Helios De Rosario Martinez wrote:

> The best resource for researching
>the phonology of Quenya is, of course, the _Qenya Phonology_ (QPh):
>it is a very early text, not revised after 1919 or 1920 (PE12:xvii),
>but it seems clear to me that the phonology was a very stable element
>(far more than the lexicon), since much of the information given in QPh
>coincides with what is -- scantly -- told in LR Appendixes and later
>linguistic texts.

**The Qenya Phonology is not, in my opinion, the best resource
for researching the Quenya as conveived by Tolkien when he
was writing and after he wrote The Lord of the Rings, though
it is not still the only source of such a nature published (I hope
this will change with publication of PE14). Tolkien made a lot
of changes during his lifetime and while Qenya of QL and
Quenya of LotR are two terms of the same idea, the structure
(phonological, morphological etc.) of Qenya is different to Quenya
of LotR. But as you note, there are things in common.

>Regarding the rhotacism, in QPh it is said that:
>
> - Eldarin had the sound [z] as variant of [ð], but in Cor-Eldarin it
>gave [r] or [s] (see tables in PE12:15, 16).

**Did it? It is long since I studied QPh and QL in detail but my
undestanding is that _z_ was originally a variant of _s_ just as
_ð_ was a variant of _þ_. At least this is my reading of the sentence
"_s_, _z_ appear to have been variants similarly of _þ_, _ð_, but
separated early, and to be treated separately as certain cases in
Qenya show but the development of Noldorin clearly proves."
(PE12:15) Since the table (p. 16) of Cor-Eldarin reflexes of primitive
Eldarin sounds does not mention what happened to voiced spirants
word-initially, I suppose that voiced _z_ and _ð_ developed as
variants only word-medially.

> - After _þ_ > _s_ "_s_ gave _z_ and then _r_ before _l_, _r_, _n_, _m_,
>_w_, _y_, _bh_, _3_ [approximated transcription; _bh_ is the labial spirant,
>a crossed _b_ in the text, and _3_ is yogh] giving _ll_, _´r_, _rn_, _rm_,
>_rw_, _ry_, _rb_ [or] _rw_, _rg_ [or] _´r_" (PE12:19).

**This is an instance where later development of Quenya differs.
First of all, Primitive Quendian appears to have had no other
spirants besides /s/ and /h/. I am not sure about Common Eldarin.

Anyway, the spirant /þ/ developed from an aspirate /th/ and its
fate was somewhat different. For instance (/th/ >) /þ/ + /w/ gave
*/þw/ > /sw/, cf. _hiswe_ from KHITH in Etym. Though not
attested, we may suppose the same for /þ/ + /y/ > */þy/ > */sy/.

I cannot say what happened to /th/ + /n/, /m/, it is possible the /th/
was deaspirated and the whole sequence underwent metathesis
producing */nt/, but I am guessing only.

As regards _bh_ and _3_ it is even more dubious; note that
combinations _rb_ and _rg_ are mentioned only in QPh, as far as
I know they are attested in no Quenya word, not even in the Qenya
Lexicon alone.

Finally, as regards /þ/ + /r/ it may be noted that /th/ + /r/ gives /ss/
in Etym, see _Nessa_ < _nethrâ_ (s.v. NETH-). It is interesting
that WJ:416 gives a different etymology of _Nessa_: this time it is
from _neresâ_. Is it because Tolkien changed his mind again and
now _Nessa_ could not come from _nethrâ_?

> - "Finally all the voiced spirants were weakened and voiced: ... _s_ >
>_z_ > _r_" (PE12:20).

**Note that it should read: "Finally all the voiceless spirants...".

This is also an instance where development of later Quenya differs: it
seems that word-final /s/ did not undergo rhotacism, though it still did
in Etym. A classical example is _olor_ "dream" from ÓLOS- in Etym
but _olos_ from _olo-s_ (UT:The Istari). I do not know what
happened to word-final /þ/ in later Quenya. It is true that we do not
find any instance of word-final /þ/ but then virtually all instances are
in Noldorin Quenya where /þ/ > /s/. As we know, Quenya allowed
only dentals word-finally (cf. Letters no. 347). Could /þ/ (belonging to
the dental series) appear word-finally in Vanyarin Quenya? I am
inclined to think so.

> - "_ð_ > _z_ > _r_ everywhere", with some exceptions (PE12:24).
>
> - "_ð_ dialectal _rð_ >_rz_ > _rr_ or _´r_" (PE12:24).
>
>So, it seems that the oldest stage of the tongues of the Eldar did
>have the sound [z], but it was lost _before_ Quenya split from the
>other Eldarin tongues. This was apparently by rhotacism or unvoicing,
>but we have no details of this early change, since (alas!) Tolkien did
>not reach a revision in ink of the section for liquids and sibilants
>(and the pencil layer was deleted, it seems).

**As I have already said, it is necessary to distinguish between
development of Qenya as imagined in the QL era and development
of Quenya as imagined later.

My understanding of the development of later Quenya is as follows:
It seems that Primitive Quendian had no other sibilants besides
/s/ (and no other sibilant besides /s/ is reconstructed for
Proto-Indo-European). The sibilant might have had basically two
variants/realizations: [s] and [z], the former occuring
word-initially, the latter intervocalically and before a voiced
obstruent (there were probably other variants, perhaps a voiced
palatalized [z] before [j]?), though it is not certain whether
this existed already in PQ or the [z] variant developed in CE
or later. The point is that intervocalic /s/ could have been
realized (pronounced) as [z].

At a certain stage voiced occlusives were spirantized intervocalically:
/b/ > /bh/, /d/ > /ð/, /g/ > /3/. All of these phonemes are later
lost, either be a complete disappearence (in case of /3/),
rephonologization (in case of /bh/ > /v/ -- I suppose that before
turning to /v/, /b/ became /bh/, sc. a voiced bilabial spirant)
or merging with another phoneme. The last is the case of /ð/
because it merged with /s/ (realized as [z] intervocalically).
There was still only one sibilant phoneme in Quenya at that stage.
It remained so in the Vanyarin dialect. However, in the Noldorin
dialect the merge of /þ/ with /s/ caused phonologization of the
opposition between [s] and [z] because now both [s] (from /þ/) and
[z] could stand intervocalically.

It is not certain when the change _z_ > _r_ happened but I suppose
it was after the change of _þ_ to _s_. It is even possible that the
phonologization of _z_ in Noldorin Quenya triggered the change
_z_ > _r_, because _z_, until then regarded and actually being
a variant of _s_, assumed its own phonological status. It was the
only voiced spirant phoneme in Quenya and it entered into the
correlation of voice which was otherwise functional for occlusives
only: /p/ : /b/, /t/ : /d/ etc. (and liquids /hr/ : /r/, /hl/ : /l/
where it was later lost). The position of /z/ was therefore
exceptional in the phonological system of Noldorin Quenya.

>Other texts which indirectly deal with phonology point to this also.
>The "Qenya Lexicon" has no root with Z.

**Similarly (if I am not mistaken) it does not have any root/base
with þ. I suppose the bases given are Cor-Eldarin.

After this sentence Helios turns to Etym mentioning several forms
that contain a _z_ (such as _mazgâ_ and _mazgê_, bases EZDE-,
EZGE- and MIZD-). To this I would like to say that if I am not
mistaken, these forms are believed to be Common Eldarin or later
elaborations. As I said, I believe Primitive Quendian did not
possess _z_ as a separate phoneme.

Then Helios remarks that Vanyarin Quenya had forms with a _z_
and that Valarin had also forms with a _z_, He wonders whether:

> 1) the Eldarin tongues developed the sound [z] again by influence of
>Valarin?

**As I have written, I think that [z] (always?) existed as
a variant of [s] even in CE and PQ.

> 2) the Noldorin dialect of Quenya (what usually we tell just Quenya)
>developed the rhotacism as a rejection of Valarin features?

**It is possible, though it may be the other way round: Vanyar
adhered to _z_, because they had contacts with Valar and adopted
and adapted a number of Valarin words.

>Finally, I would also ask something about rhotacism patterns other
>than those cited from QPh. As I told before, I find the ideas of that
>text very stable throughout all the stages of Quenya, but the document
>is incomplete, and other cases of rhotacism may be found. I would like
>to have a comprehensive relation of the typical cases of Quenya
>rhotacism, and I would be very grateful if you could help.

**The question of rhotacism is not as simple as it may seem,
there was even a disagreement between Helge Fauskanger
and Carl Hostetter concerning the analysis of _aselye_ from Aia
María. I intervened into it; if you are interested, see messages
entitled _aselye_ from Feb 21th-23rd 2003 on the Quenya
mailing list (the discussion was meant to continue on the TolkLang
list, because as Carl noted it was off-topic for the Quenya list,
but it did not).

The point is that Tolkien was changing his views on his languages.
In WJ:413 he states explicitly that "[m]edial _z_ < _s_ had become
_r_ in the Noldorin dialect of Q except for when an adjacent syllable,
or [as in case of _Kasar_] the same syllable, already contained
an _r_". However, in VT44:20 Patrick Wynne, Arden Smith and
Carl Hostetter mention (not cite unfortunately) an unpublished note
that "states that this change did not occur when _s_ was followed
by a stressed vowel". This type of rhotacism is similar to rhotacism
in the Germanic languages (Verner's law) as is also mentioned by
Patrick, Arden and Carl (a cross-reference is made to VT27:16 n. 7
where Carl discussses it).

