trochee: (Default)
trochee ([personal profile] trochee) wrote2004-11-27 05:29 pm

epithentic [sic]

in light of a recent post, I found the word epithentic in the Switchboard Transcription Project's documentation.

Google turns up nothing except the same page and another page that doesn't reassure me much because its title is "A SPE based destinctive feature composition" [sic].

Do y'all figure that "epenthetic" was what was intended? Google also suggested "epithetic" but "epithetic stop" doesn't make sense.

[identity profile] marnanel.livejournal.com 2004-11-28 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
the process by which a new word is formed by inserting a sound into another word. "Thunder," an English word derived from the Old English word "thunor" by process of epenthesis.

Gosh. I have a conlang where this is a regular rule of derivation, but I didn't know it had a name.

[identity profile] trochee.livejournal.com 2004-11-28 02:14 am (UTC)(link)
it happens a lot in English, too: "something" often gets an epenthetic /p/ between the syllables, for example. (Sometimes it's called "excrescent".)
ext_54961: (Default)

[identity profile] q-pheevr.livejournal.com 2004-11-28 05:10 pm (UTC)(link)

Epenthetic seems to make the most sense here: their example seems to be talking about the epenthetic [p] in warm[p]th. And neither I nor the OED has ever heard of epithentic before. But it doesn't seem to be a mere typo, because STP's abbreviation for it is _epi rathern than, say, _epe. Strange.

[identity profile] congogirl.livejournal.com 2004-11-30 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
hmmm seems logical that they meant epenthetic, since it is a linguistics site. another example for you is a source of poking fun for my colleague, who constantly asks our Irish friend L to say 'film,' which comes out 'fill'em.'

do you mind if I add you as a friend? I think your entries are very interesting, and have seen your comments on [livejournal.com profile] anthrochica's page.

[identity profile] trochee.livejournal.com 2004-11-30 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
no, I don't mind. I'll add you back as well. Yay for more anthropologist/linguist communication.