MrPritzel

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Old Spanish /dʒ/, /ʒ/

Hi MrPritzel,

I don't think any source supports having these as separate phonemes, as on juuentut versus mensagero. We are dealing with one phoneme which has potentially both [dʒ] and [ʒ] as allophones (the latter intervocalic). Nicodene (talk) 14:02, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I think there are some other entries with a post-consonantal fricatives written as stops (not by my disgression, I mean). Should we collapse those onto the phoneme too? I think it could be a bit misleading at a glance to hide the allophony, though. Or misleading to show the allophony? I'm not sure. Overall, I think I kinda followed the standard of phonetic precision that was already there in some places. MrPritzel (talk) 17:23, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

@MrPritzel Do you mean, for instance, /d/ versus /ð/? That was intentional, reflecting the view that Old Spanish distinguished /d ɡ/ (< intervocalic Latin /t k/) from /ð ɣ/ (< intervocalic Latin /d ɡ/). Sources that indicate this include:

Lloyd 1987 (From Latin to Spanish, p. 241)

Penny 2002 (A history of the Spanish language, p. 76)

Dworkin 2018 (A guide to Old Spanish, p. 23)

Granted, this is not directly evidenced in the spelling, and the argument is based on structural parallelism with the intervocalic /b/–/β/ distinction.

As for [dʒ] and [ʒ], the phonemic representation would have to be /ʒ/ in order to avoid making the claim that the phoneme was distinct in intervocalic position from /ʒ/ < Latin [lj], as in mugier (and no source, as far as I am aware, claims that the latter was ever [dʒ]). We could have, for instance, /ʒuβenˈtut/ [dʒ-], to indicate the possible 'strong' allophone in word-initial position. Nicodene (talk) 19:38, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I agree. I will change all the [dʒ]s back to /ʒ/.

However, does this judgement entail that all instances of this kind of allophony are to be reverted? For example, I saw a few entries with initial /β/. Like /ʒ/, I would think /β/ would be a stop in initial position. I suppose for the same reasons as above, those should be reverted to the underlying phoneme? MrPritzel (talk) 20:50, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

@MrPritzel There was a phonemic distinction between /β/ and /b/ in Old Spanish (in word-initial position and intervocalically), per the above three and numerous other sources. The distinction still survives in Ladino, incidentally, though with a labiodental instead of /β/.

In general though, yes, I would revert cases where allophonic variation is mistakenly indicated in phonemic transcriptions. Nicodene (talk) 23:42, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. Sorry for making a bit of a mess.

While we're here talking about stops, I have another question: would Arabic ب be borrowed as /β/ or /b/? To my recollection, a few entries suggested the former, but I don't think that makes sense. In short, should algibe be /alˈʒibe/ or /alˈʒiβe/, and should axeb be /aˈʃep/ or /aˈʃeɸ/?

I don't really know of any evidence either way. However, I think the seeming absence of *algive and *axef says something. But then there's darbe/darve.

Thank you for you time. MrPritzel (talk) 23:58, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

That's a good question- I'm really not sure. I'll see whether I can dig up an answer.

I wouldn't worry about darbe/darve in particular as Old Spanish v and b seem to have merged early on in consonant clusters (Penny 2002: p. 37). Nicodene (talk) 00:39, 22 December 2022 (UTC)