Search found 7 matches

by vehke
Fri Dec 17, 2004 9:15 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: OTTER
Replies: 1013
Views: 443818

Ugh, Escaflowne. Vihaan sit
by vehke
Sun Jun 06, 2004 2:30 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

Can you give some examples of sound changes that affect only common words in any natlang? Really depends on what constitute common words: a lot of Dutch speakers have intervocalic /d/ > /j/ in |goede| /xuj@/ "good" (colloquially also spelled |goeie|) and |beneden| /b@nej@/ "downstairs" (and a few o...
by vehke
Sun Jun 06, 2004 12:32 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

Here's what I suspect: A sound change (or a certain set of them) is operational in a language over a finite time period; oftentimes this period is long enough for a phoneme or sequence to be completely transformed via analogy from sporadic changes. Somtimes, however, the sound change's "time limit"...
by vehke
Sun Jun 06, 2004 5:00 am
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

Grammatical categories are a somewhat artificial concept; we don't "know" right from the beginning that there are such things as "nouns" and "verbs", we know these things because we learnt them from linguists. So it's not very natural for one to be "conscious" of word classes. My guess is, if a sou...
by vehke
Sun Jun 06, 2004 3:16 am
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

As far I understand, we should rather follow the regularity hypothesis because with analogy these diachronical changes would have to be detailed on a case-by-case basis, right? Not quite: you should follow the regularity hypothesis because that way you'll make consistent, plausible conlangs. A few ...
by vehke
Sat Jun 05, 2004 5:41 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

Personally, I think analogy accounts for much more sound change, morphological change, and even synchronic morphology, than it's given credit for. Since sound change is sporadic, a model where an entire phoneme shifts over is not realistic. Analogy does the job, however: other words start to shift,...
by vehke
Sat Jun 05, 2004 6:51 am
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Sound changes occur unconditionally?
Replies: 34
Views: 18150

Sound changes occur unconditionally?

Various sources mention that sound changes occur unconditionally, that is without regards to the phono-morphological boundaries or grammatical functions, even though I continuously stumble upon counterexamples. For example, at some point both Estonian and North S?mi lost word-final nasals for nomina...