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Glenn Kempf wrote:I hate to revive this thread just to ask a question, but:

Does anyone know any easily accessible sources that would provide a summary of the (hypothetical) phonology and phonological constraints of any of the proto-languages mentioned above (that is, a chart of the consonant and vowel phonemes believed to exist, permissible consonant and vowel clusters, and the like), so that the sound changes listed can be put into context?

More specifically, I am interested in the phonological profiles reconstructed for Proto-Slavic and Proto-Celtic, largely because I may be interested in recapitulating some features of the evolution of these families for some of my conlangs. I have already found examples of PIE phonology supplied by gsandi and others, but not of these later branches. I am indeed interested in the sound (and other) changes involved, but at the moment, my main interest is in the "starting points" used, so to speak--if that makes sense.

(In addition, I may be similarly interested in the history of certain other broad language families and individual languages, but I thought that I would start with those most likely to be easily available, at least online--I value print sources, but they tend to require more time and money to obtain.)

Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated; thanks in advance!

p@,
Glenn

I have a very nice pdf on my computer that lists all of the sound changes from PIE > Slavic, and lists the phonology at seven different stages.

*tries to find it on the Net*

Ah, here it is: www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art066e.pdf

Thanks, Maknas! A great deal of historical linguistics is still over my head, but that article will be helpful--both the phonologies at the various stages, and the examples of the changes that took place.

Спасибо!

p@,
Glenn

For a second I thought you were posting in some weird pseudo-Russian language but naturally I then I slowly realised that it was 'spaseeba'. My Russian is in a perpetual state of decline .

[EDIT: This post was full of outdated stuff, and has been superseded by a later one!]

Here are some sound changes that have occurred in Finnish.

Long close-mid vowels have become diphthongs:
/o:/ to /uo/
/2:/ to /y2/
/e:/ to /ie/
In some dialects, they have shifted further to /uA/, /y{/ and /i{/ or /iA/ (depending on front-back vowel harmony: /tieto/ to /tiAto/ but /tiet{/ to /ti{t{/).

These shifts have occurred in some eastern dialects.
/A:/ to /uA/
/{:/ to /i{/

/Ai/ to /Ae/
/{i/ to /{e/
/ei/ to /e:/
/oi/ to /oe/
/2i/ to /2e/

/Au/ to /A:/
/ou/ to /o:/

/{y/ to /{:/
/2y/ to /2:/

/eu/ to /eo/

/li/ to /l'i/
/ni/ to /n'i/
/ri/ to /r'i/
/si/ to /s'i/

If I'm wrong, please tell me.

Edit: ' = palatalization.

D3m4r1t pmist44v4t! K3pul4iz3t p01zz v4||4zt4.

Looks like some karjala-dialects. I'm not sure what ' signifies here, so could you specify? (I guess palatalization tho')

(This message contained a link to a file that I had to delete because I was out of storage space. Funny sentence.)

Umm, if you don't mind me asking, what's the beginning and end periods for those changes?

Interesting name choise, Vanhanen (kesk.) Just to note: [<F> "keskusta "valeh%tele: "a:_i_Hna_M] Nothing personal, just a welcome.

Miekko wrote:Looks like some karjala-dialects.

Well I'm not a grate expert of Finnnish dialectology but those look more like Savo-dialects. I'm not 100% sure but the lowering and monophthongization of -i and -u diphtongs seems to be a typical Savonian change. Well, in fact, many Finnish "Karelian" dialects belong actually to the Savo group. But it's still good to be spesific because "Karelian" often refers to the Karelian language.

The palatalisation of dentals/alveolars before i also seems to have crossed the line between allophonic and phonemic difference. You can see this in Kalevala savon kielell?, Matti Lehmonen, 1999. In many cases the imperfect suffix -i- has been omitted in the sg.3rd person where it's at the end of the word (inperfects of other persons are hard to find from the book). Still the palatalisation is preserved:
oli > ol' (be-imp-sg.3rd)
hakkasi > hakkas' (beat/chop-imp-sg.3rd)

Maknas wrote:Umm, if you don't mind me asking, what's the beginning and end periods for those changes?

