Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Nortaneous]

ŋʷ > m is perfectly reasonable and i have that, but can i also do unrounded ŋ > m? if not, how do i get rid of unrounded ŋ

inventory is boring. all non-labial non-approximant non-h consonants can be labialized
/p t ts̺ ts̻ tʃ k/
/b d g/ but these are lost later
/f s̺ s̻ ʃ x h/
/w~v l r j/
/a e ə i u/ + length + some diphthongs that probably don't matter

[Hallow XIII]

Well N merging into some other nasal shouldn't be a problem, it does that all the time. I would not raise my eyebrows at ŋ → m $_

Alternatively you can pull ŋ → ɰ̃ → a lot of things from w to x over m w/e

[sangi39]

There's also the boring ŋ > g (could be tricky given the loss of the other voiced stops, although you could merge /ŋ/ into /g/ before that happened) and ŋ > ʔ (which then gives you a new plosive).

[Cedh]

Portuguese dropped nasal consonants between vowels (usually leaving nasalized diphthongs). If your language does something similar, I could easily see this happening only to /ŋ/, with /m n/ being more resistant due to their more pronounced articulatory gesture.

In one of my conlangs I had /ɲ/ > /j/ before vowels, with original /ŋ/ later shifting to /ɲ/. If you reverse the order of these changes, you'd get /ŋ/ > /j/.

[Nortaneous]

A related language shifts it to ɰ̃, so I think I'll do that and have it spawn diphthongs from there.

[ObsequiousNewt]

Where might one get /l/? Postalveolars?

[Nortaneous]

Where might one get /l/? Postalveolars?

r, d, n

someone should make a sound change database. i'd do it if i could code at all

[R.Rusanov]

iotacized rhotics. normal rhotics. dentals. apicals. laminals.

[Hallow XIII]

Where might one get /l/? Postalveolars?

Pretty much any voiced alveolar is fair game. Persian in particular synthesized it from /rθ/ clusters, many other languages have been known to shift d > l (often via an intermediate rhotic stage) and as for postalveolars, ʒ > ɹ/ɻ > l is a perfectly fine sound change too. You get our drifts.

Nort: good idea. You could start by collecting changes, somebody is sure to volunteer to code it (I would but I have no idea how to make user interfaces).

[Nortaneous]

there's already the KQ correspondence library, main issue would be standardizing format and figuring out how to handle sounds of unknown values (probably include in sound change sets the ability to define ad-hoc symbols with sets of possible IPA equivalents, like PIE h1 = {x h ʔ} = "the ad hoc symbol h1 could be either x, h, or ʔ"

[Cedh]

I think it would be easiest to simply use one of the existing wikis (preferrably FrathWiki IMHO), for instance building on Tropylium's summary of sound changes involving velar consonants.

[Click]

Where might one get /l/? Postalveolars?

Any coronal rhotic, any lateral consonant, or any of [n], [d] and [ð].

[ObsequiousNewt]

Where might one get /l/? Postalveolars?

Pretty much any voiced alveolar is fair game. Persian in particular synthesized it from /rθ/ clusters, many other languages have been known to shift d > l (often via an intermediate rhotic stage) and as for postalveolars, ʒ > ɹ/ɻ > l is a perfectly fine sound change too. You get our drifts.

Nort: good idea. You could start by collecting changes, somebody is sure to volunteer to code it (I would but I have no idea how to make user interfaces).

I'm a programmer myself; I'd love to code it. If you'll draw me up a rough schematic of what you want it to look like.

[Chagen]

I'm trying to do some small-time legit diachronics for my New Pazmat lang and I wanna know if these vowel changes make sense. The idea is to start with a simple inventory with long and overlong vowels and then fuck everything up with a chain shift.

We start with an inventory of /a i e o u r̩ l̩ m̩ n̩/, each vowel having long and overlong variants (yes, that includes the syllabics). Long vowels have macrons, overlong ones circumflexes. The long syllabics simply have colons after them.

Long-vowel chain shift:

ā > ay > ē

ā(l,r) > au > ō

ē > ey > ī

ē(l,r) > eu > ū

ō > oy > ā

ṛ: > ar > ar

ḷ: > al > al

ṃ: > am > am

ṇ: >an > an
////

High-long lowering and vowel diphthongization:

ī > ē > au

ū > ō > oy

Overlong-vowel breaking (this comes after the previous changes, filling in the previous diphthongs):

â > ay > ey

â (l,r) > au > eu

ê > ēy > ay

ê(l, r) > ēu > eu

î > iw > uy (metathesis ho!)