> In the Lexicon we clearly see that no medial
>_s_ goes to _r_ (there are some cases in which seemingly to goes, but
>only seemingly; see below). But in Etym. and later texts wee see that
>it changed: for instance, _thausa_ > _thaura_ (V:393 s.v. THUS-);
>_besû_ > _veru_ (V:352 s.v. BES-);

**Speaking of the base BES-, it is quite interesting that _verno_ that
is given in Etym as a reflex of primitive  _besnô_ is recognized by
Patrick and Carl as _venno_ instead. On this occasion I would like
to ask if the reading was obvious, since it would mean that _s_
before _n_ was not rhotacized but assimilated to _n_ instead.

[Yes, the reading _venno_ is clear. For future reference, readers of
the A&C can assume that corrigenda presented using the formula
"[for:] THIS [read:] THAT" are certain. If there is any uncertainty about
the correct reading, this is _always_ indicated, most often by the
formula "[for:] THIS [perhaps read:] THAT". -- PHW]

>But the same may be said of other combinations of consonant + _r_,
>specifically of _n_ + _r_. The name _Eler(r)ína_ is a clear example: The
>entries to EL- (V:355) and RIG- (V:383) show that it must be a
>compound of _elen_ + _rína_. Such a combination in Sindarin gave _-ðr-_
>(see _caran_ + _rass_ > _caradhras_ in LR:1087, or _elen_ + _rim_ >
>_Eledhrim_ in XI:363); I guess that this is not unique to Sindarin,
>but that it may be a common Eldarin change, that in Quenya would go
>further: _nr_ > _ðr_ > _zr_ > _rr_. _Elerína_ was spelled with single _r_
>since its first occurrence about 1938 (see V:200); this shows, I
>think, the same _rr_ > _´r_ told above. But in X:154 we see in a text of
>1951 the explicit change _Elerína_ > _Elerrína_, again to show that
>Tolkien had changed his mind on this.

**I would be careful with concluding that _Elerína_ must be from
_elen_ + _rína_. It is possible that _Elerína_ exhibits a shorter
version of _elen_, sc. the element _el-_ with a connecting element
_e_ (or a suffixed stem-vowel). Note that the Quenya form of the
name of the first Númenórean king is given in _The Shibboleth of
Fëanor_ (written cca. 1968) as _Elerosse_. The form may also
exhibit the element _ele-_, which is even suggested by the form
_Elros_.

>There is one more case where this might have occurred, but it is
>unclear: In his cited article, Helge Fauskanger says that, probably,
>_nyano_ in Etym. (from _nyadrô_, V:379 under NYAD-) should be read
>*_nyarro_, and that this would show a development similar to those
>that I have suggested, but with the consonant _d_: _dr_ > _ðr_ > _zr_ >
>_rr_. It looks likely, but it is also odd that in this case the _rr_ was
>retained (since Etym. is about 1937, and the idea of retaining _rr_
>in _Elerrína_ is of 1951). Is there something for casting light on it
>in the recently published "Addenda and Corrigenda to the Etymologies"?
>
>[I will have to defer comment until the second part of the "A&C" is
>published in _VT_ 46; but of course the reading *_nyarro_ proposed
>by Helge and others is a reasonable proposal for an apparently
>problematic form. CFH]

**It is also possible that _nyano_ is to be read as *_nyaro_ (or even
*_nyáro_), but we will have to wait until VT46 is published.

Ales Bican

--
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet. (Juliet, _Romeo and Juliet_)

Quoting Ales Bican <ales.bican@...>:

> **This is an instance where later development of Quenya differs.
> First of all, Primitive Quendian appears to have had no other
> spirants besides /s/ and /h/. I am not sure about Common Eldarin.

In Etym, entry-head, MA3-, we see "Eld" *_mahtâ-_ derived from earlier *_ma3-
tâ-_, and under WA3 we find *wahtâ and *wahsê. I would tend to interpret this
that PQ /h/ (AKA /3/) became [x] before voiceless consonants, but there is no
reason to suppose a phone_m_ic split. The there does not seem to be any reason
to suppose that the Eldarin of Etym had more than two fricative phonemes, and
I'm not aware of any evidence that later CE had either.

> As regards _bh_ and _3_ it is even more dubious; note that
> combinations _rb_ and _rg_ are mentioned only in QPh, as far as
> I know they are attested in no Quenya word, not even in the Qenya
> Lexicon alone.

In Etym, under TARAG, we se *_targâ_ as the ancestral form of Q _tarya_. I'm
not aware of any attest example of what happened to *rb, but my money's on
_rv_.

                                                                     Andreas

Ales Bican wrote:

> It is long since I studied QPh and QL in detail but my
> undestanding is that _z_ was originally a variant of _s_ just as
> _ð_ was a variant of _þ_. At least this is my reading of the
> sentence "_s_, _z_ appear to have been variants similarly of _þ_,
> _ð_, but separated early, and to be treated separately as certain
> cases in Qenya show but the development of Noldorin clearly proves."
> (PE12:15)

I see. You say it means: _s_ and _z_ are variants (one to each other)
similarly as _þ_ and _ð_ are (one to each other). But I interpreted it
otherwise: that _s_ was a variant of _þ_ similarly as _z_ was a
variant of _ð_.

[Helios's interpretation here is undoubtedly the correct one. Note that
Tolkien says _s_ and _z_ are variants _of_ _þ_ and _ð_, not that _s_ is
a variant of _z_ _as_ _þ_ is of _ð_. Note too that in the accompanying
chart to this statement, "(_s_)" and "(_z_)" were originally written in as
variants to _þ_ and _ð_, respectively. CFH]

There are two main reasons which lead me to think so. First, that in
the Eldarin > Cor-Eldarin evolution _þ_ > _s_ (initially), and _ð_ >
_z_ ( > _r_) (medially, at least). And second, that I thought that the
cited sentence was the same as "_s_, _z_ appear to have been variants
of _þ_, _ð_ similarly" (I am not native English-speaker, and such
anastrophes or hyperbatons make me miss the precise meaning of the
sentences).

But of course, if you are a native English-speaker (or know more
English than me, what I think easy indeed), I trust your
interpretation.

> Since the table (p. 16) of Cor-Eldarin reflexes of primitive
> Eldarin sounds does not mention what happened to voiced spirants
> word-initially, I suppose that voiced _z_ and _ð_ developed as
> variants only word-medially.

That is a good point to discuss, by the way. Does not the table of
PE12:16 mention what happened to initial voiced spirants? I am not
sure. Of course, there is no row with the label "4/ initial", ("4" is
the grade of voiced spirants), but there _is_ a "(4)" before "2/
initial" like the "(2)" before "4/ medial". Since we explicitly learn
that "2 medial = 4 medial", may it mean that voiced spirants behavied
initially the same way as voiced stops?

I wonder why would Tolkien codify it so oddly, nevertheless I think it
is possible. And you?


Now, back to the _r_.

I agree that the examples you provide show that the _s_ rhotacism did
not have a stable model, and there were more changes from the _Qenya
Phonology_ model than previously noticed by me. A comment to some:

> > - "Finally all the voiced spirants were weakened and voiced: ...
> > _s_ > _z_ > _r_" (PE12:20).
>
> **Note that it should read: "Finally all the voiceless spirants...".

Of course!

> This is also an instance where development of later Quenya differs:
> it seems that word-final /s/ did not undergo rhotacism, though it
> still did in Etym. A classical example is _olor_ "dream" from ÓLOS-
> in Etym but _olos_ from _olo-s_ (UT:The Istari).

Yes, more or less. Although I was aware of it, I forgot to point that
in later stages we can find many exceptions in the model of the _s_
rhotacism. This is clearly seen in the case of intervocalic _s_
developed in Etym. and later (I will not mention examples or possible
causes, since they are already discussed in the messages of the
_Quenya_ Group you mentioned -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quenya/
messages #830-832, for any who wants the reference). But I thought
that the case of final _-s_ is also retained depending of the
circumstances, not a general rule.

Let's just take the same example you provide, the note on _olos_ in
UT:396. You must have noticed that in another note the term _olor_ is
mentioned instead. By your words I suppose you think that the note with
_olor_ was somewhat older, and that when Tolkien discarded the final
_-s_ > _-r_ he then wrote the alternative of _olos_.

It may be so, but also that both _olos_ and _olor_ existed, coming
from the original unrhotacized _olos_, but developed differently
depending of their precise meaning. Notice that _olor_ is translated
as 'dream' (in the Elvish mood, related to memory, imagination, clear
vision...), and _olos_ as 'vision, phantasy' (related to mind
construction, art...). This would be similar to the dicotomy between
_ar_ (conjunction) / _as_ (preposition), both from Common Eldarin _as_
('and') that Carl commented in the message #831 of the _Quenya_ list.

Anyway, I cannot find evidence of this. It could even be that the word
_olor_ (the etymology of which is not accurately described in UT:396),
did not come from _olo-s_ (opposite to _olos_), but from _olo-sV_ (V
being a short vowel), and so rhotacized because it was intervocalic
but later lost the sort final vowel. I don't know.


Then you discuss the matter of the absence of _z_ in Primitive
Quendian and Common Eldarin words. You give an hypothesis on the
evolution of these languages distinct from the one described in the
_Qenya Phonology_. However I think it agrees in one point: that these
ancient languages did not have the phoneme /z/ (although you point
that the sound [z] already existed as an allophone of [s], both
belonging to the phoneme /s/).

> **I would be careful with concluding that _Elerína_ must be from
> _elen_ + _rína_. It is possible that _Elerína_ exhibits a shorter
> version of _elen_, sc. the element _el-_ with a connecting element
> _e_ (or a suffixed stem-vowel).

I don't think it was _ele-_ + _rína_. If so, Tolkien would not have
changed it to _Elerrína_ in later stages (when, according to what I
said, some combinations of consonant + _r_ > _rr_ did not derived into
single _r_).

