[Tlhingan-hol] paq'batlh no'Hol: QIch wabmey

[Philip Newton]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 15:40, Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh
<qeslagh at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> ghItlhpu' 'ISqu', jatlh:
>> {*'qi'tu'}>{QI'tu'}:
>> Apart from {ba'} in {*tubba'lit}, {*'qi'tu'} is the only attested
>> {no' Hol} word containing syllables which end in [*'].
>> ?The word {*'qi'tu'} should have become {Qu'to'},
>> or the {no' Hol} form should have been {*'qettit}
>
> Perhaps {QI'tu'} could be considered a modern reborrowing from no' Hol?

Ooh, that would be nifty.

That sort of thing does tend to crop up all the time in natlangs -
sometimes even creating doublets, where a sound-shifted version of a
word will then coexist with a later-borrowed form much closer to the
original (typically with a different meaning), such as fragile/frail
in English or fungo/hongo in Spanish. (Or modern Greek doulia, which
means "work" or "slavery" depending on whether you accent it the
regular-sound-change way or the closer-to-the-original way.)

> Interestingly, note the ta' Hol pair  {SuH} ~ {Su'}, both "ready, standing
> by", which would be *sruq' and *sru' in no' Hol and would also support
> no' Hol *q' having *' as an allophone.

Oooh.

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <philip.newton at gmail.com>