How stable are palatalised rhotics?

[alice]

Exactly as it says. My impression is "not very", but I'd be interested to know how common they actually are, how long they survive, and what they become (e.g. /r_j/ > /r_r/ > /Z/ in West Slavonic, or > /jr/ or /j/ in Romance).

[linguoboy]

They've been stable in Irish for something on the order of a millennium or two. As far as I know, it's only some Ulster dialects that have /ɾʲ/ > /j/ (thus the anglicisation "Moya Brennan" for "Máire Ní Bhraonáin").

[AnTeallach]

They've been stable in Irish for something on the order of a millennium or two. As far as I know, it's only some Ulster dialects that have /ɾʲ/ > /j/ (thus the anglicisation "Moya Brennan" for "Máire Ní Bhraonáin").

But isn't the broad/slender contast for the fortis rhotic (orthographic initial r and interior rr) lost in all Goidelic dialects? Quoting Akerbeltz: "no one actually knows which sound exactly this was and no Gaelic, Irish or Manx dialect has preserved initial slender R. All three languages have merged them with initial broad R."

The slender lenis rhotic becomes [ð] in some Scottish Gaelic dialects.

[Bristel]

They've been stable in Irish for something on the order of a millennium or two. As far as I know, it's only some Ulster dialects that have /ɾʲ/ > /j/ (thus the anglicisation "Moya Brennan" for "Máire Ní Bhraonáin").

But isn't the broad/slender contast for the fortis rhotic (orthographic initial r and interior rr) lost in all Goidelic dialects? Quoting Akerbeltz: "no one actually knows which sound exactly this was and no Gaelic, Irish or Manx dialect has preserved initial slender R. All three languages have merged them with initial broad R."

The slender lenis rhotic becomes [ð] in some Scottish Gaelic dialects.

This is a good question, someone answer it please.

I've been looking into the rhotics of Old Irish, and I've only seen an explanation that they might have been a distinction between flapped and trilled rhotics. I'm trying to create a conlang based on Old Irish, but I might end up scrapping that idea in favor of a heavily influenced conlang.

In my personal pronunciation for reading-aloud purposes, I use /r rʲ ɾ ɾʲ/ for the representations of /R Rʲ r rʲ/.

I think this is similar to the laterals and nasals, which are written for simplification as /L Lʲ l lˡ N Nʲ n nʲ/ which are posited to be /ʎ ʎʲ l lˡ ɲ ɲʲ n nʲ/.

I'm not so sure these phonemes are widely accepted, and I am not so sure about /Nʲ/ being /ɲʲ/... (can a palatal be palatalized?)

[linguoboy]

I think this is similar to the laterals and nasals, which are written for simplification as /L Lʲ l lˡ N Nʲ n nʲ/ which are posited to be /ʎ ʎʲ l lˡ ɲ ɲʲ n nʲ/.

I'm not so sure these phonemes are widely accepted, and I am not so sure about /Nʲ/ being /ɲʲ/... (can a palatal be palatalized?)

I initially thought you had written /ŋ/ and /ŋʲ/, which seems plausible to me since the modern value of /Nʲ/ in Munster dialects is, in fact, [ŋʲ]. (/N/, on the other hand, has fallen together with /n/, although not before causing anticipatory diphthongisation in stressed syllables.)

[Bristel]

I think this is similar to the laterals and nasals, which are written for simplification as /L Lʲ l lˡ N Nʲ n nʲ/ which are posited to be /ʎ ʎʲ l lˡ ɲ ɲʲ n nʲ/.

I'm not so sure these phonemes are widely accepted, and I am not so sure about /Nʲ/ being /ɲʲ/... (can a palatal be palatalized?)

I initially thought you had written /ŋ/ and /ŋʲ/, which seems plausible to me since the modern value of /Nʲ/ in Munster dialects is, in fact, [ŋʲ]. (/N/, on the other hand, has fallen together with /n/, although not before causing anticipatory diphthongisation in stressed syllables.)

Ah. I'll have to remember this bit, sounds like a good piece to use for a plausible Old Irish daughterlang.

[sirdanilot]

Do you count some realizations of bunched /ɹ/ as well? Since there are definitely some that are palatalized.

[johanpeturdam]

Then again, you do have Lower Sorbian, which still has /rʲ/.

[Zhen Lin]

/rj/ has been stable in Japanese for several centuries (or a millennium). As with Irish, there's a systematic palatal-nonpalatal contrast. In Okinawan, though, it merged with /j/.

