the onset. On the way to modern french, preconsonantal /s/ deletes, anywhere in the word, for example: Question: how many syllables do you count in these words; several, every, groceries, history, evening, celery, dangerous: answer: some might say these words have three syllables, but in casual speech, most pronounce them with only two. Question: how does spanish treat nasal + liquid clusters arising from syncope: answer: the unacceptable /nr/ cluster is resolved by metathesis; it becomes /rn/