Helios

Quoting Helios De Rosario Martinez <imrahil@...>:


> > **I would be careful with concluding that _Elerína_ must be from
> > _elen_ + _rína_. It is possible that _Elerína_ exhibits a shorter
> > version of _elen_, sc. the element _el-_ with a connecting element
> > _e_ (or a suffixed stem-vowel).
>
> I don't think it was _ele-_ + _rína_. If so, Tolkien would not have
> changed it to _Elerrína_ in later stages (when, according to what I
> said, some combinations of consonant + _r_ > _rr_ did not derived into
> single _r_).

An obvious point, perhaps, but the change _Elerína_>_Elerrína_ could reflect a
change in analysis from _el_+_rína_ to _elen_+_rína_.

                                                            Andreas

Helios De Rosario Martinez wrote:

>I see. You say it means: _s_ and _z_ are variants (one to each other)
>similarly as _þ_ and _ð_ are (one to each other). But I interpreted it
>otherwise: that _s_ was a variant of _þ_ similarly as _z_ was a
>variant of _ð_.

Carl F. Hostetter remarked:

>Helios's interpretation here is undoubtedly the correct one. Note that
>Tolkien says _s_ and _z_ are variants _of_ _þ_ and _ð_, not that _s_ is
>a variant of _z_ _as_ _þ_ is of _ð_. Note too that in the accompanying
>chart to this statement, "(_s_)" and "(_z_)" were originally written in as
>variants to _þ_ and _ð_, respectively.

**I see. I took a second look on the sentence and yes, it could be
read like this. I am not a native English speaker either, so my
reading does not have to be natural. I will trust Carl as a native
speaker.

I wrote:

>>Since the table (p. 16) of Cor-Eldarin reflexes of primitive
>>Eldarin sounds does not mention what happened to voiced spirants
>>word-initially, I suppose that voiced _z_ and _ð_ developed as
>>variants only word-medially.

Helios replied:

>That is a good point to discuss, by the way. Does not the table of
>PE12:16 mention what happened to initial voiced spirants? I am not
>sure. Of course, there is no row with the label "4/ initial", ("4" is
>the grade of voiced spirants), but there _is_ a "(4)" before "2/
>initial" like the "(2)" before "4/ medial". Since we explicitly learn
>that "2 medial == 4 medial", may it mean that voiced spirants behavied
>initially the same way as voiced stops?

**It is interesting that we are explicitly told what happened to
voiced stops (explosives) word-initially and what happened to
voiced spirants word-medially. We are also told that voiced stops
medially = voiced spirants medially. Could it be that the two
series had a complementary distribution? What I mean is that voiced
stops occurred only word-initially and voiced spirants only
word-medially. Or is it to suggest that initially voiced spirants
merged with voiced stops and medially voiced stops merged with
voiced spirants (which would also result in complementarity)?

To put it diagrammatically:
first phase
initially:
    voiced stops - remained
    voiced spirants > voiced stops
medially:
    voiced stops > voiced spirants
    voiced spirants - remained
second phase
initially:
    voiced stops - developed as described in PE12:16
medially:
    voiced spirants - developed as described in PE12:16

Note that (as I mentioned in the previous post) later (in real
time) voiced stops seem to become voiced spirants medially, so
perhaps this aspect was incorporated and present already in
developments in the Qenya era. As commonly known, Tolkien was
inspired by Finnish and Finnish is not very fond of voiced
stops. Note also that in draft notes on pp. 23-4 (op. cit.)
Tolkien mentioned only voiced spirants, there does not seem
to be any note on voiced stops.

[_olos_ vs. _olor_:]

>Yes, more or less. Although I was aware of it, I forgot to point that
>in later stages we can find many exceptions in the model of the _s_
>rhotacism. This is clearly seen in the case of intervocalic _s_
>developed in Etym. and later (I will not mention examples or possible
>causes, since they are already discussed in the messages of the
>_Quenya_ Group you mentioned -- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quenya/
>messages #830-832, for any who wants the reference). But I thought
>that the case of final _-s_ is also retained depending of the
>circumstances, not a general rule.

**Let me note that the messages 830 through 832 is actually the
discussion on _aselye_ that I had with Carl and that I mentioned
last time. In the discussion I theorized that the exceptions like
_ósanwe_ or _alasaila_ may rather be due to analogy and
congruence with _sanwe_ and _saila_.

>Let's just take the same example you provide, the note on _olos_ in
>UT:396. You must have noticed that in another note the term _olor_ is
>mentioned instead. By your words I suppose you think that the note with
>_olor_ was somewhat older, and that when Tolkien discarded the final
>_-s_ > _-r_ he then wrote the alternative of _olos_.

**My opinion is that in the Etym era final _s_ turned to _r_ but
it did not later (say, after publication of LotR). Actually, I
overlooked the fact that the text on Istari in UT mentioned also
_olor_. It may be that the _r_ in _olor_ was original, sc. not
a product of rhotacism, unlike the _r_ in _olor_ from Etym which
< _s_.

>It may be so, but also that both _olos_ and _olor_ existed, coming
>from the original unrhotacized _olos_, but developed differently
>depending of their precise meaning.

**This is of course possible.

> Notice that _olor_ is translated
>as 'dream' (in the Elvish mood, related to memory, imagination, clear
>vision...), and _olos_ as 'vision, phantasy' (related to mind
>construction, art...). This would be similar to the dicotomy between
>_ar_ (conjunction) / _as_ (preposition), both from Common Eldarin _as_
>('and') that Carl commented in the message #831 of the _Quenya_ list.

**While this is possible as well, it need not be so. As
I wrote in the message no. 830 on the Quenya list, I am not
quite convinced that _ar_ "and" and _as_ "with" are really derived
from the same root, sc. AS. The status of rhotacism in the
Prayers is, I think, not obvious, there are several uncertainties,
e.g. _nísi_ -- why not *_níri_? Let me note that I also touched
this matter in my article _the -s case_:
http://www.elvish.org/elm/scase.html

>Anyway, I cannot find evidence of this. It could even be that the word
>_olor_ (the etymology of which is not accurately described in UT:396),
>did not come from _olo-s_ (opposite to _olos_), but from _olo-sV_ (V
>being a short vowel), and so rhotacized because it was intervocalic
>but later lost the sort final vowel. I don't know.

**This is possible, too. However, it would mean that rhotacism
took place before loss of final short vowels. We do not know
when rhotacism was meant to happen in the Etym era but the
essay _Quendi and Eldar_ suggests that it was quite a late
change when final CE short vowels were most likely dropped.

Another instance of possible different development of final _s_
can be seen in instances of the short 3rd person pronominal
suffix. It seems to appear as _-r_ in Earendel (see MC): _lútier
... Earendil_ "sailed Earendel", _langon ... kírier_ "the throat
... clove", _i lunte linganer_ "the boad hummed" and _i súru
laustaner_ "the wind 'lausted'". However, it appears as _-s_ in
famous _utúvienyes_ (LotR) or _eques_ "said he / she" (WJ:415).

On my suggestion that _Elerína_ may be _ele + rína_ instead
of _elen + rína_ Helios wrote:

>I don't think it was _ele-_ + _rína_. If so, Tolkien would not have
>changed it to _Elerrína_ in later stages (when, according to what I
>said, some combinations of consonant + _r_ > _rr_ did not derived into
>single _r_).

**I am not sure if I understand you. If it was once _ele + rína_,
why could Tolkien not decide later it was rather _elen + rína_?

* * *

I wrote:

  >>As regards _bh_ and _3_ it is even more dubious; note that
  >>combinations _rb_ and _rg_ are mentioned only in QPh, as far as
  >>I know they are attested in no Quenya word, not even in the Qenya
  >>Lexicon alone.

Andreas Johannson remarked:

  >In Etym, under TARAG, we se *_targâ_ as the ancestral form of Q
  >_tarya_.

**This is an interesting development. I wonder what the next part
of A&C will say about it because I cannot quite understand the
change of _g_ to _y_. Perhaps the _y_ in _tarya_ is a misreading
for _g_ and we will have the very first word with _rg_? And
looking at development of _gh_ (written as gamma) in PE12:24 where
_rgh_ gave _rg_, it may even be that the _y_ is a misreading for
a gamma.

  > I'm
  >not aware of any attest example of what happened to *rb, but my money's
  >on _rv_.

**I would place the same bet, though QPh allows existence of
_rb_ along with _lb_. And if later Quenya has variation _lb_ ~
_lv_, it could also have _rb_ ~ _rv_.

And Andreas, as regards spirant phonemes in CE, I agree
with you: I also think CE of Etym did not have more
spirant phonemes other than /s/ (realized as [s]
word-initially and [z] intervocalically?) and /h/ realized
as, inter alia, [x] before a voiceless sound. (A question
may be asked if _kt_ had already become _xt_ when _3t_
became _xt_. If so, I would be tempted to intepret [x]
in _mahta_ as a realization of an archiphoneme /k-h/
but that is a different matter.)


Ales Bican

--
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet. (Juliet, _Romeo and Juliet_)

The contrastive forms _olos_ and _olor_ can be explained with ease in two
different ways:

A) originally _olos_ gets its final _s_ voiced in position before vocalic
endings to _z_ which then becomes _r_ (cf. Old Latin _honos_, Classic & Vulgar
Latin _honor_).

B) originally *_oloz_ (wherever that came from) remains in position before
vocalic endings, and later becomes _olor_, but gets its final _z_ devoiced to
_olos_ in word-final position (cf. Polish G.Pl. spelled _ów_ [Croatian _ov_] and
pronounced _uf_).

