Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Matrix]

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Perhaps it could derive from a stress system?

[WeepingElf]

1. What can I do with initial nasal+consonant clusters?
2. What can I do with geminate consonants, especially given that they occur initially?

1. Make the nasal syllabic and then vocalise it.
2. You can aspirate them. Palatalisation could work, maybe.

Or tack on a prothetic vowel, e.g. /tta/ > /atta/. The same works for initial nasal-consonant clusters as well, e.g. /nda/ > /anda/.

[8Deer]

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Long vowel > high tone (in Cheyenne, I believe)

[Click]

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Long vowel > high tone (in Cheyenne, I believe)

I forgot to mention that I don't want to get rid of long vowels. Thanks, anyway.

[Chagen]

I have a plan for a proto-lang that had ejectives and aspirated consonants--the aspirates will lenite into fricatives, but the ejectives will follow something like this:

tʼ> tʔ > th > tʰ

That a logical progression? I'm trying to figure out how to re-introduce aspirates into the language once the original aspirates lenite, because I want to have my cake and eat it too, dammit.

[Pole, the]

Is it plausible for *θ to become /l/ or /r/ in a West Germanic 'lang?
What are the other routes it can evolve (besides /d/)?

[8Deer]

Is it plausible for *θ to become /l/ or /r/ in a West Germanic 'lang?
What are the other routes it can evolve (besides /d/)?

θ > ð > l/r seems fine to me, what with Germanic *z > r. Other possiblities I can think of: /s/, /t/, /ʃ/, /ɬ/, /f/, /h/.

[WeepingElf]

@Chagen: That progression is at least possible, I would say.

@Pole: Yes, I think it is plausible. Another interesting possibility would be /ɬ/.

[Nortaneous]

θ > t f x ð h
ð > l r j w 0
all seem possible, and something like most of them has happened in some European lang somewhere

@Pole: Yes, I think it is plausible. Another interesting possibility would be /ɬ/.

In a Germanic lang?

[WeepingElf]

@Pole: Yes, I think it is plausible. Another interesting possibility would be /ɬ/.

In a Germanic lang?

Why not? I know of no Germanic natlang that does that, but hey, that makes it interesting, and I see no reason why it couldn't have happened.

[8Deer]

@Pole: Yes, I think it is plausible. Another interesting possibility would be /ɬ/.

In a Germanic lang?

Why not? I know of no Germanic natlang that does that, but hey, that makes it interesting, and I see no reason why it couldn't have happened.

Icelandic has it allophonically, does it not? So its not completely unattested...

EDIT: As an allophone of /l/ not /θ/, of course.

[Nortaneous]

Oh no I'm pretty sure it's happened before, just I'm not sure how realistic it is to happen in Europe, where the only natlangs that have it are the two most out-of-the-way languages on the whole continent, and in one it's only allophonic.

[WeepingElf]

Oh no I'm pretty sure it's happened before, just I'm not sure how realistic it is to happen in Europe, where the only natlangs that have it are the two most out-of-the-way languages on the whole continent, and in one it's only allophonic.

One place I can imagine it would be a surviving Vinlandic.

[Culla]

I don't see why it would be so controversial for a germanic language to have. The some of older germanic languages had a voiceless /l/ or /hl/ cluster so it's not really that big of a stretch to get /ɬ/. Welsh developed it in a sea of languages with out sound, so why should a lone germanic language be able to do the same?

[Thry]

My germanic conlang has that sound as [] for /sl/... it's not that much of a stretch to make it a phoneme.

i.e. /slaɛ̯n/ [ɬaɛ̯n] slaen "to slay"

[Shrdlu]

I don't know where I have read this, but there are some Norwegian dialects that has [ɬ] as an allophone.

[Pole, the]

Most probably I won't go that way. :p

Okay, here is some sort of a comparison:
Dienkiu uò dia da dry duoni dièv.
Lienkiu uò lia la ry (?) luoni lièv.
Rienkiu uò ria ra ry ruoni rièv.
Sienkiu uò sia sa sry suoni sièv.
"I think about those three thin things."

Which one is the best one in your opinion?

[R.Rusanov]

You don't have to have θ or ð change ubiquitously into one sound... something like θ/ʃ/_F where F is a front vowel, θ/r/V_V, θ/x/_C and θ/s/_ elsewhere is perfectly fine, and has the benefit of making your changes look more natural and less, hm, forced I guess.

Edit: so in your example you'd get Sh(i)enkiu uò sh(i)a sa chry suoni sh(i)èv.

[Thry]

Is it plausible for *θ to become /l/ or /r/ in a West Germanic 'lang?
What are the other routes it can evolve (besides /d/)?

Oh, sorry, I didn't see this.
In my Romlang I changed it to /j/ directly... i.e. facer is [f@.'jE]. It had some [f] and [s] allophones that also endure in different contexts (word-initially, after consonants).
Those liquids are not implausible through [D], but that's basically what has been said already.

[Pole, the]

You don't have to have θ or ð change ubiquitously into one sound... something like θ/ʃ/_F where F is a front vowel, θ/r/V_V, θ/x/_C and θ/s/_ elsewhere is perfectly fine, and has the benefit of making your changes look more natural and less, hm, forced I guess.

Most probably I'll go with θ/t/#_C, θ/d/V_C and θ/r/ otherwise.

[Kezdő]

I'm trying to figure out how to get velarized consonant contrast in a daughter lang from what's essentially Latin with [tɬ], [θ], [kˀ] and a few other things thrown in. I was thinking maybe from long vowels (somehow?), but you'd all know better.

[Cedh]

I'm trying to figure out how to get velarized consonant contrast in a daughter lang from what's essentially Latin with [tɬ], [θ], [kˀ] and a few other things thrown in. I was thinking maybe from long vowels (somehow?), but you'd all know better.

In Irish, consonant velarization developed allophonically to increase auditory distinctiveness between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants IIRC, with the contrast being phonemicized by reduction of short (unstressed?) vowels. You could add to that a loss of palatalization (maybe with some quirks...) to get a plain vs. velarized contrast. For example:

C → Cʲ / _i(ː), _e(ː)
C → Cʲ / i(ː)_, e(ː)_
C → Cˠ
i, u → ɨ (short only)
e, a, o → ə (short only)
Vː → V
[+velar]ʲ → [+postalveolar]
[+velar]ˠ → [+velar]
...
Cʲ → C

[Qwynegold]

Most probably I won't go that way. :p

Okay, here is some sort of a comparison:
Dienkiu uò dia da dry duoni dièv.
Lienkiu uò lia la ry (?) luoni lièv.
Rienkiu uò ria ra ry ruoni rièv.
Sienkiu uò sia sa sry suoni sièv.
"I think about those three thin things."

Which one is the best one in your opinion?

S IMO.

[Qwynegold]

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Turn stress into pitch accent, then shorten words somehow to make it unpredictable and therefore phonemic.

[Click]

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Perhaps it could derive from a stress system?

How to get pitch accent or tone without touching diphthongs, voicing or aspiration and "laryngeals"?

Turn stress into pitch accent, then shorten words somehow to make it unpredictable and therefore phonemic.

Thank both of you!