[YG Conlang Archives] > [romanceconlang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, Dan Jones wrote: >I've encountered some trouble with Medolian. I just can't decide what >to do with the Vulgar Latin cluster -mn-. First thought was >excrescence, along the lines of Spanish: *homne > ômbre > oambre >/'wambr@/. However, "feambra" /'fjambra/ doesn't sound like a good >word for "woman". > >We get to the Crunch: How do other (con-)romancelangs deal with this >cluster? Spanish does excrescence, French assimilates, Italian does >nothing (laziness...), so what does everyone else do? Let's see. Off hand, Kerno has l' omen, il colums and la colunnea. So, it seems they either add a schwa between them (thus ensuring the survival of both nasals), the second one gets the chopper or the first one dissapears into a [nj] before -ea. Let's see. There's la famen and la femen, so perhaps there is some influence caused by whatever follows the -mn- group. It seems that -mna, -mnem > -m@n; -mnos > -ms; and -mnia > -nyea (that's rare!). [Note that colums is an individual column; la columen is a collonade.] The -ea (< -ia) group is generally proof against palatalisation, unlike -io. I guess that doesn't count as laziness. Padraic. >Dan