Re: Phantom Finnish *-k/*-h

"Marc Adler" <marc.adler@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have a few questions following up on a previous thread. In "Finnish:
> An Essential Grammar" by Fred Karlsson, it is stated that gemination
> occurs after:
>
> 1 - a 2nd person singular command
> 2 - the negative form of verbs ending in -e (eg, en tule)
> 3 - nouns ending in -e
> 4 - first infinitive

There are about a dozen other cases as well. (And case 3 has many
exceptions.)

> (Regarding the last one, this means that "elää koroillaan" is
> pronounced "elää kkoroillaan," right?)

Rather, "elääk koroillaan".

> It was mentioned in the previous thread that a final consonant might
> have been lost,

It has. Or, rather, it has been mostly been assimilated, but lost in some
situations. As I wrote previously, the phenomenon is not that mystical, but
it has been been mystified by the orthography and, most importantly, by
confusing and misleading explanations and names.

> and that it is either -k or -h.

Or -s or -t, though this is less common.

> What is the basis for this hypothesis?

Well, it's not really just a hypothesis but a fact, to the extent that there
are any facts in the history of language.

> When did the phantom consonant disappear?

Partly long ago, partly never. But there's nothing phantom about it, except
that in some cases, it might not be absolutely certain _which_ consonant
appeared at the end of a word before the assimilation (or, in some
situations, disappearance).

> Are there any written records which include it?

Many, including proper names still in use and written dialect texts.

> I assume that this consonant is also the reason for the partitive
> -tta/ttä for nouns in end in -e. Is this correct?

Yes.

> What is the relation between this consonant and the 's' that appears in
> the illative form not only of words like 'perhe' ('perheeseen') but
> also words like 'vapaa' ('vapaaseen')?

None. The illative ending was originally -sen or -zen, and later the sibilant
was changed to -h-, which may have later disappeared (and we still have forms
like 'perheesehen' or 'vapaasehen'), and the vowel has usually been
assimilated so that it is the same as the vowel before the suffix.

> Is there any relation with the 'h' that appears in the illative case of
> some other words ending in vowels, like 'maa' ('maahan')?

No.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
.

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