Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Pogostick Man]

What can I do to /tʷ/?

Potentially it can become /p/.

The Wikipedia article on Ubykh states that this is believed to have happened for at least one speaker of the language.

[vokzhen]

I believe I've seen it affricate to /tsʷ/; Japanese might be indirect evidence of this as well. From there you could have deaffrication to sʷ, and then fronting to f. I thought I'd even seen a Chinese dialect/group that took tsʷ > pf but a quick glance wasn't enough to find confirmation.

Breaking it into the cluster /tf/ should be possible too.

[Shemtov]

Are these sound changes valid:
mʲu→mĭu→məu→muə
Or mʲu→mçu→mxu

[StrangerCoug]

I find the first plausible, but the second is iffier since you have an unvoiced consonant following a voiced consonant. It also doesn't look like anything that would happen anywhere but postvocalically.

[Bristel]

What can I do to /tʷ/?

Potentially it can become /p/.

The Wikipedia article on Ubykh states that this is believed to have happened for at least one speaker of the language.

Very likely where I saw that. I read that page every once in a while.

[Nortaneous]

yeah Chinese had ts` > pf in some environment, or something like that

[Daedolon]

How could/would you go from
/i u e o a/
to
/iː uː ɪ ʊ eː oː ɛ ɔ aː ɑ/
?

[StrangerCoug]

The easy way is to develop contrastive vowel length (somehow—we'd need more information on your inventory and phonotactics to help you with that) and then lax the short vowels.

[vokzhen]

A few of the common ways of getting length:
Open syllables lengthen
Vowels in hiatus contract into long vowels
Loss of coda consonants with lengthening, especially one of /s h r/
Loss of intervocal consonants (especially one or more of /s h j w ʔ/) to create hiatus, which contract
Loss of coda nasals to nasalization with lengthening

[Qwynegold]

I believe I've seen it affricate to /tsʷ/; Japanese might be indirect evidence of this as well.

I think this is due to high vowels causing affrication, so I don't think one could use Japanese as evidence for anything related to /tʷ/.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

How would the vowels /a a: e e: i i: o o: ə u u:/ become /a e̞ i o̞ ə u/? Preferably within four or five steps
Also wondering ways on how open and closed syllables can together give rise to these.
I do not know how syllable types (open and closed) affect the change of vowels, like whether closed syllables have the affect of shortening a vowel or causing it to front or to back.

[Daedolon]

The easy way is to develop contrastive vowel length (somehow—we'd need more information on your inventory and phonotactics to help you with that) and then lax the short vowels.

inventory
/m n ɳ ŋ/
/b ᵐb d ⁿd ɖ ᶯɖ g ᵑg ʔ/
/f s z h/
/ts dz/
/r l j w/

/a e i o u/

phonotactics
(C(w, j, r, l))V(w, j)(s, z, h, r)

[Nortaneous]

uhhh

[sangi39]

I seem to recall recently seeing a suggestion that high vowels have the potential to cause affrication of stops, which would (if true) help explain Japanese /tu/ > [tsu], for example.

So, I was wondering, could this change be extended to affect all plosives within a language, e.g. /p t k/ > [pɸ ts kx], _i/u

More: show

On an extended note, if that change is possible, without any affrication of voiced stops, would the following step be plausible:

[pɸ ts kx] > [pç tʂ cç], _i

I wasn't quite sure how to handle palatalisation of [pɸ]. I've seen that some Sesotho speakers, according to Wikipedia, have substituted [pʃʰ] for /pʰj/, so I'm hoping [pɸʲ] > [pç] isn't too implausible.

[8Deer]

I seem to recall recently seeing a suggestion that high vowels have the potential to cause affrication of stops, which would (if true) help explain Japanese /tu/ > [tsu], for example.

So, I was wondering, could this change be extended to affect all plosives within a language, e.g. /p t k/ > [pɸ ts kx], _i/u/

I'm fairly certain this happens in some Bantu languages, but I can't find a specific example right now. As for /pɸ > pç / _i/, honestly a one step change of /p > pç / _i/ would be perfectly plausible to me. /ts > tʂ/ is a little weird tho, I'd expect /tɕ~tʃ/.

