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I first posted ths n the PIE thread, but this did not fulfill JAL's OCD wish, so I have created a new thread especially for him.

A question that no indo-europeanist I know has been able to adequately explain to me.

Where does /tɬ/ in Icelandic come from? When I ask this, people say 'yeah from *tl clusters'. That is a stupid answer though, as these clusters occur in words that historically do not have a t in that position. So the t has been magically inserted before /l/, then that changed to /tɬ/. But where does the /t/ come from in this scenario?

Another explanation is word-final l becoming voiceless, then /tɬ/. But that also gives two questions: 1. Then where does /tɬ/ in intervocalic position come from and 2. why is it not /ɬ/ ?

Let me give some examples. I actually am starting to think the main question is 'where does the t come from', and not where the lateral affricate comes from as that follows naturally once the /t/ has been magically generated.

sæll Somewhere in this word, a /t/ magically came into existence. It is not to be deduced from the proto germanic form, so where did it come from?

sæl Actually this one is much more clear. Here we simply see l becoming voiceless at the end of the word (and then fricative; no affricate pronounciation).

The phoneme seems to occur in intervocalic position, but only at the end of a morpheme, so it is always morpheme final. That also solves the question where it came from in intervocalic position. So only one question remains (where the damn /t/ comes from).

sirdanilot wrote:this did not fulfill JAL's OCD wish

OCD is a very serious disorder, that can impact peoples lives greatly (from which I, thankfully, do not suffer). It's not funny to make a joke about it. Ever.


JAL

Breast cancer is also a serious illness, but Southpark made a joke about it.

Freedom of expression, you know. It's a great thing we live in a free country and not in China.

And are you going to answer the question, or are you only going to meta-bitch about my posts?

oh wait the word 'bitch' is probably offensive to female canines, my bad

Well it obviously comes from /l:/ fortifying to /tl/ and then devoicing and fricatizing to /tɬ/...

Geminate l fortifying to /tl/? How does that happen then? It seems like a very counter-intuitive sound change to me.

And even if this did happen so, then where does the geminate /l:/ come from? Because there is no geminate /l:/ in the proto-form (click on the link of saell to see it).

sirdanilot wrote:Geminate l fortifying to /tl/? How does that happen then? It seems like a very counter-intuitive sound change to me.

What do you mean by "how" in this case? The sound change /lː/ > /tl̥ ~ tɬ/ doesn't seem strange at all to me. It may have passed through a stage of /l̥ː ~ ɬː/ but I'm not sure. Fortition of geminate consonants are very common cross-linguistically, althought the result of the fortition may vary. Note that Icelandic also had a parallel change /nː/ > /tn̥/ although I think only after Old Norse long vowels and diphthongs.

sirdanilot wrote:And even if this did happen so, then where does the geminate /l:/ come from? Because there is no geminate /l:/ in the proto-form (click on the link of saell to see it).

They were geminates in Old Norse. The Old Norse geminate in sǽll (Icelandic sæll) comes from the assimilation of the following *ʀ. Something like *sēliz > *sāliʀ > *sǣlʀ > sǽll.

You are not South Park, my friend. Anyway, I googled a bit, and this book says

The /tl/ vs /l/ alternation has its origin in the prestopping of long sonorants (...) a similar alternation is to be found in a paradigm like hóll 'hill' [houtl] - hólar 'hills' [houːlar̥] and steinn 'stone' [steitn̥] - steinar 'stones' [steiːnar̥].

So there you have it. 5 minutes of googling and your pressing question "no indo-europeanist you know has been able to adequately explain to you" is answered. It's all standard Icelandic diachronic allophony. Happy now?


JAL

Why thank you.

Still, my question remains then where the geminate l coms from in above words.

Also why Southpark should have more right to make 'politically incorrect jokes' than any normal person is beyond me.

sirdanilot wrote:Still, my question remains then where the geminate l coms from in above words.

See Valdeut's post.

sirdanilot wrote:Also why Southpark should have more right to make 'politically incorrect jokes' than any normal person is beyond me.

It's not about rights, it's about taste. Something which you seem to lack.


JAL

Sirdan, the board isn't here for you to whine about the world, or to practice your comedy stylings. And if you really need to do those things, the correct place would be Ephemera or an appropriate NOTA thread; L&L is for discussions of languages and linguistics. So in future please try to be respectful of other posters, and just ask the question without the temper tantrum.

sirdanilot wrote:Still, my question remains then where the geminate l coms from in above words.

And I already gave you the answer, it's an assimilation of the following consonant. In Old Norse (and Icelandic to a lesser extent I think), masculine nouns and adjectives with a stem ending in s, r, l and n often geminate this consonant in the nominative singular as a result of the assimilation of an earlier *ʀ.

I'm not sure if sæll is still used as a regular adjective in modern Icelandic but it was in Old Norse, and if you compare the declension of the Icelandic adjective heill, you see that the geminate is only found in certain forms:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heill#Icelandic

Then compare the Old Norse adjective argr (earlier argʀ). Note how the forms of heill with geminated l correspond to forms of argr where the ending begins with r.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/argr

Valdeut wrote:

sirdanilot wrote:I'm not sure if sæll is still used as a regular adjective in modern Icelandic

Me neither, but it is apparently a common greeting.