As _s_ is a more common phoneme than _z_: do we actually _know_ that explanation
A can be excluded so that explanation B must be accepted and raise the problem
of where that _z_ came from? I am speaking of the internal evolution of
_LotR_-style Quenya from Primitive Eldarin, I am well aware that _z_ occurs in
Qenya.

Höstrusk och grå moln - köp en resa till solen på Yahoo! Resor

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Quoting Ales Bican <ales.bican@...>:

> Andreas Johannson remarked:
>
>> In Etym, under TARAG, we se *_targâ_ as the ancestral form of Q >_tarya_.
>
> ... I cannot quite understand the change of _g_ to _y_. Perhaps the _y_ in
> _tarya_ is a misreading for _g_ and we will have the very first word with
> _rg_? And looking at development of _gh_ (written as gamma) in PE12:24
> where _rgh_ gave _rg_, it may even be that the _y_ is a misreading for a
> gamma.

Well, as there's to the very best of my knowledge no (other) Q word with a
gamma in it, it would rather surpise me. And _g_>_gh_>_y_ is hardly very odd.
Greek's done it before front vowels, f'rinstance, and Noldorin seems to much
the same in _Diriel_<_Dirghel_ (mentioned under DER in Etym), where the second
element is from GYEL. Unchanged _-rg-_ wouldn't agree with the statement in
Appendix E that Q only had _g_ in _-ng-_, but of course, the Professor may
have changed his mind between writing Etym and LotR.

There's also Q _felya_ from PHELEG- - no primitive form listed, but almost
certainly *_phelgâ_; cf AT _felga_ and ON _phelga_. This would be a parallel
development.

(And yes, I'm aware of Q _ulundo_ < _ulgundô_, which raises the question why
we're not seeing **fela instead.)

> (A question may be asked if _kt_ had already become _xt_ when _3t_ became
> _xt_. If so, I would be tempted to intepret [x] in _mahta_ as a realization of
an
> archiphoneme /k-h/ but that is a different matter.)

It cannot have, since _ma3-tâ-_>_mahtâ-_ and _maktâ-_ yields different forms
in Noldorin; _matho_ (with the Noldorin infinitival -o) and _maetha_ (glossed
as infinitive, but apparently a "personless" present tense) respectively.

"Quendi and Eldar" has AT _hecta-_ from _hek-tâ-_, confirming that _kt_ > _ht_
is a specifically Quenya development.

                                                               Andreas

I have always supposed that the form _olor_ arose by analogy with
the other cases (comp. Latin _honos_/_honor_) . This seems to
me to be the most natural explanation.

Lukas

I have recently specified a set of standard Conventions and
Abbreviations guide for the web-journal _Tengwestië_, and would like to
use the same for this list from now on. I ask all authors to adopt the
conventions and abbreviations listed there for their posts.

	 http://www.elvish.org/Tengwestie/conventions.phtml

Thanks,

Carl


--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter   Aelfwine@...   http://www.elvish.org

		    ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
			        Ars longa, vita brevis.
	         The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought.  "Languages take such
      a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."

Greetings:

If one wished to test a hypothesis that some invented Tolkien language I is
"based on" some primary-world language P, how ought one go about it?

What features and criteria would be sufficient demonstration of an influence?
What documentation would be expected?

Darrell


Darrell A. Martin     darrellm@...
a native Vermonter currently in exile in Illinois
http://www.darrell-martin.net/genealogy


[I would say that phonetic character, sc. inventory and permitted patterns, and
especially the phonological developments that produced them, must rank as the
chief influence on Tolkien's languages from primary-world languages. If you can
demonstrate a persuasive similarity between the phonological development of
language I from Common Eldarin and that of language P from Proto-Indo-European
(assuming P is an IE language), I would count the influence demonstrated. Other
influences exist as well, of course, as with grammatical mutation in Sindarin
and Welsh, or the rich inflectional systems of Quenya and Finnish (and to a
lesser extent Latin). For Tolkienian and/or primary-world languages where
phonological information is spotty or non-existent (e.g., Khuzdul, Black
Speech), one must instead rely on synchronic features, such as an inventory of
phonemes and permitted sound patterns, apparent derivational mechanisms, etc.
etc. CFH]

Thank you all (specially to Ales) for your comments on the matter of
rhotacism. I find them very instructive and helpful.

Some time ago I started to write an article for the Spanish linguistic site
Lambenor (http://lambenor.free.fr/) on the matter of the _r_ in Quenya,
with the ideas provided by the members of the Lambenor group (those
who know Spanish may read the messages 384-395, 3287-3290,
4999-5003, 5005, 5009, 5010, 5015, 5026, 5031, 5036, 5038, 5040,
5052, 5123-5124, 5127-5128 and 5765-5768 in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lambenor).

The issue of rhotacism is one of the most complex items of the article,
that was mainly discussed by me and Lambenor member Javier Lorenzo.
But, as may be expected, the discussion dealt mainly with the issue of
pronunciation and spelling in _tengwar_.

I am aware that in other lists (I suppose TolkLang and Elfling, the
most known) this must have been already discussed; but I have searched
in their archives (through the mirror in TolkLang), and never found a
comprehensive and coherent statement on the matter. We are trying to
do it in Lambenor, but since there it shall be only available for
Spanish-speaking people, I translate the conclusions and post them
here, for you to evaluate them.

I skip the discussion on the variants _rd_, _ry_, _hr_ and _rr_, and
go directly to the controversial item: the duality of the pronunciation and
spelling of the single _r_.

We found the main information in the Appendix E:

"R represents a trilled _r_ in all positions; the sound was not lost
before consonants (as in English _part_)." (LR:1088)

"[Óre] was often used for a weak (untrilled) _r_, originally occurring
in Quenya and regarded in the system of that language as the weakest
consonant of the _tincotéma_." (LR:1094)

"[Rómen] (in origin a modification of [óre]) was used for 'full'
trilled _r_" (LR:1095)

From those citations we have seemingly contradictory information,
since first one says that _r_ is always trilled and second that there
was an untrilled _r_. But it is clear that the key is on the words
"originally", "in origin". The second and third citations are from the
section about writing, that deals with the history of the _tengwar_, the
phonemes they _originally_ represented, and their changes, while the first
citation deals with how they must be pronounced Quenya and other
languages in the context of LR, that is, in the late Third Age.

So, we may infer that when Fëanor invented the _tengwar_ there were
a weak untrilled and a full trilled _r_, clearly different, but in
later stages there was only one trilled phoneme.

The phonemes we are dealing with must be the trilled, tap and
approximant alveolars. If we take the literal meaning of the
citations, we learn that the phoneme the of _r_ in Third Age was the
alveolar trilled, as well as the original sound of _rómen_; and that
the original sound of _óre_ should be tap or approximant. We found the
approximant a likelier option, since the other _tengwar_ of the sixth
grade also represented Quenya approximants (_anna_ = /j/, and _wilya_
= /w/).

But others stated that the citations must be interpreted otherwise,
since they are oriented to a general (though interested) English
public, not to phoneticians, and that the terminology used in the
Appendixes does not accurately match the phonetic terminology we
are used to, say, the one of the IPA.

According to this idea the weak untrilled _r_ must undoubtedly be the
weakest for English, the approximant. And we may also suppose that the
trilled _r_ of _rómen_ and in the Third Age is rather the tap, more
usual for English-speakers (in opposition to the approximant, stated
to be _un-trilled_); however we cannot absolutely discard that it was
the phonetically trilled _r_, although this is more difficult for
English-speakers to identify.

A more elaborate version of this interpretation is that the
emphasized adjective "'full' trilled" means something different from
just "trilled", similar to the distinction of the Spanish "vibrante".
We Spanish do not have any approximant _r_, but the tap and the
trilled, which are called "vibrante simple" and "vibrante múltiple".
This idea means that:

  - "'full' trilled" is like "vibrante múltiple" ("trilled" for IPA).
  - "trilled" is like "vibrante" ("trilled" or "tap" for IPA).

So original _rómen_ would be the trilled (according to IPA) and _óre_
approximant, but the _r_ in the Third Age could be either trilled or
tap.

The weak point of this interpretation is that (according to a native
English speaker in Lambenor), the parallelism between the English term
"trilled" and Spanish "vibrante" is quite odd for most languages, except
for Spanish, and that such an interpretation may be regarded as a
typical interference of Spanish speakers, having nothing to do with
Tolkien's purpose.

So, the first interpretation (original _óre_ approximant, original
_rómen_ and Third Age _r_ trilled) seems to be likelier. And I think
that it can be supported by the nature of Finnish _r_. As far as I
know (a Finnish member will please tell if I am mistaken) in that language
there is only "a trilled _r_ in all positions" (paraphrasing Tolkien in
LR:1088),
the trilled alveolar according to IPA. Since Quenya is inspired by Finnish,
it is a good hint.

However, this does not mean that there was only one _sound_ for _r_.
Although the only Finnish phoneme for _r_ is the trilled, I believe
that there are distinct allophones for it. I may be wrong, since I
have no knowledge of Finnish, but listening to the samples of Finnish
names in http://www.saunalahti.fi/~kajun/finns/alpha.htm I hear that
before vowels the _r_ is really trilled (like Spanish _perro_), but
before consonants and in final position it is tap (like Spanish
_pero_). Am I right?

Moreover, this duality of allophones may be compared with the duality
in the spelling. We have few samples of tengwar in Quenya: following
the notation of Mellonath Daeron
(http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/mdtci.html) they are only DTS
12, 19, 20, 38, 40, 42, 46, 54, 55 and 59. The longest and most important
is the tengwar version of the _Namárië_ in _The Road Goes Ever On_, where
we see that _rómen_ goes before vowels and _óre_ before consonant and
final, the same pattern of the Finnish allophones previously commented.
Although the other samples of _tengwar_ are too short for any conclusion to
be found, that pattern seems to be kept, with the only exception the
illustration 182 of _Artist and Illustrator_, where the word _moruvan_ is
written with _óre_ (althoug the _r_ is before a vowel).

