Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Cedh]

Just so you know it the next time, there is a grammaticalisation quickie thread as well.

I don't see anyone using that thread anymore...

That's no reason not to use it. As a quickie thread, it can always be used for new quick questions.
(The reason it fell out of use is probably simply that at one point people stopped asking questions there just long enough for the thread to fall off the first page, and thus out of people's minds.)

[Zaarin]

Can aspiration trigger fronting or heightening of following vowels?

[Nortaneous]

not that i know of but plosive voicing can -- adjarian's law

[Zaarin]

That works, too. Thanks.

[vokzhen]

Not that I've heard of, at least directly, and not a way that keeps the aspiration intact if that's your goal. Off the top of my head turning it into breathiness might work; aspirated consonant > breathy vowel seems pretty straightforward, but I'm not aware of it every actually being attested. Then the Khmer shift where breathy vowels gain onglides, then assimilate onglide+vowel to a higher vowel.

I'm not sure aspiration has ever been delinked Cʰ>Ch but that might be another route. Then metathesis to CVh or hCV might be a route, from which breathy vowels agains and the Khmer shift.

Also, not fronting or raising. But a possibility might be pharyngealization. Along the lines of the attested C' > Cˁ, Cʰ > C^ħ. Pharyngealized consonants can back, opposite of what you want, but I'm pretty sure they can also centralize: Ci Cu Cɛ Cɔ Ca end up as something like C^ħɪ C^ħʊ C^ħë C^ħö C^ħɐ. A few sound changes later and it's Ci Cu Cɛ Cɔ Ca versus the old aspirated Ci Cu Ce Co Cə or something along those lines. Or the opposite, pharyngealized (aspirated) consonants stay put while plain vowels undergo a chain shift that heightens or fronts them.

[Zaarin]

Not that I've heard of, at least directly, and not a way that keeps the aspiration intact if that's your goal. Off the top of my head turning it into breathiness might work; aspirated consonant > breathy vowel seems pretty straightforward, but I'm not aware of it every actually being attested. Then the Khmer shift where breathy vowels gain onglides, then assimilate onglide+vowel to a higher vowel.

I'm not sure aspiration has ever been delinked Cʰ>Ch but that might be another route. Then metathesis to CVh or hCV might be a route, from which breathy vowels agains and the Khmer shift.

Also, not fronting or raising. But a possibility might be pharyngealization. Along the lines of the attested C' > Cˁ, Cʰ > C^ħ. Pharyngealized consonants can back, opposite of what you want, but I'm pretty sure they can also centralize: Ci Cu Cɛ Cɔ Ca end up as something like C^ħɪ C^ħʊ C^ħë C^ħö C^ħɐ. A few sound changes later and it's Ci Cu Cɛ Cɔ Ca versus the old aspirated Ci Cu Ce Co Cə or something along those lines. Or the opposite, pharyngealized (aspirated) consonants stay put while plain vowels undergo a chain shift that heightens or fronts them.

Since I have breathy voiced consonants, I think I'm going to use those along the lines of Adjarian's Law that Nortaneous posted--but I love that idea about pharyngealization and am totally using it for a cousin language.

[vokzhen]

Since I have breathy voiced consonants, I think I'm going to use those along the lines of Adjarian's Law that Nortaneous posted--but I love that idea about pharyngealization and am totally using it for a cousin language.

Just to be clear, I don't think pharyngealization of aspirated consonants is attested in any way, I'm just guessing at the possibility from the attested (in Semitic and Northwest Caucasian) shift of ejectives to pharyngealization; both would involve extra glottal action shifting slightly in POA to pharyngeal.

[Zaarin]

Since I have breathy voiced consonants, I think I'm going to use those along the lines of Adjarian's Law that Nortaneous posted--but I love that idea about pharyngealization and am totally using it for a cousin language.

Just to be clear, I don't think pharyngealization of aspirated consonants is attested in any way, I'm just guessing at the possibility from the attested (in Semitic and Northwest Caucasian) shift of ejectives to pharyngealization; both would involve extra glottal action shifting slightly in POA to pharyngeal.

Given the Lakhota velarized aspirates, though, the possibility of pharyngealized aspirated consonants doesn't seem like too far a stretch.

[vokzhen]

Since I have breathy voiced consonants, I think I'm going to use those along the lines of Adjarian's Law that Nortaneous posted--but I love that idea about pharyngealization and am totally using it for a cousin language.

Just to be clear, I don't think pharyngealization of aspirated consonants is attested in any way, I'm just guessing at the possibility from the attested (in Semitic and Northwest Caucasian) shift of ejectives to pharyngealization; both would involve extra glottal action shifting slightly in POA to pharyngeal.

Given the Lakhota velarized aspirates, though, the possibility of pharyngealized aspirated consonants doesn't seem like too far a stretch.

Yes and no. The velarized aspirates are only before back vowels and /ĩ/, and regular aspirates occur before /i e/, and /tʃʰ/ does not have a velarized allophone. So that seems to be an effect of front-versus-backness rather than aspiration being velarized completely. Though mentioning that, there are other languages I've run into that have velar "aspiration," off the top of my head Navajo which, according to Wikipedia, has an "aspirated" series that looks to be more like [tx tɬˑ(ʰ) tsˑ(ʰ) tʃˑ(ʰ) kx kxʷ].

