(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Salmoneus
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Beninca reports:

a > aw before nasals
aw > o before m
aw > o before nasal followed by syllable break, with the palatal nasal analysed as /nj/

Then in Puter, "awN > EN", where 'E' is epsilon, but 'N' is just 'N'; I assume she means the class of nasals

So, from 'annu', we get Vallader and Sursilvan /On/, Sutsilvan /Ewn/, and Puter /En/. While from 'cane' we naturally get Valleder /caN/, Puter /cE:m/, Sutsilvan /cEwn/ and Sursilvan... well, Beninca calls it /cswN/ (where /N/ is my sampa for eng). While for 'flama' we get Vallader /flOma/, Sursilvan /flOa/, Sutsilvan /floma/ and Puter /flama/.

No, this doesn't match up with Wiktionary saying that the Puter form of Romantsch is 'rumauntsch', unless it's an etymological spelling. But it's Rhaeto-Romance, don't expect logic...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

Salmoneus wrote: 29 Dec 2019 23:13 Beninca reports:

a > aw before nasals
aw > o before m
aw > o before nasal followed by syllable break, with the palatal nasal analysed as /nj/

Then in Puter, "awN > EN", where 'E' is epsilon, but 'N' is just 'N'; I assume she means the class of nasals

So, from 'annu', we get Vallader and Sursilvan /On/, Sutsilvan /Ewn/, and Puter /En/. While from 'cane' we naturally get Valleder /caN/, Puter /cE:m/, Sutsilvan /cEwn/ and Sursilvan... well, Beninca calls it /cswN/ (where /N/ is my sampa for eng). While for 'flama' we get Vallader /flOma/, Sursilvan /flOa/, Sutsilvan /floma/ and Puter /flama/.

No, this doesn't match up with Wiktionary saying that the Puter form of Romantsch is 'rumauntsch', unless it's an etymological spelling. But it's Rhaeto-Romance, don't expect logic...
I imagined it would be more complicated, being Rumansch. Wiktionary probably isn't the best resource for actual linguistic work...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 28 Dec 2019 21:28Another problematic term: "bimonthly". Does it mean "every two months" or "twice a month"? Wiktionary says "just don't use it!" I don't like the idea of words having to drop out of usage because of their ambiguity.
I actually kinda like the ambiguity of terms like this and could use them with either meaning myself. The "every two months" meaning is the one I'd assume without context and at first in most contexts, but it of course depends on context. Ambiguous words aren't bad, even if they can be annoying.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Salmoneus wrote: 29 Dec 2019 23:13 Beninca reports:

a > aw before nasals
aw > o before m
aw > o before nasal followed by syllable break, with the palatal nasal analysed as /nj/

Then in Puter, "awN > EN", where 'E' is epsilon, but 'N' is just 'N'; I assume she means the class of nasals

So, from 'annu', we get Vallader and Sursilvan /On/, Sutsilvan /Ewn/, and Puter /En/. While from 'cane' we naturally get Valleder /caN/, Puter /cE:m/, Sutsilvan /cEwn/ and Sursilvan... well, Beninca calls it /cswN/ (where /N/ is my sampa for eng). While for 'flama' we get Vallader /flOma/, Sursilvan /flOa/, Sutsilvan /floma/ and Puter /flama/.

No, this doesn't match up with Wiktionary saying that the Puter form of Romantsch is 'rumauntsch', unless it's an etymological spelling. But it's Rhaeto-Romance, don't expect logic...
Very interesting. I may want to employ this...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Vlürch wrote: 30 Dec 2019 15:39
KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: 28 Dec 2019 21:28Another problematic term: "bimonthly". Does it mean "every two months" or "twice a month"? Wiktionary says "just don't use it!" I don't like the idea of words having to drop out of usage because of their ambiguity.
I actually kinda like the ambiguity of terms like this and could use them with either meaning myself. The "every two months" meaning is the one I'd assume without context and at first in most contexts, but it of course depends on context. Ambiguous words aren't bad, even if they can be annoying.
On the contrary, "bimonthly" isn't very ambiguous at all because "bi-" means "two" and "monthly" means "every month." Thus, we get "very two/other month(s)" for "bimonthly." If we want "every other week" to be concise, we say "biweekly." "Twice a month" is exactly what it says on the tin.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 31 Dec 2019 19:36On the contrary, "bimonthly" isn't very ambiguous at all because "bi-" means "two" and "monthly" means "every month." Thus, we get "very two/other month(s)" for "bimonthly." If we want "every other week" to be concise, we say "biweekly." "Twice a month" is exactly what it says on the tin.
British, Irish, Australian and Kiwi speakers interpret it as "two times per month" though, so it clashes against your (our) North American usage of "once every two months".