[Pogostick Man]

How plausible is b d g → m n ŋ / _r ?

[Zaarin]

How plausible is b d g → m n ŋ / _r ?

I think the opposite happens in either Proto-Celtic or Gaulish.

[8Deer]

How plausible is b d g → m n ŋ / _r ?

I think the opposite happens in either Proto-Celtic or Gaulish.

Which makes sense because it increases the sonority distance between the two elements of the cluster. The reverse change seems implausible to me, but I'm sure someone will now find an example of it somewhere!

[Bristel]

How plausible is b d g → m n ŋ / _r ?

I think the opposite happens in either Proto-Celtic or Gaulish.

Took me a second to understand the comment, but I think that's correct. I have a conlang based off of Proto-Celtic, and those are similar sound changes. Ex. mrogis 'area, region, country' became broigh [broɣʲ] 'ibid.'

Although, now that I think about it, while these changes may exist in Gaulish, or other Celtic langs, I don't think I chose d → n or g → ŋ. But ml → bl.

[Pogostick Man]

How does C{ŋ,ɴ} > Cʰ / _V look (rhinoglottophilia > aspiration)? Would it be plausible to derive voiced aspirates from that as well?

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

How would the vowels /a a: e e: i i: o o: ə u u:/ become /a e̞ i o̞ ə u/?

[Pogostick Man]

One option is simply dropping the vowel length, but I get the feeling you don't want to do that. So, here's an alternate solution:

uː iː → aʊ aɪ
oː eː → oʊ eɪ
a aː → ə a
oʊ eɪ → u i
aʊ aɪ → o e

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

One option is simply dropping the vowel length, but I get the feeling you don't want to do that. So, here's an alternate solution:

uː iː → aʊ aɪ
oː eː → oʊ eɪ
a aː → ə a
oʊ eɪ → u i
aʊ aɪ → o e

So, it's a lot simpler than I though, but how would /ae̯ ao̯/ and possibly /eo̯/?
Do people really just count /e̞ o̞/ as /e o/?

I am trying to come up with phoneme inventories for several language stages: Proto-Hasjakam, Himoshian, Takshite, Pre-Vrkhazhoan, Old-Vrkhazhian, Middle-Vrkhazhian, and Modern-Vrkhazhian.
Sangi came up with these particular sound changes, but don't know about the large amounts of vowels in free-variation, that doesn't look right. Of course, I could just have misinterpreted the example he gave and that this has nothing to do with the diachronic.

[spoiler]Proto-Hasjakam:
/a a: e e: i i: o o: ə u u:/

Himoshian:
/æ ɑ: ɛ e e: ɪ i i: ɔ o o: ə ʊ u u:/

Takshite:
/æ~æ: ɑ~ɑ: ɛ~ɛ: e~e: ɪ~ɪ: i~i: ɔ~ɔ: o~o: ə~ə: ʊ~ʊ: u~u:/

Pre-Vrkhazhian:
/a~ɛ a~ɑ ə~ɛ e~ɪ ɨ~ɪ i~əj ə~ɔ o~ʊ ə~ə ɨ~ʊ u~əw/

Old Vrkhazhian:
/a~e a~a ə~e e~i i~i i~aj ə~o o~u ə~ə i~u u~aw/

Middle Vrkhazhian:
/a e̞ e i o̞ o ə u/
/aj aw/

Modern Vrkhazhian:
/a e̞ i o̞ ə u/
/ae ao/[/spoiler]

[sangi39]

Ah, yeah, the changes I presented over on the CBB weren't meant to indicate free variation, but variations of each of the original Proto-Hasjakam vowels found in closed and open syllables respectively. Since I didn't present any changes that could have caused those variations to become phonemic, I continued to present them in those pairs.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Ah, yeah, the changes I presented over on the CBB weren't meant to indicate free variation, but variations of each of the original Proto-Hasjakam vowels found in closed and open syllables respectively. Since I didn't present any changes that could have caused those variations to become phonemic, I continued to present them in those pairs.

Oh... thanks. How do non-syllabic vowels develop for diphthongs when there were originally none. Do they just... Spontaneously come from an approximant?