The dual writing of _r_ does not seem to be of etymological origin
(in contrast with the other dual-form writings, as the one of _thúle_ and
_silme_ deduced from the statement in LR:1088, "[_th_] had become _s_ in
spoken Quenya, though still written with a different letter"). In the
text of _Namárie_ we have the words _oromardi_ ("lofty halls") and
_ortane_ ("[she] raised"), both with the evident particle _or(o)-_
related to "raise", but in one case spelt with _rómen_ and in the
other with _óre_; as well as the plural suffix _-r_ is always spelt
with _óre_ but the genitive form _-ron_ (as in _aldaron_) with
_rómen_.

So it is possible that the pattern is of phonetic origin, and each
_tengwa_ matches one of the allophones of _r_. However others have
discussed other possible reasons for that spelling. Some said that it
is just an stylistic issue (as the duality between _ss_ and _ß_ in
German). Some highlighted David Salo's hypothesis in
http://www.elvish.org/elm/spelling.html
that such a pattern helps to indicate whether there is or not an _a_ after
_r_ in the style of writing which omits that vowel. However, there is
little evidence for any such hypothesis.

And that it all the information (in summary) that we gathered in
Lambenor about the issue. What do you think?

Helios

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> (And yes, I'm aware of Q _ulundo_ < _ulgundô_, which raises
> the question why we're not seeing **fela instead.)

Perhaps because of the difference of the stress pattern?
In "felga>felya" the "felg>fely" syllable is stressed, whereas
in "ulgundo>ulundo" the "ulg>ul" syllable is not stressed?
To me it makes sense - but who is me :-) ?

Lukas

----------
>De : Helios De Rosario Martinez <imrahil@...>
>À : lambengolmor@yahoogroups.com
>Objet : [Lambengolmor] Pronunciation and writing of _r_ in Quenya
>Date : Dim 4 jan 2004 23:24
>

<snip>

>
> "[Óre] was often used for a weak (untrilled) _r_, originally occurring
> in Quenya and regarded in the system of that language as the weakest
> consonant of the _tincotéma_." (LR:1094)

I read here "originally occurring in Quenya" as meaning "originally
occurring in Common Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive Quendian", e.g. *not* in
Quenya as the living language of Aman and later in Exile, in which we had
only one trilled r.

There was no such thing as a "Third Age" Quenya (of the Eldar): e.g. a
dialect used in the T.A. as distinct of the one spoken by the Eldar in the
First or the Second Age. This is clearly stated by Tolkien in his letter to
Dick Plotz.

As for Men Quenya was never their mother tongue; they spoke it either with
an adûnaic accent and later with a sôval phâre accent. ;-)
But most of the time it was for them a "Book language".

Namárië,

Edouard Kloczko

I wrote:

> I may be wrong, since I
> have no knowledge of Finnish, but listening to the samples of
> Finnish names in http://www.saunalahti.fi/~kajun/finns/alpha.htm I
> hear that before vowels the _r_ is really trilled (like Spanish
> _perro_), but before consonants and in final position it is tap
> (like Spanish _pero_). Am I right?

A fellow of the Lambenor list has already pointed that actually I am
wrong, since the _r_ in those samples are always trilled (with various
lengths, but always trilled).

So, when I said of the dual writing of _r_ in Quenya that:

> it is possible that the pattern is of phonetic origin, and each
> _tengwa_ matches one of the allophones of _r_.

... I cannot support such an idea with the model of Finnish _r_.

Helios.

Edouard Kloczko wrote:

> I read here "originally occurring in Quenya" as meaning "originally
> occurring in Common Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive Quendian", e.g.
> *not* in Quenya as the living language of Aman and later in Exile,
> in which we had only one trilled r.

That was also the idea I wrote in my previous post.
But how do you know that the "weak" _r_ did not exist in the Quenya of
Aman?

We know that Quenya changed while the Noldor were in Aman (see for
example the change _þ_ > _s_ as commented in _The Shibboleth of Fëanor_),
so I think that we cannot discard the idea that the weak _r_ existed when
Fëanor invented the tengwar (unless we have any statement by Tolkien
on this, but I don't know its existence).

> There was no such thing as a "Third Age" Quenya (of the Eldar): e.g.
> a dialect used in the T.A. as distinct of the one spoken by the
> Eldar in the First or the Second Age. This is clearly stated by
> Tolkien in his letter to Dick Plotz.

I don't have the text of that famous letter, but that sounds
interesting. Can anyone provide the citation?

Thanks
Helios.

[Indeed, Edouard ought to have been required to provide the evidence
for his assertion. Sorry for the moderatorial lapse. CFH]

Greetings everyone :)

I would like to announce the publication of a new essay regarding
the syntax of Sindarin on my website I-Lam Arth.  Being a co-author
of the paper I am very interested in the knowledgeable oppinions of
the members of this excellent list. To give a brief synopsis of said
article:

Main Intent

The general intent was to analyze the syntax of the late Noldorin
and Sindarin corpus in hope of uncovering hidden, but plausible
information.  We do not attempt to predict any certain forms, nor
prescribe a grammar.  The article is entirely descriptive in nature.

Some of the topics covered(some briefly):

·Syntactic relationships that seem to cause lenition
·Abnormal word order and its possible implications for _guren
bêd enni_
·An analysis of basic word orders and their derivatives
·Determiners and their consequences syntactically and semantically

This is only a basic listing, though there is not much else.  We do
not delve into some of the topics as deeply as I would have liked,
but that will remedid with further articles. This article assumes
the basic syntactic x-bar structure, though later articles will
utilize OT theory, Directions towards the Minimalist program, and
perhaps HDPG.

I am specifically looking for feedback regarding this article.  It
is my hope that it will spur discussion - good or bad :).

You can find the article here - http://sindarin.weet.us/syntax.html

Thanks!

Aaron Shaw

Quoting Lukas Novak <lukas.novak@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > (And yes, I'm aware of Q _ulundo_ < _ulgundô_, which raises
> > the question why we're not seeing **fela instead.)
>
> Perhaps because of the difference of the stress pattern?
> In "felga>felya" the "felg>fely" syllable is stressed, whereas
> in "ulgundo>ulundo" the "ulg>ul" syllable is not stressed?
> To me it makes sense - but who is me :-) ?

I'd rather expect the words to syllabify as fel.ya and u.lun.do, respectively,
but the idea that the difference is due to the difference in stress might be
correct nonetheless. I don't think I've ever heard any other decent internal
explanation, while the obvious external one, that the good Professor changed
the rules during the composition of Etym, has been advanced repeatedly.

Another possible internal explanation that struck me right now is that it
could simply be due to the different following vowel. No closely parallel case
is known to me, but the phenomenon as such, the same consonant behaving
variously depending on the following vowel, is examplified by the different
fate of primitive *w before *a and *o, for instance. (I'm unfortunately unable
to provide a proper citation for that, having again left my library back in
Sweden. Carl?)

[Comparison of derivatives of Etym. WÔ- (Q _o-_/_ó-_) and bases in WA-,
such as WA3- (Q _vára_), WAN- (Q _vanya_), etc. exhibit this contrast.
See also the statement in _Quendi and Eldar_ that initial _w-_ was "lost in
Quenya before _ô_" (XI:367). (Please note that I make no promise of
providing citations in the future!) CFH]

                                                           Andreas

As far as I can see, unless my memory fails me - confining my knowledge to
appendices of _LotR_ - the _rómen_ is an R as pronounced in _perro_ in Castille
and the _óre_ an R as pronounced in _perro_ in some parts of South America - as
the French pronounce J. Confirming this, Tolkien used _óre_ for English
mute/Western R. I do not know if either was ever pronounced as R in _peró_ in
Castille.

Höstrusk och grå moln - köp en resa till solen på Yahoo! Resor

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Helios De Rosario Martinez wrote:

>I skip the discussion on the variants _rd_, _ry_, _hr_ and _rr_, and
>go directly to the controversial item: the duality of the pronunciation and
>spelling of the single _r_.

**As I am very interested in these matters (indeed I have spent
a lot of time thinking about Quenya phonetics and phonology
recently), is it possible for you to share your insights with
us (or me off-list if need be)?

>We found the main information in the Appendix E:
>
>"R represents a trilled _r_ in all positions; the sound was not lost
>before consonants (as in English _part_)." (LR:1088)

**As far as I can say, these can mean basically two things: (1) by
"trilled" Tolkien wanted to stress that Quenya _r_ is not mute and
is pronounced in each and every position unlike English _r_ (as is
after all suggested by the second part of the sentence) or, and which
I find more likely, (2) Quenya _r_ is indeed trilled in all positions
and (though this is not necessirily implied from the sentence) that
Quenya _r_ is different to English _r_.

>"[Óre] was often used for a weak (untrilled) _r_, originally occurring
>in Quenya and regarded in the system of that language as the weakest
>consonant of the _tincotéma_." (LR:1094)

**Unlike Edouard Kloczko, I would read this in such a sense
that Quenya (as distinguished from CE or PQ) had originally
two types of _r_'s but later (in, say, Exilic Quenya) only one
was prevalent.

>"[Rómen] (in origin a modification of [óre]) was used for 'full'
>trilled _r_" (LR:1095)

[snip]

>So, we may infer that when Fëanor invented the _tengwar_ there were
>a weak untrilled and a full trilled _r_, clearly different, but in
>later stages there was only one trilled phoneme.

