Sound Change Quickie Thread

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hwhatting
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by hwhatting »

احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:What are ways to develop word-initial geminates of obstruents (although they would be phonetically realized as tense)? Looking mostly for /p t d k s/.
The easiest way is probably Sandhi.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by احمکي ارش-ھجن »

True, but I'm looking for more interesting ways (for instance I've come up with sː- from hs- and I imagine TO, where T = voiceless stop and O = obstruent, produces them too).
ʾAšol ḵavad pulqam ʾifbižen lav ʾifšimeḻ lit maseḡrad lav lit n͛ubad. ʾUpulasim ṗal sa-panžun lav sa-ḥadṇ lav ṗal šarmaḵeš lit ʾaẏṭ waẏyadanun wižqanam.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Vijay »

You could also do what Moroccan Arabic did: merge short vowels into schwa and then delete schwa in most positions. Apparently, some native speakers of Malayalam also just delete word-initial vowels or even syllables.

EDIT: This happens in Japanese, too:

[ttakɯ̟ᵝ ~ mattakɯ̟ᵝ] (expression indicating exasperation)

Also in Japanese, you have [tte], which is a contraction of [to iɯ̟ᵝ].
Last edited by Vijay on Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by احمکي ارش-ھجن »

Actually, that is a quite systematic process in my conlang family where pretonic vowels are elided. I was mostly looking for what specific clusters of consonants (aside from homo-organic clusters) can produce the gemination.

And I dunno how Japanese turn "to iu" into "tte", that's wacky.
ʾAšol ḵavad pulqam ʾifbižen lav ʾifšimeḻ lit maseḡrad lav lit n͛ubad. ʾUpulasim ṗal sa-panžun lav sa-ḥadṇ lav ṗal šarmaḵeš lit ʾaẏṭ waẏyadanun wižqanam.
- Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

I'm working on a language called Basic in which sounds are transcribed phonetically. For example, our approximate /j/ is transcribed as /y/ and our affricate /d͡ʒ/ is transcribed as /j/. Would the following changes make sense in that context:
1. /t͡ʃ/ to contrasting /ç, x/;
2. /i/ (ee) to /e/;
3. unification of /e/ and /eɪ̯/ into something like /á/; and
4. /aɪ/ to /i/?

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

By the way, you use angle brackets < > to enclose orthography, keeping slashes / / for phonemes.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Frislander »

Also no writing system is completely phonetic, what you're describing is a phonemic writing system which only respresents the underlying contrastive phonemes (which therefore makes your description meaningless since most conlangs have phonemic writing systems). In that case then, what are the changes for? Is this for deriving a new language, allophonic changes or something else?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Vijay »

احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:And I dunno how Japanese turn "to iu" into "tte", that's wacky.
Compensatory lengthening + vowel change?

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Basically, Altrúnians concocted an alphabet in which nearly all paired phonemes use the same base character while coupling it with transcribing some sounds as the letters making them. Thus, keeping the second example from my last post, the letter Д for [ʧ, j].

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Sexendèƚo »

What could I turn voiceless nasals into? Other than back into voiced nasals.

I have a lot of [sn,sm],[xn,xm],[pʰn],[kʰn],[tʰn] clusters in intervocalic and word-final positions, which look to me like they would turn into voiceless nasals as other sonorants devoice in these positions in my language (see example). But I don't want to keep them as voiceless nasals.

Example:
-kʰ + -la > -kɬa
-tʰ + -we > -tɸe
(These contrast with the unaspirated series: k+l > kla and t+w > twe)
-s + ɾ > r̥
-s + l > ɬː

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Sexendèƚo wrote:What could I turn voiceless nasals into? Other than back into voiced nasals.

I have a lot of [sn,sm],[xn,xm],[pʰn],[kʰn],[tʰn] clusters in intervocalic and word-final positions, which look to me like they would turn into voiceless nasals as other sonorants devoice in these positions in my language (see example). But I don't want to keep them as voiceless nasals.

Example:
-kʰ + -la > -kɬa
-tʰ + -we > -tɸe
(These contrast with the unaspirated series: k+l > kla and t+w > twe)
-s + ɾ > r̥
-s + l > ɬː
The main options I can think of is to turn them into voiced nasals or to make them split into clusters of non-nasal consonants and voiced nasals.
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 Sexendèƚo »

Travis B. wrote:The main options I can think of is to turn them into voiced nasals or to make them split into clusters of non-nasal consonants and voiced nasals.
Hmm.

So the main place the voiceless nasals would appear is in clusters of the [sN], [xN] sort. Some word-final examples:

tara-x-m
light-plural.inanimate-instrumental
"with the lights"

agveda-s-m
soldier-plural.human-instrumental
"with the soldiers"

This causes devoicing in other sonorants:

agveda-s-l > agvedaɬː
soldier-plural.human-allative
"to the soldiers"

This particular conlang is supposed to be moving from a more agglutinative stage with {number/noun-class marker}+{postposition} to a more fusional stage.

So are there other things that [sN] or [xN] clusters could reasonably change to V_V, or V_# ?
Last edited by Sexendèƚo on Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Sexendèƚo wrote:
Travis B. wrote:The main options I can think of is to turn them into voiced nasals or to make them split into clusters of non-nasal consonants and voiced nasals.
Hmm.