Hmm, those changes are very easy to notice and don't need any formal literary knoledge on the subject. I'd say they are from late proto Finnic, the protolang of all Baltic sea Finnic lang forms, to something Savonian. It's really hard to tell what is the ending dialect because although the Savonian group is large and relatively uniform there's much little areal variation. Most likely no single dialect has all those changes but they are a collection of changes typical (in some form) to all or most of the dialects. There's for example difference in the treatment of /A:/ and /{:/. some dialects have them as /oa/ and /e{/ while others have them as /ua/ and /i{/. This variation seems to continue in the (Russian) Karelian dialects also so it's a general north-eastern finnic feature.

Oh yes,

In some dialects, they have shifted further to /uA/, /y{/ and /i{/ or /iA/ (depending on front-back vowel harmony: /tieto/ to /tiAto/ but /tiet{/ to /ti{t{/).

Don't confuse these with eastern dialects. They are typical canges in some western dialects. I have though no clue in which.

gach wrote:Interesting name choise, Vanhanen (kesk.) Just to note: [<F> "keskusta "valeh%tele: "a:_i_Hna_M] Nothing personal, just a welcome.

kepulainen pett?? aina.

Miekko wrote:Looks like some karjala-dialects.

Well I'm not a grate expert of Finnnish dialectology but those look more like Savo-dialects. I'm not 100% sure but the lowering and monophthongization of -i and -u diphtongs seems to be a typical Savonian change. Well, in fact, many Finnish "Karelian" dialects belong actually to the Savo group. But it's still good to be spesific because "Karelian" often refers to the Karelian language.

I was only thinking of the palatalization when I said that, the vowels are beyond my knowledge, except that Savo really has insane vowel shifts.

We are STILL awaiting the Catalan and Italian diachronics AFAIK.

Might as well revive this...

Circ?us wrote:We are STILL awaiting the Catalan and Italian diachronics AFAIK.

Might as well revive this...

Umm, no? I posted the Catalan changes a few pages back. Phar *said* he had finished the Occitan changes over a month ago, but he has yet to post them....

And if Phar is still working on them, I suspect it'll be awhile until we get the Italian ones. I don't have my copy of the book anymore ('tis back at the University), and besides, school now is taking up more of my schedule, so I can't really do much with it...

Glenn Kempf wrote:I hate to revive this thread just to ask a question, but:

Does anyone know any easily accessible sources that would provide a summary of the (hypothetical) phonology and phonological constraints of any of the proto-languages mentioned above (that is, a chart of the consonant and vowel phonemes believed to exist, permissible consonant and vowel clusters, and the like), so that the sound changes listed can be put into context?

More specifically, I am interested in the phonological profiles reconstructed for Proto-Slavic and Proto-Celtic, largely because I may be interested in recapitulating some features of the evolution of these families for some of my conlangs. I have already found examples of PIE phonology supplied by gsandi and others, but not of these later branches. I am indeed interested in the sound (and other) changes involved, but at the moment, my main interest is in the "starting points" used, so to speak--if that makes sense.

(In addition, I may be similarly interested in the history of certain other broad language families and individual languages, but I thought that I would start with those most likely to be easily available, at least online--I value print sources, but they tend to require more time and money to obtain.)

Any help or advice would be gratefully appreciated; thanks in advance!

p@,
Glenn

Sure.

http://faculty.washington.edu/zhandel/

Scroll down to the doctoral dissertation. It contains a huge chunk of info on reconstructed Middle Chinese (600-1000 AD) and Old Chinese (700ish BC) phonology.

But to put it briefly:

Middle Chinese phonology was, well, Chinese. Exactly what you'd expect: no consonant clusters, tones, and so forth. Plosives show a three-way contrast (ph/p/b) that survives today mostly in Wu dialects (everyone else has ph/p left). There were 4 tones, of which 3 contrast (the last one occurs iFF the syllable ends on a plosive), a bit less than what you see today (Mandarin contrasts 4, Cantonese contrasts 6). Vowels don't really have their own existence, instead they occur in highly rigid combinations with final consonants and in diphthongs (again, same as modern Chinese). Final consonants were limited to p t k m n ng (identical to modern Cantonese). All in all, a very Chinese system.