[Zaarin]

Yes and no. The velarized aspirates are only before back vowels and /ĩ/, and regular aspirates occur before /i e/, and /tʃʰ/ does not have a velarized allophone. So that seems to be an effect of front-versus-backness rather than aspiration being velarized completely. Though mentioning that, there are other languages I've run into that have velar "aspiration," off the top of my head Navajo which, according to Wikipedia, has an "aspirated" series that looks to be more like [tx tɬˑ(ʰ) tsˑ(ʰ) tʃˑ(ʰ) kx kxʷ].

Good points. I think it's close enough to credible that I'm going to go with it; it'll make an interesting contrast to the language of the region's dominant culture, which has normal pharyngealized consonants (originating, as with Arabic and Aramaic, from historical ejectives, preserved in several of the language's cousin languages).

[Nortaneous]

Re: velarized aspirates, I've used those in two conlangs.

Proto-Arve had a stop system of /pʰ p tʰ t kʰ k/ and one affricate, /ts/. Southern dialects tend to lose aspirates in various ways (usually pʰ tʰ kʰ > f ts x), and Midland dialects tend to palatalize tʰ to ts before front vowels. The dialect of Vahkatton, between the two regions, had pʰ kʰ > f x unconditionally (although /f/ becomes /x/ before /ö o ü u/ later) as in the south, but tʰ > tʰ, ts / V[-front], V[+front] as in the midlands (but tʰ > ts / _#), and then h tʰ > x tᵡ before back vowels (x~h interchange is common in Arve, since they were originally in complementary distribution and they both contrast with χ, which is more strongly articulated). This could be reconstructed as:
pʰ > px > xʷ, xʷ > x / _{ö o y u}, xʷ > f
kʰ > kx > x
tʰ > tx / _V[-front]
tʰ > ts

Then there are a bunch of vowel shifts, and tᵡ ts end up contrasting before central vowels: *äˑ/*a > a, *e/*ö > ɜ, *ü/*u > ɨ. Then a few words are borrowed from Midland dialects and M tʰ > V tᵡ.

Then there's Amqoli, which went p > f > x and developed aspirates from Cx clusters. But those aspirates contrast with Cχ sequences from Cq. (Near-minimal pairs: txe 'because' ~ tχem 'going', tka 'time' ~ txa 'lightning' ~ tχal 'insult', tsxur 'nose' ~ tsχor 'killing', pkal 'treat' ~ pxaxa 'weed out'.)

...Actually, I notice that Px clusters are more common than plain P. I might have #P > Ph > Px, sP zB > P B.

[----]

Okay I have two unrelated sound changes that I'm wondering about.

(1) s > ɬ
(2) k > p/_#

I'm not sure if (1) is totally reasonable, but something similar to (2) has happened before right? Romanian did something to that effect iirc. Are these acceptable changes?

[Zaarin]

s > ɬ is certainly plausible, but I wouldn't expect it unconditionally unless it was part of a chain shift in which something else moved into the place of /s/.

[----]

That's exactly what happens

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

How does one develop /ɹ/ from a language that didn't have one?

[Travis B.]

How does one develop /ɹ/ from a language that didn't have one?

Lenition of /r/ (as in [r]) perhaps?

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

How does one develop /ɹ/ from a language that didn't have one?

Lenition of /r/ (as in [r]) perhaps?

In what kind of environments?

[vokzhen]

Pretty sure it's most often from a different rhotic; see dialectical pronunciations across Germanic and the wholesale replacement in most English from what was almost certainly once a trill/tap. Positional allophones of a different rhotic happen as well, intervocal or coda seems most likely to me, but some African languages have the approximant as the primary allophone and a tap as the intervocal, and one or two of the languages I've run across that allow word-initial rhotic-stop clusters have an approximant as the allophone there. Off the top of my head, the other place I've seen them from is lenition of /d/ (generally along with other voiced stops) and Spanish dialects, where coda /s/ lenites to [ɹ] (as opposed to the far more common [h]). There's also allophony with a fricative like [ʐ] that's pretty common in the Tibet-China-Southeast Asia region, but I'm not sure which tended to be original.

[Pole, the]

How does one develop /ɹ/ from a language that didn't have one?

Lenition of /r/ (as in [r]) perhaps?

In what kind of environments?

r/ɹ/_ ? (See English.)

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Well, my conlang is supposed to have /ɹ/ and /r/ (and also /ʀ/) so that can't work. Vokzhen, you supposed that something like /dr/[dɹ] > /ɹ/?

[Zaarin]

How does one develop /ɹ/ from a language that didn't have one?

It could also come from a lateral or /n/. I want to say I've seen some obscure Semitic dialect have /ɹ/ from either a uvular or pharyngeal fricative, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.

[Pole, the]

Well, my conlang is supposed to have /ɹ/ and /r/ (and also /ʀ/) so that can't work. Vokzhen, you supposed that something like /dr/[dɹ] > /ɹ/?

So then:
r → ɹ
t d → ɾ / σ[+stress]_
ɾ → r

[Nortaneous]

r > ɹ
n > r / V_V

r > ɹ / _[C #]

l > ɹ

ɭ > ɹ

dd nd ld > ɖɖ ɳɖ ɖ > ɖ ɳɖ ɹ

z > ɹ

s > ɹ / _[C #]

[Hallow XIII]

j > ð > ɹ

[Porphyrogenitos]

Soo, if I'm debuccalizing /f/ to /h/, and feel the need to likewise debuccalize /v/ to /ɦ/...what can I do with /ɦ/? Is it plausible for /ɦ/ to simply merge into /h/?