zompist bboard

So I've been working on a language that is a relative of Japanese. I was thinking of doing something with metathesis in the general form of CVCV > VCCV (the exact change isn't important I don't think, but I can add it later if needed). This got me to thinking about languages that have strict syllable structures in general and how it seems like sound changes tend to work on syllable levels for them, so metathesis might be a very uncommon change for a language that tends toward CV syllables. On the other hand, it could give the conlang an interesting flavor separate from Japanese, especially since I'm trying to avoid vowel reduction just now.

Do languages with strict syllable structures tend to avoid metathesis like I thought I noticed? And if so, would this sound change be just weird, or would it be offbeat enough to be interesting?

There are lots of kinds of metathesis. I don't know about the likelihood of vowel-consonant metathesis creating new consonant clusters in a language that previously had few, but there are many examples of languages that underwent consonant-consonant methathesis. E.g. in European languages that I am familar with, there can be sk/ks metathesis, or more generally sC/Cs metathesis (which in English have affected words like "ask" and "wasp"), and l/r metathesis, which shows up fairly frequently in Spanish (e.g. milagro < miraculum, peligro < periculum). These don't add to the number of consonant clusters in a word.

For some fairly extreme synchronic metathesis in an underlyingly CV language, check out Rotuman

After looking at Rotuman, I think I should be ok as long as the metathesis quickly resolves into long consonants already found in Japanese at the point I'm deriving from. Or at least influence from Japanese could push it that way. Thank you for the input.

While I've gotten the answer for my own project, I'd be happy to hear any other input on the general subject of metathesis in CV languages.

Here are 2 cases of metathesis in Japanese :
ふんいき(fun i ki, fu+n+i+ki) to ふいんき(fu in ki, fu+i+n+ki)
シミュレーション(shi miu re- shion, simulation) to シュミレーション(shiu mi re- shion)

Apparently Nahuatl has a lot of VCCV roots that appear to descend from Uto-Aztecan CVCV, but I haven't looked into it further.

Thank you all. I'm feeling confident about the set of sound changes I wanted to introduce with this.

Oh and metathesis to maintain CV structure is how a lot of languages developed infixes.

E.g. ak + ole = akole, but ak + tura = *aktura, so the onset of the root is switched with the affix to make takura.