Note that if you want to make a true etymological argument, in terms of how the prefix bi- was used in ancient Latin, neither English usage is good. Latin words of this sort meant 'lasting a period of two Xs': bimestris 'lasting two months', biennis 'lasting two years'. Etymologically, a "bimonthly journal" would supposedly mean "a journal that only lasts two months" (or "...two months at a time"). Not that I think etymological arguments have much weight anyway.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

A month ago, I read Steven Dworkin's A Guide to Old Spanish (2018). I didn't find much that was new for me in terms of morphosyntax, although this was the first time I read that some scholars say that 13th century prose, like that of the General Estoria ("General History"), had a particularly high proportion of VS and VSO sentences, and that this might have been an influence of Arabic and maybe also Hebrew on the language.

I did see a lot of words that survived from Latin into Old Spanish that I didn't know had survived. I've listed most of them below, certainly all the better ones. Note that the etymologies are not provided in the book, I looked them up myself (Dworkin simply mentions a word comes from Latin, he doesn't give the Latin etymon). If I don't give the Spanish meaning, assume it's basically the same as that of the etymology.

Nouns
- bibitum 'drunk (thing), a drink that has been consumed' > bebdo 'drunk (person)' (and then beudo and beodo, the latter presumably /ˈbe.odo/)
- aurificem 'goldsmith' > orebze (and then orebce, apparently still in use in the 19th century!)
- mūrem 'mouse' > mur
- vulpem 'fox' > diminutive *vulpiculam > vulpeja/gulpeja
- cor 'heart' > cuer
- tempora 'times; good/fitting hours to do sth; (by extension, as the "good" place to hit sb to kill them) the temples of the head' > eggcorned in spoken early medieval Latin/Romance into *tempula [ˈt(j)ɛmp(o)la], as if it was a feminine diminutive of tempus 'time' (then further eggcorned in written Latin as templa, plural of templum '(religious) temple') > Old Spanish tienlla 'temples of the head; cheek'
- aciem 'sharp edge; battle line' > az 'army' (with the interesting Old Spanish derivative enaziado, literally "made-into-the-army", meaning 'Christian-born man who's now a traitor that spies for the Muslims')
- fossa 'ditch, trench' > fuessa
- argenteum 'made of silver' > arienzo 'silver coin'
- medicāmen 'medicine' > analogized to *medicāminem > vedegambre (with [m...ð...ɣ] > [β...ð...ɣ] assimilation)
- synagōga 'synagogue' > esnoga/senoga/sinoa

Adjectives, plus an adverb
- collectum/am 'acquired; deduced' > collecho/a 'collected'
- domitum/am 'tamed' > duendo 'docile'
- putidum/am 'stinky' > pudio
- invītus 'reluctantly' > amidos (interesting [nw] > [m] change... contrast inviāre > enviar [emˈbjaɾ])

Verbs
- augurāre 'to prophesy by watching birds' > agorar 'to predict' (this word must have been very easy to apply a folk etymology to: hāc hōrā 'at this hour' > agora 'now'!)
- machinārī 'to arrange skillyfully; to plot (against the State)' > maznar 'to knead; shape iron, forge metal' (another easy folk etymology for medieval people: maza 'mace, club'...)
- perscrūtārī 'to investigate thoroughly' > pescudar 'to ask'
- plangere 'to hit rocks, the sea, the ground (said of natural things); to beat one's head or heart in sadness; to mourn sb' > llañir 'to weep'
- obviāre 'to meet sb' > uviar > 'to go out and meet sb'

A couple interesting new formations:
- on the basis of tam magnum/am 'so big; big like that' > tamaño/a 'so big', el tamaño 'size', and quam magnum/am 'how big?' > quamaño/a, quālem > derives calaño/a 'similar, equal' (I personally wonder if tam magnum/am was actually reinterpreted as tamm-āneum/am, with the noun>adj. suffix -āneum/am (both -agnum and -āneum become [ˈaɲo] in pre-Spanish)... then calaño would actually be quālem + -āneum!)
- from post faciem 'behind their face, behind/after their presence' > *post-faci-āre > posfaçar 'to slander sb'