û > uy > ū

ô > oy > oy

And finally:

O > āR > āR where O is an overlong syllabic resonant and R is a short syllabic resonant

////

And thus, thanks to these rules, what was once a simple length adjustment in the protolang is now a straight up PIE grade system:

*wērsena wūsena: I am protecting
*wewersē wewersī: I am protecting (over and over again)
*wewērsē wewūsī: I usually protect
*wêrsana weúsana: I am now ready to protect/I can protect

*gēgena gīgena: I believe
*gegēgē gegīgī: I have religious belief
*gêgana gaygana: I once did not believe but now I do; I have now entered a state of believing due to some previous action

I have a feeling I have some rules conflicting with each other, however....

[ObsequiousNewt]

I notice â > ay > ey and ê > ēy > ay... perhaps you mean the first to be āy instead of ay? (not that there's anything wrong with ay > ey > ay)

[Chagen]

Yeah, that's right. Just a little typo, I was typing it in a noisy classroom.

[ObsequiousNewt]

Yeah, that's right. Just a little typo, I was typing it in a noisy classroom.

You think that's bad, try typing on an iPad in a noisy classroom. Ugh. (Yes, they're school-issued. I would have preferred laptops.)

[Chagen]

Laptops would have been cheaper too...

[ObsequiousNewt]

Laptops would have been cheaper too...

Well, they did get them on a grant, so I don't know how much they actually cost. But I would give a lot for a proper keyboard and XCompose.

[Chagen]

Moving, how can I get retroflex fricatives and affricates through diachronics?

[WeepingElf]

Moving, how can I get retroflex fricatives and affricates through diachronics?

The most common pathway appears to be:

/r/ + alveolar fricative/affricate > retroflex fricative/affricate

[sangi39]

Well I was going to say something, but WeepingElf beat me to my main point

I've asked if retroflex consonants could have another source:

I have a question along a similar line of thought to the previous question.

Is it possible for a difference in +RTR vs. -RTR to "bleed" backwards onto the preceding consonant? For example:

-RTR: /i e a o u/
+RTR: /i̙ e̙ a̙ o̙ u̙/

/p b t d k g/ [p b t d k g] before -RTR vs. [p b ʈ ɖ q ɢ] before +RTR
/m n ŋ/ [m n ŋ] before -RTR vs. [m ɳ ɴ] before +RTR
/f s x/ [f s x] before -RTR vs. [f ʂ χ] before +RTR
/r l/ [r l] before -RTR vs. [ɽ ɭ] before +RTR

Thus consonants remain in generally the same position before -RTR vowels while non-labial consonants shift back in the mouth before +RTR vowel. I'm aware of similar processes using different contrasts, such as Slavic "syllabic synharmony" involving palatalisation and the movement of breathy voice onto following vowels, but I'm not entirely sure whether it's possible for this sort of process to occur with +RTR vs. -RTR so I was wondering if anyone else thinks it's plausible or not.

WeepingElf and Nort seemed to thing it was plausible

[Cedh]

sangi39: That sounds plausible to me too.

Yet another possibility would be having two successive waves of palatalisation. The first wave would create postalveolar fricatives and affricates (or maybe your protolanguage already has them). The second wave would initially create 'brighter-sounding' alveo-palatal fricatives and affricates, and the existing 'darker-sounding' postalveolars would become 'even more dark-sounding' retroflexes in order to maximise the acoustic difference. Some Slavic languages did this (Polish IIRC, and maybe others too). Here's an example how it might work (note the different environments for the two waves of palatalisation):

1st palatalisation:
[k g x ɣ] > [kʲ gʲ xʲ ɣʲ] > [tʃ dʒ ʃ ʒ] / _i, _jV

2nd palatalisation:
[t d s z] > [tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ] > [tɕ dʑ ɕ ʑ] / i_, Vj_

maximisation of contrast:
[tʃ dʒ ʃ ʒ] > [ʈʂ ɖʐ ʂ ʐ]

[Chagen]

Moving, how can I get retroflex fricatives and affricates through diachronics?

The most common pathway appears to be:

/r/ + alveolar fricative/affricate > retroflex fricative/affricate

I thought of that with /tɕɻ dʑɻ/, but I wanted those to stay distinct. Maybe I'll do that though, as it seems the most sensible way.

With that I guess Proto-Pasuu has a finished phonology, though it is pretty goddamn weird--19 stops, two fricatives, and no nasals (though they later arise from prenasalized stops). I mean, this is the lang's stop inventory:

/p pʰ bʰ t tʰ dʰ k kʰ gʰ q qʰ/
/^mb ⁿd ^ŋg/
/pʲ tʲ kʲ/
/^mbʲ ⁿdʲ ^ŋgʲ/

Hopefully that's even mildly feasible. Lenition and Palatization will dual tag-team it and give Pazmat more fricatives than stops in the end.

[ObsequiousNewt]

Is /kt/ > /t`/ plausible?