l i n g s t u f f

/ˈfsʲa ɕəstˈlʲəvəjə sʲəˈmʲa pəˈxʷaʒə ˈdɾʷək nə dɾʷəˈga | ˈkaʒdəjə nʲəɕəstˈlʲəvəjə sʲəˈmʲa nʲəɕəstˈlʲəvə pəsfəjəˈmʷə/

More thoughts on vertical vowel system typology will be provided upon prompting.

the general term for this kinda thing is sandhi, american english lacks it but apparently the british have it re: rhoticity sometimes. but r is weird. so idk if it counts. anyway sandhi includes general influence from outside words and im much more interested in the sudden appearance of a phoneme, it's weird to me that our minds are okay with storing two phoneme-strings for the same word. maybe in some sense one really does think of the phoneme as "always being there" and just being silent most of the time

What makes French interesting, of course, is that liaison can't be analyzed as a synchronic case of epenthesis, because the vowel that's added isn't predictable from the phonological environment, it's lexically determined. This means you either have to include that vowel in the underlying (phonemic) representation of the word and posit a deletion rule, and you have to resist analyzing it as a synchronic phonological phenomenon at all and say that it's purely morphological; each lexeme just has two forms that surface in different environments. I think the latter analysis probably hews closer to the cognitive reality but either analysis is formally valid.

The interesting feature of the "hidden" French consonants that you just have to know is that a lot of nouns and adjectives have a liaised form where it reappears, but then also have a nearly-identical feminine form where it's voiced without liaison. I suppose this helps people remember what the consonant is, and it seems to be the origin of the convention that liaison is not performed after singular nouns (where it would make them sound feminine, unlike the plurals where the plural marker is what liaises).

This is actually not epenthesis—an is etymologically equivalent to one, but the vowel developed differently due to the lack of word stress. The other form of the indefinite article, a, actually shows an irregular change of final consonant loss preceding a word-initial consonant.

Also, a correction: I kept saying "vowel" when talking about liaison but of course it should have been "consonant".

I suspect -n in plural forms might've preserved it to maintain the distinction between singular and plural forms. While the only surviving forms in present-day English (oxen, brethren, children) would still retain their distinctiveness without the /n/ (*oxe would end up homophonous with ox, but the loss of the final vowel would presumably post-date the loss of /n/), there were historically a number of other words that took -n in the plural that would become homophones if n were dropped, e.g., eye/eyen or shoe/shoen. So the need to maintain a clear distinction between singular and plural might've exerted enough pressure to keep the -n in that paradigm, whereas for the infinitive there would be no loss of information with -en becoming silent. That doesn't really explain why it was retained for the past participle, though. The loss of -n would merge simple past and past participle for some verbs like broke/broken, but there wouldn't be any ambiguity there, so the preservation of the past participle -en would require a different explanation

my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say

OP: How to create floating Chinese shufa/calligraphy (cr夏末）

so it has

So we might expect such a distinction to exist here too, but afaict I don't have it. In both cases though, whilst historically it should go back to old triphthongs /ʊu̯ə̯/ & /eɪ̯ə̯/ they seem to have been reassigned to the FORCE and SQUARE lexical sets, as if they went back to /ɒə̯/ & /eə̯/, and so exhibit a stable single syllable with no bisyllabic by-form.

The country’s leaders had in the past tried to stamp out Singlish with various initiatives and calls to action, but linguistic experts said such efforts eased as Singaporeans adopted the ability to code-switch when needed."

why indeed

this is amazing actually

you can just... hold up, im distracted because i keep imagining you pronouncing sanguine like linguini

Linguistically, it’s rarer than clicks!