A couple interesting borrowings:
- Arabic ترجمان tarjumān turjumān tarjamān (< borrowed from Syriac Aramaic ܬܪܓܡܢ <trgmn> (commonly read targmån nowadays) or ܬܪܓܡܢܐ <trgmnʔ> (commonly read targmånå nowadays) < borrowed from Akkadian 𒅴𒁄 targumannu turgumannu) 'translator' > OSp. truiamán [tɾuʒaˈman] (later trujamán)
- Gothic 𐌻𐍉𐍆𐌰 lōfa 'palm' > OSp. lúa 'glove' (this word is found today as Icelandic lófi 'palm' and northern British English loof 'palm, extended hand')



While we're at it, I recently learned, elsewhere, that Latin foria 'diarrhea' has survived as a vulgar word into modern French: la foire. As in, avoir la foire 'to have diarrhea, to be suffering of diarrhea'.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

Vedegambre is my favorite. It sounds right out of the Spanish Jabberwocky poem.

Are we sure about amidos? Its got two irregular shifts, plus it ends in -os even though the others seem to all end in -o.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Pabappa wrote: 07 Jan 2020 02:04Are we sure about amidos? Its got two irregular shifts, plus it ends in -os even though the others seem to all end in -o.
Amidos is less surprising than it seems at first.

The expected inherited form of Lat. invītus in Old Spanish would be *embidos (also hypothetically spelled *enbidos, *envidos).

The irregular word-initial e > a change can also be seen in jejūnum *[ʝeˈʝuno] > *[eˈʝuno] > ayuno 'fasting', in-addere > Old Spanish eñader/eñadir/añader/añadir 'to add', eccum illud > aquello 'this', Late Lat. lectorīle > letril > (with confusion as l' = definite article) atril 'lectern'. The Spanish of El Salvador also has in + ante > anantes 'barely [do sth]' (cf. Colombian/Venezuelan/Peruvian Spanish enantes 'recently').

The [nw] > [nβ] > (conditional /β/~/b/ merger after nasals) [nb] > [mb] > [m] change is more surprising, but if the [nβ] > [nb] change happened early enough, it could ride the same sound change found in lambere > lamer 'to lick', ambōs > OSp. amos 'both', palumbem > paloma 'pigeon', lumbum '(meat cut) loin' > lomo 'animal's back'. The likes of inviāre > OSp. embiar and invādere > OSp. embaír don't help this hypothesis though.

As for -os, this is an adverb while the others were adjectives in canonical form (I should've cited them as duendo/a, pudio/a). This adverb ending isn't that weird considering minus > menos 'less', laxius 'more widely' > lejos 'far'.

Finally, the most attractive thing is that, in spite of it all, both invītus and amidos are adverbs and mean basically the same thing, "reluctantly, not wanting to".
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguistCat »

Cross-posted from the ZBB

Does anyone have a reference to the assumed order of sound changes from Old Japanese to current times? If not, OJ to any later stage of would be extremely helpful, as long as they have at least a general idea of when the changes occurred.

I've found a few mentions of when specific sound changes have happened (like that OJ /p/ became /w, ∅/ intervocalically likely before 1000ad), but I know there are a fair number I haven't been able to account for, let alone a list of them in one place. It would be nice if there is a resource out there so I don't have to collect them myself. But if there isn't (or it's extremely hard to find), it would be equally nice to know so I can continue collecting things in one spot myself without being on a wild goose chase.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

LinguistCat wrote: 13 Jan 2020 23:45Cross-posted from the ZBB

Does anyone have a reference to the assumed order of sound changes from Old Japanese to current times? If not, OJ to any later stage of would be extremely helpful, as long as they have at least a general idea of when the changes occurred.

I've found a few mentions of when specific sound changes have happened (like that OJ /p/ became /w, ∅/ intervocalically likely before 1000ad), but I know there are a fair number I haven't been able to account for, let alone a list of them in one place. It would be nice if there is a resource out there so I don't have to collect them myself. But if there isn't (or it's extremely hard to find), it would be equally nice to know so I can continue collecting things in one spot myself without being on a wild goose chase.
I am somewhat familiar with this stuff and I've been working on such a summary for some time in the past couple days, but there are a number of things that aren't clear to me, and it takes a little time to read through discussions of them.

