Sound Change Quickie Thread

[vokzhen]

English prince/prints, fence/fents, ham(p)ster, dream(p)t, streng(k)th where nasal+voiceless clusters have a stop homorganic to the nasal inserted. I wouldn't expect backing of the nasal unless *all* coda /n/ collapse to velar, though, otherwise place assimilation is much more likely for the coronals.

[Tropylium]

Retroflexes are often velarized, so I could imagine *nʂ > ŋʂ (> ŋkʂ) happening as well. Sanskrit has a sort of similar change: *tʂ, *cʂ > kʂ.

[Daedolon]

Thanks, Tropylium

Is this possible ?

m n > b d /_ on the stressed syllable

or

b d > m n /Ṽ_ on the syllable strictly after the stressed syllable

[Nortaneous]

some dialects of korean have m n > b d / #_, some PNW langs had unconditional m n > b d

[Zaarin]

b d > m n /Ṽ_ on the syllable strictly after the stressed syllable

This seems reasonably. Tuscarora had t > n /_Ṽ, which is similar.

[Zaarin]

I've read that ejectives can turn into voiced consonants. I've also read that ejective fricatives are not formed by the same technique as ejective stops, and that they are both less common and less stable.

I have a parent language that has a stop series T T' D, and a fricative series S S'. Two daughters merged the ejective fricatives with the plain ones; one followed Arabic and Aramaic in making ejectives pharyngealized instead; one kept the system intact. But I have one more daughter language that I want to do something different with--namely, voicing the fricatives. Can I have S' > Z without T' > D?

[Tropylium]

I'd sort of expect instead a chainshift S S' > Z S actually, but anything involving ejective fricatives sounds very difficult to find actual precedents for.

[Zaarin]

I'd sort of expect instead a chainshift S S' > Z S actually, but anything involving ejective fricatives sounds very difficult to find actual precedents for.

Yeah, they're definitely an oddity. Thanks.

[Das Baron]

In a language which undergoes liquid metathesis, like what the Slavic languages went through, what might happen with a word like *norto or *nolto? Is it realistic that they fully metathesize to *nroto/*nloto (with a subsequent change to eliminate the initial cluster), or would it be more likely that they become *noroto/*noloto, preventing the cluster completely?

[Nortaneous]

PSl. *norvъ 'custom' > OCS nrav (loaned into Russian as nrav, coexisting with native norov), Bulgarian and Slovene nrav, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian narav, Polish narów, and Czech and Slovak mrav with dissimilation from earlier nrav.

So you can either block reduction of the original vowel after pleophony (as in Macedonian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian), allow reduction (as in Bulgarian, Slovene, and OCS), allow reduction and dissimilate the cluster (as in Czech and Slovak), or allow reduction with epenthesis to ndl- ndr- (as is apparently optional in Russian).

There's nothing wrong with initial nr- nl- clusters -- see Dorig... never mind, Dorig seems to prohibit nr- nl-. See Tocharian B nrai 'hell'. (I can't find any TB roots with initial nl-, but I can't find any PSl. roots with nVlC- either.)

[hwhatting]

but I can't find any PSl. roots with nVlC- either.)

Me neither, and Derksen also doesn't have any.

[Das Baron]

PSl. *norvъ 'custom' > OCS nrav (loaned into Russian as nrav, coexisting with native norov), Bulgarian and Slovene nrav, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian narav, Polish narów, and Czech and Slovak mrav with dissimilation from earlier nrav.

So you can either block reduction of the original vowel after pleophony (as in Macedonian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian), allow reduction (as in Bulgarian, Slovene, and OCS), allow reduction and dissimilate the cluster (as in Czech and Slovak), or allow reduction with epenthesis to ndl- ndr- (as is apparently optional in Russian).

There's nothing wrong with initial nr- nl- clusters -- see Dorig... never mind, Dorig seems to prohibit nr- nl-. See Tocharian B nrai 'hell'. (I can't find any TB roots with initial nl-, but I can't find any PSl. roots with nVlC- either.)

Much appreciated.

