>>15957203>Synchronically, it's considered word-final excrescence of an alveolar nasal.I would say that it is the other way around. It is just that words with consonants at the beginning are far more common. Looking at the history of the language it makes more sense to veiw it as I view it, as they only started dropping the consonant in the indefinite article later on. It is what occured, and the English did it for some purpose I don't remember the correct term for.
>Nasal consonants have a very high level of sonority but still comprise intermoraic consonant clusters under mainstream analyses.Yeah, but I have heard other arguments. Anyway, I don't find the discussion over phonemes so interesting. The matter of the strange usage of the oblique case in English as OP references it is far more interesting.
