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Angmar
Member Username: Angmar
Post Number: 5 Registered: 01-2007
| Posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007 - 07:03 pm: |
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I'm just curious, does anybody know what exactly triggered the excessive palatization and velarization of Irish consonants? I know palatization is a common phenomenum to all languages but is there any reason explaining why in Irish it spread to all consonants rather than on just a few. Why didn't the same thing happen to Welsh? After all they both are supposed to have originated from the hypthetical Proto-Celtic language (although Welsh is said to be P-Celtic and Gaelic Q-Celtic). Anyway what I'm asking is why did Irish undergo such a change? Can it be explained at all? I am not sure this is the right place to ask this question but i would really be interested to know whether anyone has an answer. Yes I know,I'm a language geek... |
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BRN (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From:
| Posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007 - 07:41 pm: |
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Don't know what was the impetus or 'impetu̅s', but the fact that at least slender and plain became important would have set up a selection pressure to keep the pairs seperate, and specialisation tends towards excess, in general, so you end up with slender (plain, palatal and palatised) vs. broad (velar, velarised, and uvular) over time. Lenition of consonants between vowels made for an increased number of consonants, and to a lesser degree, did the nasalising process, but why they nearly all were kept as phonemic, is out of my competence |
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Lughaidh
Member Username: Lughaidh
Post Number: 1541 Registered: 01-2005
| Posted on Thursday, February 08, 2007 - 03:29 am: |
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Palatalization comes from the presence of close vowels (i, e) and velarisation from "middle" vowels (a, o). In Old Irish, the presence of "u" after a consonant wouldn't velarise it (as far as I know), but bilabialise it. Now, why is there such palatalisation/velarisation/bilabialisation in the Gaelic languages and not in the Brythonic ones... no one knows ! Learn Irish pronunciation here: www.phouka.com/gaelic/sounds/sounds.htm
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Angmar
Member Username: Angmar
Post Number: 7 Registered: 01-2007
| Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 07:43 pm: |
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So does anyone really know or is it even possible to know what causes a language to go in such extremes as to palatize all their consonants? What’s the trigger? Stress maybe, morphology or phonological environments? From what I’ve heard, Russian is quite similar to Irish with it's diction between soft and hard consonants. Can we not draw conclusions from this similarity? |
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Dennis
Member Username: Dennis
Post Number: 2573 Registered: 02-2005
| Posted on Friday, February 09, 2007 - 10:15 pm: |
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This is all discussed in depth in Stair na Gaeilge II.7.1-3, 7.5, 8.3, etc. Kim McCone, the author, published this one chapter in English as Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Sound Change. See if your library has it or can get it for you. "An seanchas gearr, an seanchas is fearr."
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BRN (Unregistered Guest) Unregistered guest Posted From:
| Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 - 09:27 am: |
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Dennis
Member Username: Dennis
Post Number: 2577 Registered: 02-2005
| Posted on Saturday, February 10, 2007 - 12:26 pm: |
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Dála an scéil... bheinn sásta na sliochta as Stair na Gaeilge a bhaineann le hábhar a thabhairt daoibh, ach níl mé sásta iad a aistriú, agus is léir nach bhfuil mórán Gaeilge ag mo dhuine. So... má tá fonn oraibh beagán aistriúcháin a dhéanamh... "An seanchas gearr, an seanchas is fearr."
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