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On Friday, May 03, 2002 1:03 am, 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. > > 1st option > > CL > /kl/ > PL > /pj/ > FL > /S/ I like the last two, but I'm having trouble with /kl/ staying as is. Granted, you could have a native development of /kl/ > /cj/ or whatever, but have learned borrowings use /kl/; this happens at least in Spanish, as in the doublet llave (native) : clave (borrowed from CL). > > 2nd option > > CL > /kr/ > PL > /pr/ > FL > /fr/ > > 3rd option > > CL > /pl/ > PL > /fl/ > FL > /S/ I actually like /kl/ > /pl/, but once again I'm having trouble with the fact that the last one involves a palatalization and the others don't. As for the /k/ itself becoming /p/, it's unusual but I think it could work since you also have /kt/ > /pt/ (and velars and bilabials are supposed to be acoustically sound much more similar to each other than either is to dentals, so occasional switches between them are not unheard of). [...] > I'm also trying to decide what to do with initial S-clusters. I know > Spanish, Portuguese and French (and I assume Catalan and Occitan?) add an > epenthetic vowel. I know Italian (and IIRC Romanian) doesn't. What does > Romansh do? Sardinian? Sicilian? Does anyone know if North African > (Algeria & Tunisia) Arabic likes initial "S", "F", etc. or no? What about > "R"? I think Arabic in general dislikes initial consonant clusters, both with and without /s/; usually a prothetic /i/ is used. Not sure what you mean by "R", but I assume you're referring to the second option. In that case, that's the ordinary outcome in Portuguese.