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Adam Walker wrote: > Okay, here I am back with another quandry. I'm trying to decide how > L-clusters develop. I'm looking at CL, PL, and FL and I've come up with > three possible senarios. Are any of them inherently implausible? Any of > them especially appealing? At present I'm leaning toward the third choice. The second choice seems to me the most plausible. FL > /S/ is not impossible (it's attested in Ligurian: FLUME > sciu^mme [Syme]), but you should be straightforward: if you decide that L causes FL to become /S/ (via /fj/ > /fS/ > /S/), then I'd expect also CL and PL to get /tS/ (as it does in Ligurian: PLOVE > cieuve ['tS2ve]; the processes are: CL > /kj/ > /cS/ > /tS/ and PL > /pj/ > /pS/ > /tS/). The passage CL > /pl/ seems the most unlikely to happen... also consider that Romance languages treat L clusters in three main ways: 1) leaving them as they are (as in French or Friulian); 2) gettin /r/ out of /l/ (as in Portuguese, IIRC); 3) palatalizing the previous consonant (although this happens in many different ways: CLAVE > It. chiave /kjave/ and Lombard ciav /tSAf/...). > 1st option > > CL > /kl/ > PL > /pj/ > FL > /S/ > > 2nd option > > CL > /kr/ > PL > /pr/ > FL > /fr/ > > 3rd option > > CL > /pl/ > PL > /fl/ > FL > /S/ > > The /S/ in both option 1 and 3 is actually a sort of cross between /S/ and > /f/ which occurs in Shona. > > Well, what think you? > > I'm also trying to decide what to do with initial S-clusters. I know > Spanish, Portuguese and French (and I assume Catalan I just received a mail in Català: "però _espero_...". > and Occitan?) add an > epenthetic vowel. I know Italian (and IIRC Romanian) doesn't. Some Northern dialects (Gallo-Italic languages, if you prefer) have an endemic* /i/ showing up if the precedent word ends in a consonant cluster. Most of my fellow countrymen here on the Swiss border even say 'in Isvizzera' even when speaking Italian instead of standard 'in Svizzera'. In the xix century some Northern writers also used to write _Isvizzera_, _Isvezia_ or even _istesso_ instead of _stesso_. * i.e. it's not widespread, and its use is not stable even in the areas where it's present. > What does > Romansh do? No, IIRC. > Sardinian? Latin SCIRE becomes 'iskire'... but I don't know if this is the general rule. > Sicilian? No: stranu /Sranu/ (strange) > Does anyone know if North African > (Algeria & Tunisia) Arabic likes initial "S", "F", etc. or no? What about > "R"? What do you want to know 'bout R? Luca