zompist bboard

Mandarin actually has a three-way distinction: [ts] [tʃ] [tɕ/tʲ] (not sure which one it's parsed as) and [dz] [dʒ] [dʑ/dʲ], indicated in pinyin as c, ch, q and z, zh, j, respectively. So, yeah, not necessarily. Interesting. What do you mean by 'not necessarily'? Are they not phonemes? Also does any...

As the title says, are there any languages that have both /ts/ and /tɕ/ as distinct phonemes (or anything similar to this)? I'm thinking because both are not phonetically very different most of these would tend to merge relatively quickly. I know Japanese and Korean has both [ts] and [tɕ] but they a...

Outside Germanic, are there any other instances of fricatives hardening to stops? In particular I'm interested in the dental/alveolar stops. In which languages does this happen? I'm not sure but I think I recall some Finnish dialects having the change t>D>d in consonant gradation environments. Also ...

I have only heard of a few languages where historically speaking virtually all of the original initial consonant clusters were reduced to single consonant onsets. In fact the only two examples I know are Korean and Lhasa Tibetan. However in the case of Lhasa Tibetan I have little to no idea what wer...

[On a similar note, I just read yesterday in one of my books on Romance languages that more often than not where there used to be word doublets in Latin, the modern daughter languages have favored retaining the longer form of the two. 1. What's the name of that book? 2. What are some of the example...

[On a similar note, I just read yesterday in one of my books on Romance languages that more often than not where there used to be word doublets in Latin, the modern daughter languages have favored retaining the longer form of the two. 1. What's the name of that book? 2. What are some of the example...

Well I remember reading that alveolar or dental consonants have a tendency to front adjacent back vowels (e.g.: the word [tut] might become [tyt]) and vice-versa that velar consonants pull front vowels to the back region. All of this is pretty obvious and logical when you think about it. Alveolar an...

The most common affixes used to disambiguate Chinese nouns are 兒 ér (particularly characteristics of Beijing vernacular) and 子 zǐ . These can be described as diminutive suffixes, both being in origin independent nouns meaning "son" or "offspring". But it's arguable whether as a strategy this is mor...

Here is the thing, in a given language sound changes can occur which have the effect of greatly reducing the number of syllables contained in roots (via syncope, apocope, etc...). This in turn can have the result of causing a lot of the originally distinct roots to have the same phonological shape. ...

I can't think of any colour surnames in French, but there is a woman's first name Blanche 'white'. It is considered somewhat archaic today though. Damn it I'm pretty sure I use to know one in Irish too... can't remember.

Would anyone know what were the historical developments that lead to (consonant)+glide sequences in both Korean and Japanese? If I'm not mistaken, for those who hold that Korean and Japanese are Altaic, some of these onglides would originate from Proto-Altaic rising dipthongs. However I haven't got ...

The Middle Chinese to modern Cantonese vowel shift Source: Newman, J. 1983. Cantonese vowel shift. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale XII.1: 65-79. Forms with asterisks are Middle Chinese (MC) Prior to the Cantonese vowel shift the following sound changes took place: 1. Back assimilation: a>ɔ/_...

As promised here is a summary of the vowel shifts discussed in the article zompist linked. If anyone notices any mistakes or has suggestions please tell me. I'll add it to the correspondence library. The Middle Chinese to modern Cantonese vowel shift Source: Newman, J. 1983. Cantonese vowel shift. C...

Thanks for all your replies! I'd say the full Ryukyuan shift goes roughly like this: North: /e/ → /1/ → /i/ /u/ → /1/ → /i/ after the alveolars /s/ and /t/ /o/ → /u/ South: /i/ → /1/ /e/ → /i/ /o/ → /u/ (/1/ → /M/) Both: /ai/, /ae/ → /e:/ (→ /i:/) /au/, /ao/ → /o:/ (→ /u:/) /eu/ → /u:/ Do these shif...

Would any of you guys know examples of non-IE vowel shifts? Moreover if you do, I would prefer them to be taken from languages outside of the geographic territory of Europe. I know of a few non-IE shifts myself like the Savonian Finnish vowel shift, or the great Saami vowel shift, but that's about i...

Diachronically speaking, how do noun classes come into being?

I have read on a few occasions that noun classes can sometimes originate from classifiers or again from the cliticization of distinct sets of pronouns ... but aside from that I haven't a clue

Is is not equivalent to "why are tones so important to the Chinese", in other words, not broad, but simply unanswerable? Or am I missing something? Actually I should have rephrased it this way: Why are cliticcs of such interest to Indo-Europeanists? btw it is not I who actually chose the essai ques...

there you go guys, I just changed the title of the thread.

Is is not equivalent to "why are tones so important to the Chinese", in other words, not broad, but simply unanswerable? Or am I missing something? Actually I should have rephrased it this way: Why are cliticcs of such interest to Indo-Europeanists? btw it is not I who actually chose the essai ques...

roninbodhisattva wrote:Wait, the topic of your paper is literally the title of this post, or it has to do something with clitics in Indo-European?

Ya it's the topic of my paper.

I'm asking because I have a paper to write on the topic in my class. I have a few ideas of my own but I'd like to hear your suggestions. Also I have the impression I might be missing some important points. Oh and i'm not expecting anyone to actually write out an answer for me, I just want some sugge...

I was just wondering, how exactly does a full phonemic set of ejective consonants develop in a language? Also, Ossetic is said to have develop by areal contact with the Caucasian languages a complete set of glottalized consonants. Now I would be interested in finding out which of the original PIE co...

I don't think I mention'd this online wordlist of Veps yet? (Watch out for the inclusion of a number of Ludic words as well, however… they're the ones from the village of Sununsuu) Thanks for that Azulene. The only little problem is I can't read Finnish (I'm probaly going to have to learn a Uralic ...

I don't have the complete picture, but I do have some stuff: Selected sound changes from Proto-Germanic to Proto-West Germanic -/æ:/→/a:/ -Unstressed /ai au/→/æ: o:/ -Word-final /z/ lost -All other /z/→/r/ -Consonants except /r/ are doubled before /j/ Selected sound changes from Proto-West Germanic...

The construction using 'de' is indeed quite commonly used for compounding (along with the preposition à) but not to the same extent or at least not in the same way as for instance observed Finnish or German. While it is true in French I can say things like ‘un mur de bois de sapin de l’est de la Cô...