[hwhatting]

Exactly as it says. My impression is "not very", but I'd be interested to know how common they actually are, how long they survive, and what they become (e.g. /r_j/ > /r_r/ > /Z/ in West Slavonic, or > /jr/ or /j/ in Romance).

In Russian they've survived to this day. In Belorussian they've simply become depalatalised and merged with the Slavic non-palatalised rhotics.

[King of My Own Niche]

/rj/ has been stable in Japanese for several centuries (or a millennium).

But the Japanese /r/ is more of an alveolar tap [ɾ].

[Thomas Winwood]

But the Japanese /r/ is more of an alveolar tap [ɾ].

Japanese /r/ is a flap, and it's underspecified for centrality. It's usually indicated as [ɺ].

That is however irrelevant since the OP asks about rhotics, and a flap/tap is still a rhotic.

[Hakaku]

I'm not sure I'd consider the rhotic+palatal sequence in Japonic all that stable, since the very nature of the rhotic itself isn't. If we go back as far as Early Old Japanese, we already find an opposition between Eastern *r and Western *y in such examples as sero vs seyo 'do it'.

In any case, it's not clear at what point the rhotic+palatal sequence first appeared, but it developped primarily through reduction of *riV and *r^yeV to *ryV, and was also borrowed in a number of Chinese loan words. Wikipedia suggests that the sequence was established around Late Middle Japanese. Assuming this is correct, then the palatalized rhotic may have never really gained a foothold in any Western variant, since we begin to observe the sequences *ri and *re being reduced to *i intervocalically (nasare > nasai, gozari > gozai, kari > kai, ore > oi) around the same time, and *ry shifted towards *y in more progressive dialects all except in word-initial position. There, both the rhotic and palatalized rhotic remained fairly stable except in Kyushu and partly in Ryukyuan, where it was commonly subjected to fortition: Kagoshima *rainen > *denen "next year", *r^yeuri > *ryuuri > *dyui "cooking". In Ryukyuan specifically, the palatal was dropped: Okinawan *ryuu > *ruu ~ *duu "dragon", (*riyaufan > *ryaufau >) ryoohoo > *roohoo ~ *doohoo "both sides", *ryuukyuu > *ruuchuu ~ *duuchuu "Ryukyu".

So is the palatalized rhotic stable in Japonic? Lexically, in Kyushu and Ryukyu, no, but it has stuck around in Eastern Japanese and partly in Western Honshu Japanese. If we include morpheme fusion (think "kore wa" > "korya" this.TOP), then the palatal-rhotic sequence perpetuates throughout Western Japanese except in Southern Kyushu (and I don't believe in any Ryukyuan variant either). So if we consider it all together, then the palatalized rhotic has been around some 800 years. And in terms of sound changes, we see /rj/ > /j/, /r/, /d/ or /dj/, and by extension [dZ] due to allophony. (And yes, I mark /r/ broadly)

[Zhen Lin]

I'm not sure I'd consider the rhotic+palatal sequence in Japonic all that stable, since the very nature of the rhotic itself isn't. If we go back as far as Early Old Japanese, we already find an opposition between Eastern *r and Western *y in such examples as sero vs seyo 'do it'.

I'm not sure this counts. It could just be an entirely different morpheme. But yes, you make a good point. I remember reading a paper claiming that the absence of /r/ in initial position is due to a sound change, rather than mere coincidence. If I recall correctly one of the examples cited was ogamu vs worogamu (postulating the latter is a reduplicated form).

(nasare > nasai,

I think it's more likely to be nasari → nasai. It seems to me that the Kansai dialects have a tendency to use ren'yōkei forms for imperatives. But I may be mistaken.

[Hakaku]

(nasare > nasai,

I think it's more likely to be nasari → nasai. It seems to me that the Kansai dialects have a tendency to use ren'yōkei forms for imperatives. But I may be mistaken.

The problem here is that nasai functionally acts as an imperative, which suggests that its underlying form aligns with the meireikei -e form. This is also supported by the fact that Western Japanese also uses the variant なんせ nanse and Kagoshima uses やんせ yanse, both which bear the same connotation and are aligned in the same position. The ren'yōkei -i form is most often used to link one verb to another, so it would be odd to have it dangling at the end of a sentence and bear such a strong nuance, while also following a verb that's already in that form (e.g. standard: "karinasai").

Though, confusingly, due to the sound change I mentioned earlier, nasari also becomes nasai. It's just not used as such in standard Japanese, as the change is defective and the word was borrowed from the older Kansai dialect (note how kari should be reduced to kai). But it's possible to distinguish the meireikei and ren'yōkei forms by comparing other verbs (e.g. tatsu: tate vs. tachi), where the imperative still always falls under the meireikei form.