[StrangerCoug]

I have what's supposed to be the protolang for a large language family with an inventory of /a aː e eː i iː o oː u uː p b̥ b̬ m t d̥ d̬ n s z̥ z̬ z̃ k ɡ̊ ɡ̌ ŋ/ and a syllable structure of (C)V(C). Coda consonants are permitted only after a short vowel and are limited to /p t s k/ there from a morphophonemic standpoint, but there are no other phonotactic restrictions right now. What are some interesting ways to play with the voiceless/slack/stiff contrast? (And what's the most plausible default voicing for the nasals in this kind of system?)

[Élerhe]

I can't remember exactly where I was going with this (possibly some sort of "initial mutation" scenario after reading something on Facebook), but does > [β ð ɣ] adjacent to [r] (and possibly [l] and maybe [z]) seem plausible, with remaining as such in all other positions?

I might be remembering something incorrectly, but didn't a similar change on the history of Welsh?

Either way, it seems to make sense to me, but I don't want to do anything with it until I've gotten a second opinion.

Next to [r] I can see that happening (at least an [r] didn't stop it happening to b in Spanish), and I could see a parallel thing happening with l, but I think zed would harden the sound rather than soften it

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Could a language have /ð/without /θ/?

[Pole, the]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fijian_language#Phonology

[Nortaneous]

According to UPSID: (restricting the search to only one #{POA} non-sibilant fricative and picking out the ones where that fricative is voiced and not a fricated tap/trill)

Voiced dental non-sibilant fricative: Aleut, Cubeo, Dahalo, Fijian, Guarani, Koiari, Mari, Mazatec, Mixtec, Moro, Nganasan, Quechua, Tacana.
Voiced dental-alveolar non-sibilant fricative: Highland Chinantec, Huave.
Voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative: Karen.

Aleut and Cubeo are right, although some dialects of Aleut have /θ/. Dahalo and Guarani do not appear to have /ð/. Koiari, Mari, Mazatec, and Mixtec are multiple languages. I don't care enough to check the rest, but UPSID always has to be taken with several mines of salt.

In Cubeo, /ð/ is a recent and IIRC only marginally contrastive development from *j. Fijian has a series of fricatives/approximants /β ð ɰ/.

[vokzhen]

Bunun has /ð/. Some Finnish dialects, and a bunch of Sami languages. Depending on your analysis, (American) Spanish.

In Cubeo, /ð/ is a recent and IIRC only marginally contrastive development from *j.

Specifically, [ð] occurs between non-high vowels, [j] or [dZ] occur elsewhere. The only place it occurs phonemically is ða- "to make."

[GreenBowTie]

Could a language have /ð/without /θ/?

Luiseño does.

[Zju]

So after having learned about one of the world's rarest sounds, the bilabial oral egressive click ʘ↑, found in Damin, I began wondering how it could come into being in a natlang. Maybe something along the lines of kpʼ → ʘ↑, pkʼ → ʘ↑ or even uncoditional pʼ → ʘ↑ in a more extreme case. These do seem far fetched, but more probable than any of ʘ, ʘʔ, ʔʘ turning in it IMO.

Also how likely are l̥ → ɬ and ɬ → l̥ really? The two do not sound alike at all.

[Zaarin]

Also how likely are l̥ → ɬ and ɬ → l̥ really? The two do not sound alike at all.

Assuming that's a voiceless not a laminal lateral (it's really hard to tell with the forum's font), it happens frequently; the two sounds are interchangeable in many languages.

[Nortaneous]

what's an egressive click?

bilabial clicks are attested as allophones of labial-velars, so

[vokzhen]

Also how likely are l̥ → ɬ and ɬ → l̥ really? The two do not sound alike at all.

Assuming that's a voiceless not a laminal lateral (it's really hard to tell with the forum's font), it happens frequently; the two sounds are interchangeable in many languages.

They are voiceless, I usually copy-paste unknown diacritics into my google bar.

If you think they don't sound alike at all, either you're abnormally attuned to the difference or the samples/your own pronunciation don't match the prototypical pronunciation. E.g. Welsh /ɬ/ is entirely un-/l̥/-like for many speakers because they pronounce it [ç].

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

Could homoorganic stops be inserted between nasals and rhotics only, as opposed to including laterals and other liquids?

[alynnidalar]

How reasonable is Vrn > V:n?

I'm messing about with a non-rhotic (or less-rhotic) variety of Tirina and am trying to think of interesting things to do with the vowels; I don't want to just drop the /r/ and be done with it.