So the main place the voiceless nasals would appear is in clusters of the [sN], [xN] sort. Some word-final examples:

tara-x-m
light-plural.inanimate-instrumental
"with the lights"

agveda-s-m
soldier-plural.human-instrumental
"with the soldiers"

This causes devoicing in other sonorants:

agveda-s-l > agvedaɬː
soldier-plural.human-allative
"to the soldiers"

So are there other things that [sN] or [xN] clusters could reasonably change to V_V, or V_# ?
I can see the opposite happening with things like /ns/ clusters, with them turning into [nts] (this happens in English, BTW).
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 Zaarin »

Perhaps they could denasalize to /p t/?
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Zaarin wrote:Perhaps they could denasalize to /p t/?
That is a possibility.
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 Pabappa »

In many conlangs I do much like that ... /nh hn/ > /nt/ medially, /t/ initially. I dont have any natlang precedent, its just one of those ideas I had that simpl feels right. Might want to consider retaining /s/~/ns/ for the coronal pair just on the basis that /s/ is more persistent than other fricatives ... but i like stops so I chose stops for all four pairs (p t č k). Ive never considerd what to do in final position because clusters dont occur in final position in even my most consonant-heavy conlangs.
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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Voiceless nasals could become voiceless fricatives at the corresponding place of articulation, like /m̥/ > /ɸ/ or /n̥/ > /θ/

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Sexendèƚo »

احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:What are ways to develop word-initial geminates of obstruents (although they would be phonetically realized as tense)? Looking mostly for /p t d k s/.
I adore word-initial geminates (blame it on my girlfriends raddoppiamento sintattico).

I usually derive it through:
1. Sandhi that basically copies Italian initial consonant doubling.
2. Loss of a final consonant in a prefix/article/preposition/etc.: [et ku] → [e kːu]
-- This could be followed by a loss of the preposition/article/prefix entirely, so that the gemination on [k:u] would carry definiteness or case or something.
3. Development of initial [sC] clusters into preaspiration and then gemination. [sku→ʰku→kːu]
4. Assimilation in word-initial clusters [ktu→tːu]
Porphyrogenitos wrote:Voiceless nasals could become voiceless fricatives at the corresponding place of articulation, like /m̥/ > /ɸ/ or /n̥/ > /θ/
Oh, that gives me an idea! So I was thinking that when [w,lˠ] devoice in the language they might keep the velar coarticulation and end up something like [ɸˠ,θˠ]. I wonder if the devoicing of [m,n] along with the velar pair becoming uvular/pharyngeal could result in a normal/emphatic distinction. It'd be weird to have emphatics only for ɸ,θ though so I'd need to develop them elsewhere somehow. Intuition tells me ɸˤ would not last long?

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

The thing is that velars do not usually become uvulars unconditionally; when they do become uvulars it is usually due to the influence of an adjacent back vowel or further-back-than-velar consonant.
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 Sexendèƚo »

Travis B. wrote:The thing is that velars do not usually become uvulars unconditionally; when they do become uvulars it is usually due to the influence of an adjacent back vowel or further-back-than-velar consonant.
My idea came from dialects of Arabic that (iirc) have the emphatics as velarized rather than uvularized. Though I suppose that's representative of the opposite change Cʶ → Cˠ

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Sexendèƚo wrote:
Travis B. wrote:The thing is that velars do not usually become uvulars unconditionally; when they do become uvulars it is usually due to the influence of an adjacent back vowel or further-back-than-velar consonant.
My idea came from dialects of Arabic that (iirc) have the emphatics as velarized rather than uvularized. Though I suppose that's representative of the opposite change Cʶ → Cˠ
Also note that in Arabic varieties typically emphatics are closely tied to vowel quality, such that vowel quality often marks emphaticness more strongly than the consonants themselves.
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 yangfiretiger121 »

The language that became the Skaran Empire's Basic once had the voiceless lateral fricative (/ɬ/; <hl>) and the voiceless lateral approximate (/l̥/; <lh>) as separate phonemes. Currently, they've merged into a single voiceless lateral fricative.

Lhasa [l̥ɑ'sɑ] —> ['ɬɑ.sɑ]

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

yangfiretiger121 wrote:The language that became the Skaran Empire's Basic once had the voiceless lateral fricative (/ɬ/; <hl>) and the voiceless lateral approximate (/l̥/; <lh>) as separate phonemes. Currently, they've merged into a single voiceless lateral fricative.

Lhasa [l̥ɑ'sɑ] —> ['ɬɑ.sɑ]
It seems so typologically implausible that a language would ever have that distinction in the first place, and if it ever developed it, it would be highly unstable and would collapse very quickly.
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 yangfiretiger121 »

Travis B. wrote:
yangfiretiger121 wrote:The language that became the Skaran Empire's Basic once had the voiceless lateral fricative (/ɬ/; <hl>) and the voiceless lateral approximate (/l̥/; <lh>) as separate phonemes. Currently, they've merged into a single voiceless lateral fricative.

Lhasa [l̥ɑ'sɑ] —> ['ɬɑ.sɑ]
It seems so typologically implausible that a language would ever have that distinction in the first place, and if it ever developed it, it would be highly unstable and would collapse very quickly.
It was one of the first sound changes in the language. The distinction lasted a year or so in the language's formative stages before collapsing into the fricative sound. What's troubling me is if they'd have preserved the <lh> spelling for these many years or changed it to <hl> sometime along the way. That question should be answered here, though.

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Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Post by Travis B. »

There is no such thing as a "first" sound change in a language, as languages have no single time in which they come into being.
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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