**I would like to note that it is not certain whether the
original tengwar as devised by Feanor really had two
characters for different _r_'s. What I want to say is that
<rómen> could have been introduced by later loremasters.

>The phonemes we are dealing with must be the trilled, tap and
>approximant alveolars. If we take the literal meaning of the
>citations, we learn that the phoneme the of _r_ in Third Age was the
>alveolar trilled, as well as the original sound of _rómen_; and that
>the original sound of _óre_ should be tap or approximant. We found the
>approximant a likelier option, since the other _tengwar_ of the sixth
>grade also represented Quenya approximants (_anna_ == /j/, and _wilya_
>== /w/).

**First of all, we do not know whether the rhotics (the _r_ sounds)
you mention as possible (i.e. a trill, tap and approximant) are really
alveolar. The contact point or place of approximation (in case of the
approximant) may also be the dental region, which may be even more
probable, because _r_ is listed as one of dentals when Tolkien
mentioned which sounds were permitted word-finally (see Letters
no. 347), though 'dental' in this case could be just a label that
unites all these sounds.

As regards the identity of Quenya _r_, I agree that we must think
of only (voiced) dental/alveolar trill, tap/flap and approximant.
All of them most likely apical (contact/approximation made with
the tip of the tongue).

I think it would be good to explain what trill, tap/flap and
approximant rhotics are.

Trills involve vibration of some articulator which is most often
the tip of the tongue. The tongue tip is vibrating against a contact
point in the dental/alveolar region. Trills usually consist of two
or three periods of vibration.

Taps (also called flaps, though some authors distinguish between
taps and flaps) are those rhotic sounds that have only a single
short closure. They typically involve a direct movement of the
tongue tip to a contact location in the dental or alveolar region.

Approximant _r_'s are those rhotics that do not involve contact
between articulators but only approximation between them. In case
of e.g. apical dental/alveolar approximant this means that the tip
of the tongue makes approximation toward the dental/alveolar
region but makes no contact. Note that this approximation is
not accompanied by friction (friction is involved in fricative
_r_'s).

Now an apical trill occurs in Peninsular Spanish, Finnish and
Italian (inter alia). A tap occurs in Spanish (usually described
as dental) or in American English (a different type of tap -- if
a distinction between tap and flap is maintained, the AE variety
is rather a flap). Finally, an (alveolar) approximant rhotic is
typical of Southern British English.

Let me note that the above information is taken from a book
called _The Sounds of the World's Languages_ by Peter
Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson (1996). Another piece of
information relevant for the present discussion is the fact that
in Spanish a "weak" _r_ (i.e. the tap) occurs word-finally
while a trilled _r_ (i.e. the trill) occurs word-initially and
sometimes intervocalically where it sometimes stands in
opposition with the tap. This information is taken (though also
suggested in the aforementioned book) from _Fonetické
obrazy hlásek_ (Phonetic images of sounds) by Bohuslav Hála
(1960). Finally, I would like to mention that a book _Finnish_
by Helen Sulkala and Merja Karjalainen (2002) confirms that
Finnish _r_ is a trill (they speak about apico-alveolar trill)
but the book also mentions that in word-medial position
various allophones from one flap to several flaps appear.

With this information at hand I can return to Quenya. My
opinion is as follows: Tolkien spoke about a trilled _r_ and
I think he really meant the (apical) dental/alveolar trill and
not the Southern English approximant, because a trill appears
in Finnish, Spanish and Italian. All of these languages Tolkien
knew and liked. The untrilled variety Tolkien mentioned in
App. E is also not (in my opinion) the English approximant
but a tap/flap. I find it more likely because a tap occurs in
Spanish (and also in Finnish). And there is also a striking
resemblance in distribution of the sound. In Spanish a tap
occurs word-finally; in Quenya the untrilled _r_ is represented
by <óre> and this tengwa is usually used for word-final _r_'s.
Furthermore, in Spanish a trill occurs word-initially; in Quenya
the trilled _r_ is represented by <rómen> and this tengwa
is usually used for word-initial _r_'s.

>But others stated that the citations must be interpreted otherwise,
>since they are oriented to a general (though interested) English
>public, not to phoneticians, and that the terminology used in the
>Appendixes does not accurately match the phonetic terminology we
>are used to, say, the one of the IPA.

**Appendix E is a problematic text. When reading it, we must
remember that Tolkien was writing it primarily for English
readers that could not be supposed to have deep linguistic
knowledge. Also, he must have been limited by space. And
he was not or could not be always accurate.

For instance he says that _h_ in Quenya _eht_, _iht_ had the
same sound as heard in English 'hew' or 'huge', and that _ht_
had the sound of _cht_, as in German _echt_ (i.e. ich-Laut),
_acht_ (i.e. ach-Laut). However, the sound in German _echt_
is a voiceless palatal fricative but the sound in English
'hew' is a voiceless palatal approximant (though the difference
is subtle, of course).

Another similar case is when Tolkien says that _h_ has the
sound of English _h_ in 'house' or 'behold'. The problem is
that the _h_ in 'house' is voiceless but voiced in 'behold'.

Describing situation in Spanish Helios wrote:

> - "'full' trilled" is like "vibrante múltiple" ("trilled" for IPA).
> - "trilled" is like "vibrante" ("trilled" or "tap" for IPA).

**Do you mean "untrilled" or "tap" for IPA?


Ales Bican

--
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet. (Juliet, _Romeo and Juliet_)

Andreas Johansson wrote:

>>>In Etym, under TARAG, we se *_targâ_ as the ancestral form of Q >_tarya_.
>>>
>> ... I cannot quite understand the change of _g_ to _y_. Perhaps the _y_ in
>> _tarya_ is a misreading for _g_ and we will have the very first word with
>> _rg_? And looking at development of _gh_ (written as gamma) in PE12:24
>> where _rgh_ gave _rg_, it may even be that the _y_ is a misreading for a
>> gamma.
>
> Well, as there's to the very best of my knowledge no (other) Q word with a
> gamma in it, it would rather surpise me.

**So would it surprise me. I did not want to say that it should really be a
gamma but the development in QPh I mentioned last time (i.e. _r<gamma>_
> _rg_) struck my attention. Gamma is after all similar to _y_.

> And _g_>_gh_>_y_ is hardly very odd. Greek's done it before front vowels,
> f'rinstance, and Noldorin seems to much the same in _Diriel_<_Dirghel_
> (mentioned under DER in Etym), where the second element is from GYEL.

**I do not claim that it cannot be possible. I would only like to understand
the development. If this happened in Greek before front vowels, it is
understandable, since after spirantization _g_ could have been assimilated
to _i_ or _e_, sc. fronted to become palatal fricative and then become (or
remained fricative?) palatal appoximant _y_. However, I can hardly see
motivation in the case of _targâ_ > Q _tarya_.

> Unchanged _-rg-_ wouldn't agree with the statement in Appendix E that
> Q only had _g_ in _-ng-_, but of course, the Professor may have changed
> his mind between writing Etym and LotR.

**Sure he could and very likely did, as suggests e.g. _ei_ in _inimeite_
(Etym s.v. INI).

>There's also Q _felya_ from PHELEG- - no primitive form listed, but almost
>certainly *_phelgâ_; cf AT _felga_ and ON _phelga_. This would be a parallel
>development.

**Two instances make it more probable but still I am interested in what A&C
will say about it.


Ales Bican

--
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet. (Juliet, _Romeo and Juliet_)

Ales posted:

> **Appendix E is a problematic text. When reading it, we must
> remember that Tolkien was writing it primarily for English
> readers that could not be supposed to have deep linguistic
> knowledge. Also, he must have been limited by space. And
> he was not or could not be always accurate.

		 [snip]

> Another similar case is when Tolkien says that _h_ has the
> sound of English _h_ in 'house' or 'behold'. The problem is
> that the _h_ in 'house' is voiceless but voiced in 'behold'.

Not in "American" English:  both _h_s are voiced and sound
identical.  It seems strange that Tolkien, (who I assume
would differentiate these sounds) would make this mistake.
Could he have had an American audience in mind?

-- Tobold  (Doug Pearson)

[The answer to the final question is almost certainly "no". As
for Tolkien having made a "mistake" -- it is far more likely
that Tolkien was simply speaking of the pronunciation of
_h_ in a general manner for a lay audience. I note that even
the OED indicates the pronunciation of the _h_ in both 'house'
and 'behold' with the same symbol 'h', which the "Key to the
Pronunciation" indicates is pronounced as in 'ho!" -- PHW]

Helios cited from app. E:

> > "[Óre] was often used for a weak (untrilled) _r_, originally occurring
> > in Quenya and regarded in the system of that language as the weakest
> > consonant of the _tincotéma_." (LR:1094)

Edouard Kloczko commented:
> I read here "originally occurring in Quenya" as meaning "originally
> occurring in Common Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive Quendian", e.g. *not* in
> Quenya as the living language of Aman and later in Exile, in which we had
> only one trilled r.

Why would Feanor create a letter for a sound he didn't use? Sure, he also
created letters for aspirated sounds, but I guess this was rather because
these sounds were observed in the language of the Valar. Or can we suppose
that the lambengolmor of Feanor's time already knew the sounds of Common
Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive Quendian? To my understanding, these sounds
could only be reconstructed when the Eldar knew Sindarin and other Elvish
dialects from Middle-Earth. And if we suppose that these sounds were known
at the time of Feanor: Why would a letter for a sound that was only
distinguished in Common Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive Quendian become part of
the standard orthography of Quenya?