JAL

Astraios wrote:

sirdanilot wrote:Still, my question remains then where the geminate l coms from in above words.

See Valdeut's post.

I somehow completely missed that post. Thank you valdeut !

That answers my question, thanks.

It's not about rights, it's about taste. Something which you seem to lack.

taste is quite subjective now isn't it? The fact that you find something tasteless doesn't mean it's universally, irrevocably tasteless.

For the record, Faroese has the same dissimilation of /l:/ and /n:/, as do some Norwegian dialects.

Some Celtic languages have voiced prestopping in certain positions -- Manx does, at least.

You mean Manx did?

sirdanilot wrote:You mean Manx did?

I suppose you mean that Manx is not a living language anymore, and therefore warants the past tense. However, you are false on both accounts. According to Wikipedia, "Only a small minority of the Isle of Man's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it. (...) Although the last of the original native speakers, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974, the language has never fallen completely out of use." Furthermore, when talking about extinct languages, we may very well use the present tense. I don't think anyone would say "Latin had seven noun cases" as opposed to "Latin has seven noun cases".


JAL

Manx is about as alive as Latin or Coptic or Ancient Greek. Probably less so even. People have meta-knowledge of it but do people actively use it to buy a loaf of bread or tell their children to shut up? I don't think so. If people don't use their language in that way then you can consider it dead. That doesn't mean you cannot study it, of course, but that's why I would use the past tense. People study dead indigenous languages all the time based on older grammars/word lists. In fact I am writing a paper on Allentiac, a long-dead language of Chili of which only a couple of word lists exist. But it's morsdood as we would say.

The only language revitalization project that has worked very well is Hebrew, and that is because of political and religious reasons that do not exist for Manx (or that other dead celtic language, Cornish, for that matter). A small number of speakers might pass it on but it will not return to the status of active community language.

Maybe a revitalization of ancient Celtic religion would aid in reviving the languages, haha.

sirdanilot wrote:Manx is about as alive as Latin or Coptic or Ancient Greek. Probably less so even.

Latin is more or less alive, in the Vatican, although I'm not sure how many people actually use it in day-to-day communication (as opposed to Italian), Coptic is more or less alive as well, used in Egypt as a religious language, Ancient Greek is to my knowledge used nowhere actively. Manx may not be a living language by your definition, but as Wikipedia says, there are people fluent in it, so I wouldn't consider it dead-dead.

That doesn't mean you cannot study it, of course, but that's why I would use the past tense.

You may choose to do so, I just suppose that not many people studying a dead language would. And again, Manx has a modern standard, so the past tense is really not called for here.

A small number of speakers might pass it on but it will not return to the status of active community language.

Though you're likely right, I find the certainty with which you speak unwarranted. Stranger things have happened.


JAL

sirdanilot wrote:Manx is about as alive as Latin or Coptic or Ancient Greek. Probably less so even. People have meta-knowledge of it but do people actively use it to buy a loaf of bread or tell their children to shut up? I don't think so. If people don't use their language in that way then you can consider it dead. That doesn't mean you cannot study it, of course, but that's why I would use the past tense. People study dead indigenous languages all the time based on older grammars/word lists. In fact I am writing a paper on Allentiac, a long-dead language of Chili of which only a couple of word lists exist. But it's morsdood as we would say.

The only language revitalization project that has worked very well is Hebrew, and that is because of political and religious reasons that do not exist for Manx (or that other dead celtic language, Cornish, for that matter). A small number of speakers might pass it on but it will not return to the status of active community language.

For what it's worth, there are children educated through the medium of Manx. Wholly through the medium of Manx. In a real school, that is, not by hobbyist home-schoolers. So in that respect it's doing pretty good for a "dead" language, a lot better than some "living" languages certainly.

Maybe a revitalization of ancient Celtic religion would aid in reviving the languages, haha.

Do try not to sound so sneering about the whole topic, there's a good chap. It makes you sound like a cunt with all the social skills of an intestinal parasite.

What I normally see in descriptions of dead languages is a mixture of present tense and past tense. Descriptions may start off with "Ancient Parmesanese was spoken in the Pasta steppes", but the description of linguistic features often switches to the present tense. Just as an example, see this description of Hittite, a language that, when I last looked, was as dead as a doornail; sometimes the switch between present tense and past tense happens in one sentence, for no perceptible reason:

1.2. Diphthongs wrote:There are several diphthongs, although the exact number is under dispute. [āi] and [āu] were probably long diphthongs, from several sources.

This is one example, but it could be multiplied by quoting many historical grammars. Describing features of a dead language using present tense is nothing unusual.

hwhatting wrote:sometimes the switch between present tense and past tense happens in one sentence, for no perceptible reason:

1.2. Diphthongs wrote:There are several diphthongs, although the exact number is under dispute. [āi] and [āu] were probably long diphthongs, from several sources.

Well, just based on this example, I'd say that the present tense is about an established fact, something that's still the case, and the past tense is about how it was actually pronounced, when it was still spoken. Seems quite natural to me, at least. Something like "Latin has [present] a case ending -um, which was [past] probably nasal".


JAL