For example, Old Japanese (Nara period) is sometimes reconstructed with the prenasalized phonemes /ⁿb ⁿd ⁿg ⁿz/ for the syllables <bV dV gV zV> (often thought of as simply /b d g z/ instead), on the basis that they come from Proto-Japonic mVCV, nVCV and nCV, that these syllables do not occur word-initially, and that the language doesn't have word-final -n (its syllable structure is CV). Enabled by this, they also say /p t k s/ were voiced to [ b d g z] word-medially, and then use this to explain things like OJ /jobi2te2/ [jombwide] "call.GERUND" > modern /joɴde/, and its homophone OJ /jomi1te2/ [jomide] "read.GERUND" > modern /joɴde/ (after the second loss of medial vowels that gave rise to many modern coda -ɴ). But this would suppose things like OJ /sakɯrabana/ [sagɯrambana] 'cherry flower' > modern /sakɯrabana/ after g>k fortition and mb>b denasalization, and people who disagree with this prefer to say that OJ /jomi1te2/ > modJ /joɴde/ is better explained as compensatory voicing or voicing spread. However, I find the nasalization in /jobi2te2/ > /joɴde/ compelling to think "/b/" was /ⁿb/. But this doesn't apply to OJ /g/ because OJ velars went into another direction, and are there any OJ verbs with /d z/ at the end of the stem? So I'm not sure what arguments either side has exactly...

In other words, different people reconstruct older stages of Japanese in different ways and it somewhat confuses me. Or at least, I haven't looked enough into the matter.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

i think you (and they) might be mixing 2 different instances of the same shift. Jp had the unknown rendaku-like shift way back when and then a second one in recorded times that we're absolutely sure of. thats why you can have clusters like /mb/ , /nd/, etc where one would expect to only see /mp nt/ shifting to /b d/.

but Im no expert either ... my main source is the Wikipedia article and snippets of a few books that are linked from it and accessible through Google .
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Pabappa wrote: 17 Jan 2020 01:22 i think you (and they) might be mixing 2 different instances of the same shift. Jp had the unknown rendaku-like shift way back when and then a second one in recorded times that we're absolutely sure of. thats why you can have clusters like /mb/ , /nd/, etc where one would expect to only see /mp nt/ shifting to /b d/.
I'm not confusing the two rendakus (if people call the OJ /jobi2te2 jomi1te2/ > modJ /joɴde/ change "a second rendaku"), but the two interact, if indirectly, in the way the way voicing and coda nasals are distributed across time.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Pabappa »

okay thanks, I just wanted to be sure. But where do /mb/ & /nd/ (and maybe /ŋg/ too?) come from then?

Do we know, or is that the thing that everyone's debating about?

My understanding was that such clusters were impossible from rendaku alone, because in Old Japanese they were unitary phonemes, and thus they would always resolve to /b d/ in the modern language. This would mean that these clusters could only come from secondary contraction of nasal + vowel + stop sequences, like yomite > yonde, amembo "lollipop", and perhaps the word "rendaku" itself, if it's an old enough coinage. it just happens that this shift was nearly or entirely identical to the first one, so they ended up getting smooshed around somewhat and where previously only rendaku was grammaticalized, now effects of both are seen.

I get that its a bit confusing ... i picked the word lollipop out because it stuck in my mind ... it is an example of a sporadic, phonetic-only shift where the article /no/ contracted to /n/ instead of being grammatically ironed out to /Ø/ as in most other words. I dont know why this is, but I'd guess that perhaps it's a relatively new word, and so the sequence /nob/ did not behave the way it would have if the word had been coined in Heian-era Japan like the thousands of others that show true rendaku.

i guess a weak spot in my theory is that modern Japanese also has /mp nt/ alongside /mb nd/, and i have no idea where those clusters come from, unless it can be shown that they are all transparent compounds.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Pabappa wrote: 17 Jan 2020 03:36But where do /mb/ & /nd/ (and maybe /ŋg/ too?) come from then?

[...]

i guess a weak spot in my theory is that modern Japanese also has /mp nt/ alongside /mb nd/, and i have no idea where those clusters come from, unless it can be shown that they are all transparent compounds.
I think I'm confusing you because I said:
Ser wrote:Proto-Japonic [...] doesn't have word-final -n (its syllable structure is CV)
Uh, PJ doesn't have word-final (coda) -n, that's true, but it does have word-medial coda -n, reconstructible from Ryukyuan, hence why I mentioned that some /b d g z/ in 8th-century Old Japanese come from "PJ nC", e.g. PJ *kansai > OJ /kaze/ [kaze] 'wind' (...or possibly /kaⁿze/ [kanze]...).