As I understand it, there's only an external explanation for the duality of
r-letters. J. R. R. Tolkien developed these two letters for a phonetic
representation of his own "r-dropping" dialect of English: rómen for
approximant _r_ and óre for dropped _r_, that is, for the schwa-sound that
replaces an original _r_, e.g. in _here, there, under_ (it's difficult to
decide whether óre is a vowel letter or a consonant letter).

When he wrote Quenya with tengwar, he used both letters in almost the same
way he used them in English. Maybe this was only because he was used to do
so, or maybe because he liked to have diverse letters. Maybe Tolkien's
attitude to the tengwar was somewhat lax, similar to Feanor's: "[...] in any
case his primary interest was in _writing_, in its practical and its
decorative aspects rather than in an accurate phonetic transcription. Not
that he was with without interest in phonetic analysis" (app. E to _Quendi
and Eldar_, in: VT 39, p. 8).

Maybe his use of the two r-letters in Quenya remained unconscient until he
had to explain how the tengwar work, that is, at last until he wrote the
appendices to the Lord of the Rings. Helios' above quote might mean that J.
R. R. Tolkien planned to revise the Quenya phonology by introducing a
distinction of approximant _r_ vs. trilled _r_, but since his attitude to
spelling matters was similar to Feanor's, he forgot to do so.

Is the hypothesis of such a planned but never fulfilled revision plausible,
I mean, do we have any evidence for similar cases?

---------------------------
       j. 'mach' wust
http://machhezan.tripod.com
---------------------------

[Edouard's reading of "originally occuring in Quenya" (with regard to untrilled
_r_) as meaning "originally occurring in Common Eldarin (?)or/and Primitive
Quendian" is, I think, unjustified and highly idiosyncratic. If one applies
Occam's
Razor (the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct) to this question,
the situation regarding trilled R and weak R in Quenya seems rather obvious.
Though R came to be pronounced as "a trilled _r_ in all positions" (LR:1088),
there was originally also a weak R in Quenya (either Old Quenya, or the more
conservative form of the language spoken in Valinor, as opposed to Exilic
Quenya). Tolkien's use of the tengwar Rómen versus Óre in his transcription
of "Namárie" gives us a clear indication of where these two sounds originally
occurred -- trilled R (rómen) was usual at the beginning of words or
intervocalically, and weak R (óre) was usual before consonants and at the
end of words. -- PHW]

Ales Bican wrote:
>
> Helios De Rosario Martinez wrote:
>
> >I skip the discussion on the variants _rd_, _ry_, _hr_ and _rr_,

[snip]

> is it possible for you to share your insights with
> us (or me off-list if need be)?
>

Of course. I will translate the text (I wrote it in Spanish) and then
post it. But it will be in another post (it is quite long).

> Another piece of
> information relevant for the present discussion is the fact that
> in Spanish a "weak" _r_ (i.e. the tap) occurs word-finally
> while a trilled _r_ (i.e. the trill) occurs word-initially and
> sometimes intervocalically where it sometimes stands in
> opposition with the tap.

Yes, so it is. The tap also occurs in contact (after or before) a
consonant, although in those positions it depends on the individual
pronunciation: some people (I myself, for instance) slightly trill
ante- and post-consonantal _r_ depending on the velocity of speech
(specially when speaking slowly or emphasizing the word). But the rule
is:

  - Initial _r_ and intervocalic _rr_: trilled.
  - In other positions (final or adjacent to a consonant), and
intervocalic _r_: tap.

Note that intervocalic _rr_ is not longer (as Finnish); it only marks
that it is trilled, opposite to intervocalic _r_.


> The untrilled variety Tolkien mentioned in
> App. E is also not (in my opinion) the English approximant
> but a tap/flap. I find it more likely because a tap occurs in
> Spanish (and also in Finnish).

That is the only point were we disagree. The sounds in Finnish and
Quenya are a good hint, of course. But note that LR:1094 says:

"Grade 6 was most often used for the _weakest or 'semi-vocalic'_
consonants of each series. (...) Thus [óre] was often used for a weak
(untrilled) _r_, _originally_ occurring in Quenya and regarded in the
system of that language as the weakest consonant of the tincotéma."
[emphasis mine].

I learn from those words that the original consonant for _óre_ was a
"semi-vocalic" dental, as _anna_ was a "semi-vocalic" velar and
_wilya_ was a "semi-vocalic" labio-velar. And I think that this
"semi-vocalic" is what in the terminology of the IPA is called
"approximant".

This is not opposite to the fact that later Quenya lost this
approximant sound, and retained only the Finnish-like trilled (and
tap, maybe).


> Describing situation in Spanish Helios wrote:
>
> > - "'full' trilled" is like "vibrante múltiple" ("trilled" for
> > IPA).
> > - "trilled" is like "vibrante" ("trilled" or "tap" for IPA).
>
> **Do you mean "untrilled" or "tap" for IPA?
>

No, I mean "either 'trilled' or 'tap' for IPA".
_Vibrante_ is (in Spanish phonetical terminology) an ambiguous term,
since it can be referred to either _vibrante múltiple_ (trilled) or
_vibrante simple_ (tap). The common point is that both are opposite to
the approximant, which is nearly "mute" for Spanish ears.

What I meant is that maybe Tolkien used the word "trilled" in this
way, not with its specific meaning for IPA, but opposite to the "weak"
(which he specified as "untrilled") approximant.

Helios

Quoting Ales Bican <ales.bican@...>:

> Quoting Andreas Johansson:
> > And _g_>_gh_>_y_ is hardly very odd. Greek's done it before front vowels,
> > f'rinstance, and Noldorin seems to much the same in _Diriel_<_Dirghel_
> > (mentioned under DER in Etym), where the second element is from GYEL.
>
> **I do not claim that it cannot be possible. I would only like to understand
>
> the development. If this happened in Greek before front vowels, it is
> understandable, since after spirantization _g_ could have been assimilated
> to _i_ or _e_, sc. fronted to become palatal fricative and then become (or
> remained fricative?) palatal appoximant _y_. However, I can hardly see
> motivation in the case of _targâ_ > Q _tarya_.

Because I'm a dudhead, I forgot to mention you get rG > rj also in Swedish.
I'm not sufficiently into the phonological development of my native language
to tell exactly in what environments, but it seems to have failed to take
place medially before a back vowel (e.g. _morgon_ ['mOr`gOn] "morning"),
but it did happen finally (e.g. _varg_ [var`j] "wolf"*), so no front vowel is
_required_ for it. You do get it before 'a' (e.g. _vargar_ ['var`jar`]
"wolves"),
but then this is a front [a], not back [A] like in Q, and all examples of -rga-
I can think of have a morpheme boundary in them anyway.

* This is of course not the cognate of "wolf" - that's _ulv_ [8lv]. But I
suspect it's very much connected to Tolkienian "warg"!

                                                      Andreas

PS Phonetic transcriptions above follow the X-SAMPA system, which is described
here: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/x-sampa.htm . Note further that
values are for my dialect - in particular, a retroflex trill is far from the
only variant of Swedish /r/ heard! Indeed, in casual speech some of those
would be retroflex approximants for me.

On 05.01.2004, at 23:12, Ales Bican wrote:

> With this information at hand I can return to Quenya. My
> opinion is as follows: Tolkien spoke about a trilled _r_ and
> I think he really meant the (apical) dental/alveolar trill and
> not the Southern English approximant, because a trill appears
> in Finnish, Spanish and Italian. All of these languages Tolkien
> knew and liked. The untrilled variety Tolkien mentioned in
> App. E is also not (in my opinion) the English approximant
> but a tap/flap. I find it more likely because a tap occurs in
> Spanish (and also in Finnish). And there is also a striking
> resemblance in distribution of the sound. In Spanish a tap
> occurs word-finally; in Quenya the untrilled _r_ is represented
> by <óre> and this tengwa is usually used for word-final _r_'s.
> Furthermore, in Spanish a trill occurs word-initially; in Quenya
> the trilled _r_ is represented by <rómen> and this tengwa
> is usually used for word-initial _r_'s.

Laurence J. Krieg provided us with an accurate transcription of
recordings (made in 1952) where J.R.R. Tolkien reads, inter alia,
'Namárie' and 'A Elbereth Gilthoniel' [Jim Allan: An Introduction to
Elvish p. 152ff.].

  From the transcription it can be seen that trilled and tapped 'r' are
virtually interchangeable in Tolkien's pronunciation of Elvish. Tapped
'r' is numerically prevalent whereas trilled 'r' is found throughout
before dental (a common phenomenon).

Hence I think it is possible that Quenya is thought to feature (or
would 'naturally' have) positional variants of its 'r's, oscillating
between trilled and tapped 'r'.

However, Tolkien would mean both a tapped and a trilled 'r' when
using the cover term 'trilled' in the Appendices.

Although the distinction between tapped (actually a 'one-trill' r) and
trilled 'r' e.g. in Spanish can be heard clearly, I think most people
would characterize those 'r's as 'trilled' when speaking without a
linguistic background or making only a rough statement. And
indeed a trill is distinguished from a 'tap' or 'flap' just by the
number of taps/flaps. That is, a trilled 'r' has many flaps.

Hence, I think it most likely that the 'r' originally represented by
<óre> would have been an approximant or fricative. As for the point of
articulation, the listing in the tincotéma might be suggestive as  Ales
has said (i.e. dental/alveolar/post-alveolar). A guttural approximant
or fricative might also be considered.

-David Kiltz

At the end of his post (589) "Re: Pronunciation and writing of
_r_ in Quenya" David Kiltz wrote:

"A guttural approximant or fricative might also be considered."

David noted in a separate message to the moderators that this
was a mistake, and he requested that before his initial message
was posted that the line be corrected to:

"A uvular approximant or fricative might also be considered."

