Sound Change Quickie Thread

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Tropylium
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Tropylium »

I keep wondering if there really are two entirely unrelated changes creating /ʃ/ there, or if we have instead the following:
1) s > ʃ / _C
2) k > ∅ / ʃ_
(If the second had a stage /ʃx/ similar to Dutch /sx/, that could also explain where the spelling "sch" came from.)
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

The problem with that is that the change of sk > ʃ occurs somewhere between Old High German and Middle High German, while the change of s > ʃ / _{p t m n l w} (and a similar change occurs after certain consonants as well, e.g. in falsch) occurs somewhere between Middle High German and Early New High German.

One way to treat this is to say that ⟨s⟩ was actually apical, i.e. /s̺/, and ⟨ȥ⟩ was actually laminal, i.e. /s̻/, and, dialects that had merged the two already aside, /s̺/ merged conditionally with either /s̻/ or /ʃ/ (it should be remembered that /s̺/ tends to sound more like /ʃ/ than /s̻/ does) depending on position, i.e. whether it was in a cluster or not.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Sglod »

What could I turn [ɬ] into?
I want to avoid any liquids.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Matrix »

Directly, it could become something like [ʃ], [ɕ], or [ç] - perhaps even more than one of them, depending on the surrounding environment - and from there there are of course many ways those consonants could go.

Also, there is a certain tendency - at least among English speakers, not sure about other languages - for others to hear [ɬ] and [tɬ] as a velar, so perhaps the sounds could mutate in that direction? I'm not entirely sure.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Sglod »

Matrix wrote:Directly, it could become something like [ʃ], [ɕ], or [ç] - perhaps even more than one of them, depending on the surrounding environment - and from there there are of course many ways those consonants could go.

Also, there is a certain tendency - at least among English speakers, not sure about other languages - for others to hear [ɬ] and [tɬ] as a velar, so perhaps the sounds could mutate in that direction? I'm not entirely sure.
Cheers, I hadn't thought about those! I couldn't conjure up anything except a liquid.

Klingon's name is an example of the velarisation.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by vokzhen »

/s/ is attested in Hebrew, /t/ (or /tʰ) is attested in some Southern Bantu. Ugric languages took Proto-Ularic *s *š and merged them with outcomes of Mansi /t/, Khanty /t/ or /l/, and Hungarian null, and /ɬ/ is one likely intermediary. Pretty sure I've seen >h and/or >null elsewhere as well. I've heard that /ɬ tɬ/ in some Northeast Caucasian languages corresponds regularly to /x k/ or something similar (prevelars, uvulars) in others, and Archi seems to represent a midstate as their lateral fricatives/affricates are all prevelar.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Zaarin »

If I recall correctly, ɬ>θ may be attested in a Muskogean language.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Shemtov »

Is this sound change plausible given a few thousand years of development: j>ʒ>ʃ>s

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Pole, the »

Definitely.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by hwhatting »

Shemtov wrote:Is this sound change plausible given a few thousand years of development: j>ʒ>ʃ>s
Something like that happened in Yakut (Common Turkic /j/ > /s/, probably via /ʒ/ as in Kazakh), and it took only a few hundred (500 - 600?) years.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by ---- »

j > s has happened many times in languages throughout the world, it's not unusual at all.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Nannalu »

What could /ʂ/ change to? Esh?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by vokzhen »

/ʃ s x/ seem to be fairly common outcomes; unless I'm mistaken about development I believe /s/ happened in a lot of Chinese languages, and /x/ is well-known from Slavic and some Indo-Iranian (and similarly in Spanish with /ʃ/). Retroflex-palatal mergers don't seem too uncommon either, unless they're highly areal to SEA, though the outcome more often seems to be a retroflex; simply taking retroflex to palatal happens too. Pashto has a whole bunch of different outcomes: ʂ ʐ stays the same in some dialects, including the prestige, but others have /ç ʝ/ /ç g/ /x g/ or /ʃ ʒ/.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Shemtov »

Can aspiration become pharyngealazation?
Also, what's a good way to split /l/ into /l/ and /r/?