Although I think you're also confusing the two different historical drops of word-medial vowels. One happened at some point from Proto-Japonic to 8th-century Old Japanese, probably earlier rather than later, where sequences of mVPV and nVPV (where P = /p t k s/) created many but not all Old Japanese /b d g z/ (which some people say were /ⁿb ⁿd ⁿg ⁿz/).
- PJ */jama-miti/ 'mountain-path' > *jamam'ti > 8th-century OJ /jamadi/ (...or /jamaⁿdi/ [jamandi]...) 'mountain path' (> modern 山路 yamaji)

The other one happened in the course from Old Japanese to 11th-century Classical Japanese, and with cluster resolution created many coda -n, geminate consonants and, especially in western dialects like Kyoto, falling diphthongs. This is known as "onbin" in Japanese linguistics, and there continued to be a tension between the old pronunciations without it and the new ones with it for a long time. Onbin is not usually represented in kana spellings even as late as the 16th century (especially in poetry), as it was considered colloquial (there is a writer explicitly commenting on this circa 1100), but it does appear with some low frequency.
- OJ /motite/ [motite] (...or possibly [modide]...) > *mot'te > 11th-c. CJ /motte/ (> modern Tokyo/Kyoto 持って motte)
- OJ /kaki1te/ [kakite] (...or [kagide]...) > *kak'te > 11th-c. CJ /kaite/ (> modern Tokyo/Kyoto 書いて kaite)
- OJ /jomi1te/ [jomite] (...or [jomide]...) > *jom'te > 11th-c. CJ western /joude/ (> modern Kyoto [jo:de]), eastern /jonde/ (> modern Tokyo 読んで yonde)
- OJ /kawite/ [kawite] (...or [kawide]...) > *kaw'te > 11th-c. CJ western /kaute/ (> modern Kyoto [ko:te]), eastern /katte/ (> modern Tokyo 買って katte)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguistCat »

Just knowing that these sound changes happened/were happening in these specific centuries is really helpful to me honestly. I'm sure there's some way to say that certain ones started or ended a little later in the same group, but for the most part I don't need to get quite that specific.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Okay thank you ,I understand better now. But ....

I guess what I dont get is why, if /yomi te/ > /yonde/, why are there still instances of /mp nt ns ŋk/ in modern Japanese? Are they all known to be transparent modern compounds in which the old rules were simply not applied? Or is there a reason to believe that /yomi te/ was pronounced /yomi de/ at the time of the shift? Do we even have a way to find this out or is it just wild guesses because it was never written down?

I wouldnt make such a big deal of such a small point normally, but it might be helpful to the original poster especially if even the academic books on the subject arent going to explain it.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Pabappa wrote: 17 Jan 2020 07:33Okay thank you ,I understand better now. But ....

I guess what I dont get is why, if /yomi te/ > /yonde/, why are there still instances of /mp nt ns ŋk/ in modern Japanese? Are they all known to be transparent modern compounds in which the old rules were simply not applied? Or is there a reason to believe that /yomi te/ was pronounced /yomi de/ at the time of the shift? Do we even have a way to find this out or is it just wild guesses because it was never written down?

I wouldnt make such a big deal of such a small point normally, but it might be helpful to the original poster especially if even the academic books on the subject arent going to explain it.
Modern /ɴp ɴt ɴs ɴk/ came to exist thanks to Chinese loanwords, and now English ones too (entaatainaa 'entertainer'). Yeah, Chinese really did a number on Japanese phonology there. Think of a word with /ɴp/: it is almost certainly a Chinese loanword. 散歩 sanpo 'a walk, stroll' (Middle Chinese san + bwo), 前方 zenpoo 'forward, ahead' (MC dzen + pjɑŋ), 鉛筆 enpitsu 'pencil' (MC jwæn + pit), 扇風機 senpuuki 'electric fan' (historically 'foldable fan', Middle Chinese ɕjɛn + pjuŋ + kjəj).
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Loanwords influencing the recipient language's phonology, especially phonotactics, isn't that rare. English word-initial voiced fricatives are almost entirely due to loanwords, while Štokavian (the basis for standard Serbo-Croatian and its 'descendants') /f/ and /d͡ʒ/ wouldn't be phonemic without loanwords. Loanwords also contain the majority of word-final consonant clusters (e.g. tekst, student), native clusters are concentrated in onsets.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Is the dual actually productive and in common use in any modern natlangs? It seems like the dual is something languages create early on only to later abandon, but I realize this is probably a heavily biased IE-centric view. Unfortunately my linguistic knowledge is very IE-centric. [:$]
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