Unfortunately, I neglected to make this correction before approving
the first message, and so I note the correction here, along with
my apologies to David for the moderatorial lapse.

-- Patrick H. Wynne

>**Appendix E is a problematic text. When reading it, we must
>remember that Tolkien was writing it primarily for English
>readers that could not be supposed to have deep linguistic
>knowledge. Also, he must have been limited by space. And
>he was not or could not be always accurate.
>
>For instance he says that _h_ in Quenya _eht_, _iht_ had the
>same sound as heard in English 'hew' or 'huge', and that _ht_
>had the sound of _cht_, as in German _echt_ (i.e. ich-Laut),
>_acht_ (i.e. ach-Laut). However, the sound in German _echt_
>is a voiceless palatal fricative but the sound in English
>'hew' is a voiceless palatal approximant (though the difference
>is subtle, of course).

So subtle even that the IPA does not use different symbols to spell them...
though of course you are right.

>Another similar case is when Tolkien says that _h_ has the
>sound of English _h_ in 'house' or 'behold'. The problem is
>that the _h_ in 'house' is voiceless but voiced in 'behold'.

As a matter of fact I am quite certain that in the English spoken in Britain
the _h_'es are voiceless in every position, including those between vowels.
The voicing of the glottal fricative seems to be an invention of the
Americans. Thus, Tolkien's example would be quite adequate, which would be
only fair, because mixing up voiced glottal fricatives with unvoiced ones
does not seem like an error Tolkien would make because this is no
simplification but an actual error.

[As noted before in my comment added to message 585,
the OED indicates the pronunciation of the _h_ in both 'house'
and 'behold' with the same symbol 'h', which the "Key to the
Pronunciation" indicates is pronounced as in 'ho!". -- PHW]

I am however not sure of this because I am no native speaker of anything but
dutch. Then continuing on the plausible idea that tolkien wouldn't make such
errors, this could mean that the _h_ in for example _aha_ would be voiced,
but I will not open an unattested can of worms.

-Eddin Najetovic

_________________________________________________________________
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meaningless to everyone.

Thanks,

Carl

As I told before because of Ales' request, I have translated the
section on the variants of _r_, of the article about the _r_ in Quenya
that I am editing for Lambenor. Here it goes.

A foreword on this matter is that it is noticeable the resemblance
between the variants of _r_ (_rd_, _hr_, _ry_ and _rr_) and the
variants of _l_ in Quenya (_ld_, _hl_, _ly_ and _ll_). Both consonants
are what in traditional linguistics are called "liquid", i.e.
consonants which may form syllabic groups after another consonant. In
the earliest texts on Quenya Tolkien actually stated that the _r_ was
in the Eldarin tongues "a mere variant of _l_" (PE12:15). And although
there is no evidence of this idea to bee kept in later development of
Quenya, we do see that both consonants always had common features, as
observed in their parallel variations.

We may actually see a close relationship between the symbols of
_rómen_ (which represented some type of _r_) and _lambe_ (which
represented _l_). Not only they are in the same row of additional
_tengwar_ (between 25 and 28), but they both share a wavy line (in
_rómen_ something like a prolongation of the bow of _óre_); and of
them both there are variants for a "following _d_" (_arda_ and
_alda_). So it is likely that _rómen_ was originally designed for
denoting the liquid quality of _r_, not only a sound distinct of
_óre_'s.

So, although in _tengwar_ only the variants _rd_ and _ry_ are attested
(both as modifications of _rómen_), we may think with little risk that
the other variations (_hr_ and _rr_) should be also ortographically
related to _rómen_, so keeping the parallelism with _lambe_.
Phonologically speaking, these variations should be as well related to
the original phoneme of _rómen_, the trilled /r/.

Now, let us examine each one of them:

_Arda_ occurs in the contact of _r_ with _d_, what usually occurred by
loss of an intermediate vowel (as in _varda_ < _barádâ_, see BARÁD- in
Etym.), in compounds (as _mardil_ < _mar_ + -_(n)dil_), and so on. In
any case, they were still pronounced as two separate sounds ([rd]).
Moreover, each one belonged to one distinct syllable; but Quenya
writing favoured the rendering of two adjacent consonants in only one
symbol when the combinantion occurred often, as this does.

_Hr_ (supposedly rendered as _halla_ + _rómen_) was yet a single
sound, a "voiceless _r_" (LR:1088) - and breathed, according to a note
in LR:1097-, although it was usually derived from the contact of two
distinct sounds, initial _sr_-. It is remarkable that, in opposition
to the previous comment on _arda_, _hr_ is written with two different
_tengwar_ (even being a single phoneme!). But _halla_ may be regarded
a diacritic symbol rather than a _tengwa_, and moreover _hr_ does not
seem to be a so usual consonant in Quenya.

Regarding this matter and the previously commented about the proper
_tengwa_ to use in these variations of _r_, we may also note that the
only attested usage of _halla_ is actually with _rómen_, or rather a
variation of _rómen_ in which its left straight line is extended
vertically. It occurs in the tengwar MSS of Edwin Lowdham (IX:319-21);
but it is of relatively small interest for studying Quenya writing, since
those texts do not represent Quenya but Old English, and moreover
this symbol does not represent a variation of _r_, but of _w_.

Regarding the pronunciation of this _hr_, it is often compared to
Welsh voiceless _r_, i.e. a voiceless trilled alveolar, but note that
Tolkien stated in LR:1097 that it is also breathed (rendered in IPA's
code as a superscript _h_).

On _ry_, it is written with _rómen_ with two dots below, execpt in one
case: the version of _Namárië_ published in _Eorclanstanas_, where
_ómaryo_ is written with _óre_, as stated by Mans Björkman in his
article on "Classic Quenya Mode"
(http://hem.passagen.se/mansb/at/teng_quenya.htm).
The author of the article states that this is "probably by mistake".

This group is controversial. In LR:1094 Tolkien states that "palatals
were represented by a Fëanorian diacritic denoting 'following y'
(usually two underposed dots)". This is obviously the case, so _ry_
could be regarded as a palatal _r_ (there is no IPA symbol for it, but
it may be represented as a retracted retroflex trill). But some
scholars think that it would be rather a palatalized trill (represent
it as /rj/, with _j_ in superscript), or maybe a group of /r/ + /j/,
where each sound would belong to a distinct syllable. There is a hint
which points to this hypothesis, in some notes on pronunciation
published in PE13:63, where Tolkien stated that _ty_ had originally an
unitary sound, the unvoiced palatal stop [c], but was later spelt as
[cj]. This extension could be common to the whole _tyelpetéma_, and
hence _ry_ would have originally the sound of palatal _r_, but later
the one of palatal _r_ + [j].

Finally we have _rr_ (as found in words like _earráme_, _mirroanwi_,
and so on), that according to the model of other double letters
(specially _ll_ as seen in the _tengwar_ version of _Namárië_, in
words such as _pella_, _tellumar_, Tintallë_..., but also other as
_ss_ in _lassi_, _lissë_...) should be most likely written as _rómen_
with a bar o tilde below. There is discussion on whether
phonologically it is a long _r_ (/r:/) or a geminate (/r.r/); in
LR:1089 Tolkien says that these double consonants are "long" (although
_rr_ is not cited) and so says in LR:1096 about the consonants written
with the underbar, hence we think that the first interpretation is the
likeliest one.

Some have pointed that in words as _earráme_, compounded by _ear_ +
_ráme, where as separated words the former is written with _óre_ and
the second with _rómen_, this _rr_ could be written as _óre_ +
_rómen_. But this idea is not very likely, since the _tengwar_ writing
is usually based on the sequence of sounds in the words, not in their
isolated components; for instance, _elen_ ('star') ends with _númen_
and _tári_ ('queen'), starts in _tinco_, but the compound _Elentári_
(seen in the _tengwar_ version of _Namárië) is written with _anto_,
even when the phonemes of the adjacent consonants keep separated
(opposite to /r:/).

Helios

On 05.01.2004, at 23:27, Ales Bican wrote:

> I can hardly see
> motivation in the case of _targâ_ > Q _tarya_.

In addition to Andreas Johansson's examples from Swedish, I might add
that in some German dialects the same happens. In the Rhineland area
you have /ju:t/ for SG (=Standard German) _gut_ etc. (the 'j' being
pronounced very similar to English 'y' but with some palatal friction).
In fact, moving towards the Ruhrgebiet you will hear /gürjen/ for the
PN 'Jürgen', that is /j/ and /g/ are exchanged. Phonetically, what
happens is that 'light', that is palatalized /g/ becomes a fricative
which naturally yields /j/. Now (for your point) velar or
non-palatalized /g/ should become /G/ (I mean the velar voiced back
spirant). However the opposition /G/ : /j/ is leveled in favour of /j/.
The reason for that would seem to be that a /G/ would normally be
pronounced further down the throat than /g/ hence in the process of
spirantization the point of articulation is moved either way (to the
front or the rear of the gum). Possibly because the process of
spirantization started with palatalized /g'/, i.e. g before front
vowels and was then analogously extended to all instances of /g/. Or
else, because the pronunciation of /g/ has already been somewhat
fronted before, so that the output is /j/ without significant movement
of the point of articulation, if any at all. In fact, there *is* a very
slight difference between /j/ in _jeck_ 'crazy' and _jut_ 'good', the
latter being pronounced somewhat more to the back, between the palatum
and the velum.

I think that a scenario along these lines looks rather likely. At any
rate, the development exhibited by Quenya is well documented in real
world languages, as /j/ = /y/ is attested even in the history of
English (although the output of /g/ +- pal. are different).

-David Kiltz