Old Chinese phonology, on the other hand, is completely weird. There were a lot of consonant clusters, and the constraints seem to be even looser than English. Final consonants were also freer: -s, -?, etc, and some reconstruct -r, -l, whatnot. There were likely no tones.

Thank you, Ran! I'd all but forgotten about this particular request, partly because I thought that I'd gotten all the replies I was going to get.

I will indeed take a look at Prof. Handel's dissertation, and some of his other online writings look interesting as well (in particular, I saved a copy of his article on Ingush vern morphology ).

Thanks again!

p@,
Glenn

Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

?ge Kruger wrote:Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

Here's one:

? > -r

Space Dracula wrote:

?ge Kruger wrote:Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

Here's one:

? > -r

Eh? So you mean random <r>'s just keep on popping up all over the place?

Dewrad wrote:

Space Dracula wrote:

?ge Kruger wrote:Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

Here's one:

? > -r

Eh? So you mean random <r>'s just keep on popping up all over the place?

Look at a sample of Old Norse. You'll see what I mean.

A section from 'Egils saga', on the WikiPedia, wrote: ?orgeirr blundr, systursonr Egils, var ?ar ? ?inginu ok haf?i gengit hart at li?veizlu vi? ?orstein. Hann ba? Egil ok ?? ?orstein koma s?r til sta?festu ?t ?angat ? M?rar; hann bj? ??r fyrir sunnan Hv?t?, fyrir ne?an Blundsvatn. Egill t?k vel ? ?v? ok f?sti ?orstein, at ?eir l?ti hann ?angat fara. Egill setti ?orgeir blund ni?r at ?nabrekku, en Steinarr f&#339;r?i b?sta? sinn ?t yfir Lang? ok settisk ni?r at Leirul?k. En Egill rei? heim su?r ? Nes eptir ?ingit me? flokk sinn, ok skildusk ?eir fe?gar me? k?rleik.

Space Dracula wrote:

Dewrad wrote:Eh? So you mean random <r>'s just keep on popping up all over the place?

Look at a sample of Old Norse. You'll see what I mean.

Ah. I assume then that that was a joke. Damn my sense of humour bypass

Space Dracula wrote:

Dewrad wrote:

Space Dracula wrote:

?ge Kruger wrote:Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

Here's one:

? > -r

Eh? So you mean random <r>'s just keep on popping up all over the place?

Look at a sample of Old Norse. You'll see what I mean.

-r is the subject marker in Old Norse.

The only sound change i know of is n -> r

Scandinavian has at least had nasal vowels at some point, I have no idea whatever happened to them (but I've been thinking that maybe the Scand. namn / navn vs. Engl. / Germ. name is a result of a nasal final vowel or something). Also z went r quite consistently.

ON at one point had a nasal /?/ - there was a separate rune for it.

?ge Kruger wrote:Anyone know the changes concerning the Northern Germanic languages? Or where to find them? (Preferably starting at Common Germanic.)

Einar Haugen: Scandinavian Language Structures: A Comparative Historical Survey. U of Minnesota Press, 1982.

It's all there, in tabulated form. A good, concentrated read.

I refuse to let this thread fade into oblivion. You know, Aqua, we're still waiting on the VL > Italian and VL > Occitan changes, for God's sake!

And, to make this a worthwhile post, I'll just ask if anyone has the PIE > Indo-Iranian sound changes?

Whimemsz wrote:I refuse to let this thread fade into oblivion. You know, Aqua, we're still waiting on the VL > Italian and VL > Occitan changes, for God's sake!

And, to make this a worthwhile post, I'll just ask if anyone has the PIE > Indo-Iranian sound changes?

Whimz, threads in L&L aren't pruned.

And I talked with Aqua at the meet, and he said he probably'll never get around to finishing those changes