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Shemtov wrote:Can aspiration become pharyngealazation?
There have been cases of h > ħ, e.g. in the Finnish example people tend to mention.
Shemtov wrote:Also, what's a good way to split /l/ into /l/ and /r/?
One way to do it may be to conditionally l > lˠ or l > lʲ, and then do l > r, and then do lˠ or lʲ > l.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by vokzhen »

Shemtov wrote:Can aspiration become pharyngealazation?
Also, what's a good way to split /l/ into /l/ and /r/?
I've seen several instances of glottalization > pharyngealization, but never aspiration > pharyngealization. I could see it possibly happening from the other direction, where /r/ is backed and devoiced so that you end up with clusters like [tħ] that some dialects resolve through aspiration, some through pharyngealization.
Travis B. wrote:
Shemtov wrote:Can aspiration become pharyngealazation?
There have been cases of h > ħ, e.g. in the Finnish example people tend to mention.
In Finnish it's specifically in the context of /ɑ/, just POA assimilation.

It's common for /l/ to become a tap intervocally. Before or after consonants as well, Portuguese <obrigado> "obliged" or Romanesco <arto> "alto/tall" being two examples Wikipedia gives. From there you can delete certain consonants or vowels to make it phonemic, or add another source of /r/ like intervocal /n/ or /z/.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by CatDoom »

I'm probably not the first to have asked this, but I was wondering if anyone knew of any precedent for vowel nasalization changing into some other vowel-marking of syllable-level feature, like tone or phonation. I know I've seen this in some conlangs, but are there any real-world cases where this is believed to have happened?

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

CatDoom wrote:I'm probably not the first to have asked this, but I was wondering if anyone knew of any precedent for vowel nasalization changing into some other vowel-marking of syllable-level feature, like tone or phonation. I know I've seen this in some conlangs, but are there any real-world cases where this is believed to have happened?
In Lithuanian, nasal vowels have become long vowels (the language already had long vowels before). This change was fairly recent, happening after the orthography was laid down (the formerly nasal vowels, but no other long vowels, are written with an ogonek).
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Zaarin »

This is kind of a specific question. I want to nativize the name "Geneviève" [ʒanviɛv] in one of my conlangs. This conlang has no /ʒ/ but it does have /ʃ/, [v] is only a post-vocalic allophone of /b/ (but it also has /ɸ~f/ and /w/), and it doesn't allow VV sequences. So I was thinking something like Šanbyeḇ [ʃanˈbjev] or Šanbiyeḇ [ʃanbiˈjev], but I could also see Šanwiyeḇ [ʃanwiˈjev] or Šanf(i)yeḇ [ʃanɸiˈjev~ʃanˈɸjev]. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

vokzhen wrote:unless I'm mistaken about development I believe /s/ happened in a lot of Chinese languages
some dialects of Mandarin merge the retroflexes into the alveolars, yes.

Hanoi Vietnamese merged s` ts` r\` into s c z
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Tropylium »

Shemtov wrote:Also, what's a good way to split /l/ into /l/ and /r/?
IIRC a number of Bantu languages had *l > ɽ before the close-most vowels /i u/, sometimes followed by phonemicization due to ɪ ʊ > i u.

Relatedly but in the other direction: Ossetian has *rj > l, Middle Persian has †rd > l. I wonder how this happened phonetically; maybe with [ɾ] as an intermediate?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

don't some nor/swe dialects have ON rð > ɽ?

anyway, ld > ll, l > r / V_[V #], ll > l, but that doesn't give you a contrast word-initially unless you drop some initial vowels somehow.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Pogostick Man »

Tropylium wrote:†rd
What does the † mean?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by احمکي ارش-ھجن »

Is /θ ð/ > /w/ possible (with or without intermediate steps)?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by hwhatting »

احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:Is /θ ð/ > /w/ possible (with or without intermediate steps)?
With enough intermediate steps, everything is possible.
/θ ð/ > /f v/ is attested, and you could take it from there.

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