LINGUIST List 7.1234

Wed Sep 4 1996

Qs: Kitagawa & Kuroda, Phonological process, Dutch and Flemish

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Yunsun Jung, Kitagawa & Kuroda's paper
2. Dave Harris, Phonological process--Worcester/Gloucester/Leicester
3. TOOPSTWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU, Dutch and Flemish

Hi. I am looking for a copy of Kitagawa & Kuroda's 1992 manuscript,
titled as 'Passive in Japanese'. I will appreciate any helpful
response. (you can e-mail me to yjunghusc.harvard.edu.) Thank you.

I've been thinking about names like Worcester, Leicester, and
Gloucester which, though perhaps viewed by most of my fellow Americans
as strange relics of British eccentricity, really do follow a simple
and straightforward phonological process where two like consonantal
continuants separated by a weak vowel (in this case schwa) are merged
into one by the deletion of this weak vowel. The same phenomenon
occurs with the name of a school in Provo, Utah which I attended as an
adolescent:

	Farrer Junior High School 
	This is pronounced "Fair" (or "Ferr" if your accent makes a 
	difference between [Er] and [eir] which mine doesn't)

 Anyway, using a regular expression, I searched a US Census list of
80,000 surnames available on the web in order to find names in which
like consonants were separated by one vowel and came across a few more
from various language groups that may or may not be examples of
this. (It's hard to know when you can't have the names pronounced for
you as well as see them written.) My question, then, is this:

 I would be interested in knowing in what other languages this
phenomenon occurs and with what other sounds. Judging from some of the
names I encountered in my search, I suspect that it may occur in
Japanese where [i] and [u] deletion causes two like consonants to be
connected together. Also, in languages where word-internal gemination
is phonemic, I'm curious as to whether simplification occurs as it
does in English or if the gemination retains its full phonological
value. Please include as many examples as you can with your comments
and I will post a complete summary to the list. Any other observations
about this phenomenon are also welcome. Thanks,

Can anyone enlighten me on just the major differences between Dutch
and Flemish? I have studied Dutch on my own and have been to Antwerp,
but I noticed no difference (except for a slight difference in
pronunciation) between the Dutch I had learned and the Flemish I
encountered in Antwerp. I have also never seen anyone juxtapose
contrasting fragments of Dutch and Flemish.

If there are any major lexical or morphosyntactic differences between
Dutch and Flemish, could someone demonstrate them for me with a
contrasting sentence or two?

Dank U!

Gary H. Toops TOOPSTWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU
Associate Professor Ph (316) WSU-3180 (978-3180)
Wichita State University Fx (316) WSU-3293 (978-3293)
Wichita, Kansas 67260-0011 USA http://www.twsu.edu/~mcllwww