Re: update

[Geoff Eddy <geoff@morven.compulink.co.uk>]

Padraic Brown wrote:
> 
> Jann svitt svaradhi:
> 
> Is this the nt question?  John is quite right, we don't take _those_ kinds
> of questions! ;-D
> 
> Please ask away!

Assuming this means "yes", it is indeed the nt question. The details are
these:

- In Irish, /nt/ reduces to /d/ both internally and as one instance of
eclipsis (nasal mutation). E.g. "cent" for 100 becomes _cead_.

- In Breathanach (and Liotan), the same happens (but only in LF): 100 is
_cead_ too.

- In Welsh, it's not quite so clear, but we have _canu_ for "to sing",
compared to Latin _cantare_, with the medial /n/ corresponding to the
/nh/ which would result from nasal mutation.

- But in Brithenig, we have _cantar_, preserving the stop medially,
whereas /t/ undergoes nasal mutation to /nh/ initially, as in Welsh.

Put another way, if lenition (soft mutation) operates both medially
between vowels and initially after a word ending in a vowel, is there a
reason why clusters of nasal + stop undergo nasal mutation initially,
but not medially?

Hope this is clear!

Geoff
-- 
 [] You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get [] Geoff Eddy,
in      []
 [] him to float on his back, you've got something.   [] Edinburgh,
Scotland []
 [] --++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++  []
-++--++--++--++--++ []
 [] Homepage is at http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven       [] This space for
rent []