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Thinking again about unresolved issues in Rhodrese I
thought I'll ask you all for opinions about the
spelling of /tS/.
Since the beginning (in extrafictional time) when there was
only Old Rhodrese I've been spelling /tS/ as _tx_, but for a
while I've been thinking that this spelling is a bit
'out of line' for two reasons:
(1) /S/ is no longer spelled _x_ in New Rhodrese --
only _sc_ or _s�_ --, and
(2) a lot of the spellings for palatalized sounds use a
_g_ as a mark of palatalization: _gl, gn_, _sg_ for
/Z/, and word-finally _dg_ for underlying //dZ//
alternating with _g_ before _e, i, y_ and perhaps
_j_ elsewhere, e.g. _el viadg_ beside the verb
_viagiar_.
So the consistent spelling for /tS/ ought to be _tg_,
wouldn't it? The problem is that I for no good reason
find this digraph ugly, especially word-initially
(_tgel_ for ECCE ILLU and _tgimair_ for TIMERE if
that's indeed the form!). I've been hiding behind the
notion that when 16th century standardizers selected
spellings for the palatal sounds among the greater
variety used by medieval scribes they picked the most
unambiguous alternatives. Thus _yt_ was rejected
because e.g. _dreyt_ could theoretically be a spelling
for /draIt/ as well as for /dretS/, and _tg_ would have
been rejected because it could theoretically be used
for /dZ/. The snag is that in practice _dg_ is -- and
_tg_ for //dZ// would -- only be used for //dZ// in
final position, where it is actually devoiced to [tS]!
And they might just as well reject _tx_ because they
had rejected _x_ for /S/ since it could also spell /ks/
or /gz/, and because it was un-Latin! At the same time
they might have *chosen* _tg_ because it was more
similar to its usual Latin correspondence CT. So in the
end there is only my own aesthetic aversion left! Is
there anyone who shares it, or anyone who has arguments
against it? Beside it I have good arguments in favor of
_tg_, bad arguments against _tg_, good arguments
against _tx_ and only bad arguments in favor of _tx_,
so on balance I *ought* to pick _tg_, if only it didn't
grate my eyes! There is one kind of good argument *against*
_tg_ = /tS/: it denotes /dZ/ in Catalan; OTOH it denotes
/ts\/ in Rumantsch...
BTW /tS/ comes from three and a half sources:
(1) (Vulgar) Latin CT.
(2) (Vulgar) Latin CC before front vowels.
(3) (Vulgar) Latin C between a consonant and a front vowel.
(4) Sometimes (Vulgar) Latin T before Latin /i:/.
As I mentioned in an earlier post I have my doubts
about (4), because the results aren't always appealing,
and I have problems with the timing relative lenition
of stops: does Latin _Vti_ become /V\tSi/ or /V\dZi/,
and would it become /V\dZi/ *anyway* because this */tS/
is short unlike the */ttS/ in (1-3)? I.e. would the
inherited (probably non-existent) form of LATINU be
_Latg�/Latx�_ or _Lag�_ -- or would it perhaps be
spelled _Ladg�_?
/Bendet[gx]