Ask-A-Linguist Message Details
| Subject: | Initial [tl]-cluster |
|---|---|
| Question: |
Hello all, I recently met a gentleman with the last name Tlumack. He expressed some problems with having a last name which begins with an English-illegal consonant cluster (he was not a linguist). He then said that he had no idea what the origin of his last name was--though he had verified that the initial tl- was not an orthographic error. He believed his family to have come to the United States from Hungary. It has been a while since I studied historical phonology (and my studies were limited to just a few Indo European Languages--and I never achieved ''deep'' knowledge of the subject), so I was unable to tell him a language family or subgroup that would have allowed the initial /tl/ cluster. I feel that it is also possible that the <tl> in the orthography is not actually representative of a /tl/ cluster, but rather a lateral affricate, or something else. I'd like to be able to help this man figure out the linguistic origin of his last name! Is the <tl> actually representative of that cluster? Or something else? And is the name Indo European or maybe Uralic? As a side note--I was curious to confirm why /tl/ might be illegal in English while /pl/ and /kl/ are fine. Do phonologists think it's just because /t/ and /l/ share roughly the same place of articulation? Are these distributions similar cross- linguistically--i.e. are /pl/ and /kl/ more common than /tl/? Thanks so much! |
| Reply: |
I wonder if his ancestor left Europe with the surname 'Tlumacz'? Anthea |
| Reply From: | Anthea Fraser Gupta click here to access email |
| Date: | 08-Sep-2012 |
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