Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Qwynegold]

Surely he was joking, right?

[Nortaneous]

Besides narrow phonetic transcription, is there ever a case where the two need to be distinguished? Are there any languages that contrast the two?

[Tropylium]

Even if they don't, they still seem to have slightly different diachronic behavior due to different values of ±obstruent: ɬ <> s, ɬ <> tɬ or ɬ > t are common, ditto l̥ > h or l̥ <> hl, but probably not most of the opposite options without an l̥ <> ɬ overpass first.

In other words, if we need to keep fricatives and approximants apart in general (at least l – ɮ, ʋ – v, w – ɣʷ are attested contrasts), why not here too?

[missals]

I find that a lot of newbie conlangers are extremely reticent and unconfident about what kinds of sound changes are plausible. I guess because they don't yet have an understanding of what makes sound changes plausible.

If you don't have a basic understanding of articulatory and acoustic phonetics, the idea that l̥ > ɬ is obviously naturalistic and plausible might as well be just as opaque and arbitrary - or just as sensible - as saying that ʃ > ʄ or ɣ > ʎ are realistic. After all, they're just pairs of kinda similar-looking symbols, right?

[McGee]

I know /kw/ can become /p/ but is it possible for /p/ to become /kw/? If it can, then is it also possible for /kw/ to become /kʲ/?

[Pabappa]

I know /kw/ can become /p/ but is it possible for /p/ to become /kw/? If it can, then is it also possible for /kw/ to become /kʲ/?

/pʷ/ > /kʷ/ is sometimes posited for Oceanic languages, but Im skeptical. It could have been the other way around, with the shift of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ occuring more than once. I'd think kʷ>pʷ twice, or even several times, is more likely than pʷ>kʷ once. There is /p/ > /q/ in a Native American family which is claimed to have lost its labial consonants as the speakers took to wearing elaborate lip jewelry. Perhaps a roundabout shift like /p > f > hʷ > kʷ/ would work, but youd have to have a conditioning environment for the last step or else explain why a fricative suddenly strengthened into a stop. (Not impossible but uncommon.)

I dont think /kw/ > /kʲ/ would work either unless you also push the regular /k/ up with it. I'll add, though, that I'm noticing I'm a skeptic on sound changes in general, so perhaps someone else will find a way that I can't think of.

[Whimemsz]

.

[Man in Space]

I want to say that *kw > p occurred somewhere in Chibchan, so it’s attested in the New World too.

[Whimemsz]

I want to say that *kw > p occurred somewhere in Chibchan, so it’s attested in the New World too.

Yeah, from the posts I quoted it looks like it's also attested in some Zapotecan varieties and in Tlapanec. (And Tohono O'odham, Mayo, Yaqui, and all of Muskogean except Creek come close, with b or bʷ as the result.) (Actually...checking the book chapter I have on Muskogean historical phonology, Creek has *kʷ > p intervocalically, it just has *kʷ > k initially, if I'm understanding the developments correctly. The wording isn't entirely clear.)

[McGee]

A general shift of /kw/ > /kʲ/ is possible. The Plains Algonquian languages merged */w/ and */j/ to /j/ to varying degrees, so you're basically talking about a change of /w/ > /j/ after /k/ (though you may want to have that semivowel merger happen more widely for it to be more plausible).

Wide is my aim. I'm trying to collapse a labial series. My current thought is this: /p p' f m/ > [kʷ kʷ' xʷ ŋʷ]. Then the labialization would be lost on the fricatives [x ŋ]. Then perhaps your proposed merger of /w j/ > /j/, resulting in /kʲ kʲ'/?

[Nortaneous]

I don't understand what's supposed to be implausible about /pʷ/ > /kʷ/. They're quite similar acoustically and not that different articulatorily, and you accept that the reverse is plausible (this isn't like a debuccalization change where the shift almost always goes in one direction, this is just an instance of two very similar sounds switching places, so the plausibility of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ implies the plausibility of /pʷ/ > /kʷ/).

Well, many Oceanic languages develop a pʷ series, and I don't know of any examples of pʷ > k(ʷ) there, even though there are Oceanic languages with t > k.

[Whimemsz]

I don't understand what's supposed to be implausible about /pʷ/ > /kʷ/. They're quite similar acoustically and not that different articulatorily, and you accept that the reverse is plausible (this isn't like a debuccalization change where the shift almost always goes in one direction, this is just an instance of two very similar sounds switching places, so the plausibility of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ implies the plausibility of /pʷ/ > /kʷ/).

Well, many Oceanic languages develop a pʷ series, and I don't know of any examples of pʷ > k(ʷ) there, even though there are Oceanic languages with t > k.

There are supposedly a few examples; not many, since Proto-Oceanic didn't have many etyma with *pʷ, though it had plenty with *bʷ and in several languages this changed to gʷ or kʷ or a coarticulate:

A number of Oceanic languages have rounded velars, like /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /ŋʷ/, or labiovelars, like /k͡p/, /g͡b/, /ŋ͡m/, but these have not been reconstructed for POc. One reason for this is that, in a number of languages, rounded velars or labiovelars reflect the POc rounded bilabials. In the northern Malaitan languages of Southeast Solomonic, namely North Malaitan, Kwara’ae, Lau, Kwai, Kwaio, and Dori‘o, /gʷ/ reflects POc *bʷ. In the northernmost of these languages, North Malaitan and Kwara’ae, /ŋʷ/ reflects POC *mʷ (in the others /w/ reflects *mʷ). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are also reflected as /gʷ/ and /ŋʷ/, respectively, in Western Fijian dialects and in dialects of southeastern Viti Levu (Geraghty 1983:42–50) and Beqa island, to the south of Viti Levu (Paul Geraghty, pers. comm.). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are reflected as /kʷ/ and /ŋʷ/ in the Torres Islands languages Hiw and Lo-Toga and the Banks Islands languages Lehali and Mwerlap of north Vanuatu; they are reflected as /k͡pʷ/ and /ŋ͡mʷ/ in other Banks languages (Alexandre François, pers. comm.). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are reflected sporadically as /ᵑg/ and /ŋ/, presumably from earlier /ᵑgʷ/ and /ŋʷ/, in Jawe of New Caledonia, and regularly as /gʷ/ and /ŋʷ/ in the New Caledonian language Pwapwâ. Firm reconstructions containing POC *pʷ are few (Lynch 2002:315), but its few reflexes indicate that it is at least sometimes reflected as /kʷ/ in northern Malaitan languages and in those Fijian dialects that have distinct reflexes of the POc rounded bilabials.

Unfortunately Ross doesn't give any actual examples, and when I just searched through Ross, Pawley, and Osmond's The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: 2: The physical environment the words with *pʷ either lacked a reflex in one of the relevant languages, or the reflex was NOT /kʷ/. But the book was published in 2003, before Ross' article, and also the 2002 article by Lynch that he cites lists the reflex of *pʷ in Lau as "k,kʷ." Although Lynch's actual article shows that it's more complicated than that because *pʷ and *p merge before rounded vowels, plus additional complications ... there are still some examples in the appendix: *pʷake "k.o. green food" > Lau kʷake "greens," Kwaio kʷaʔe "tree fern (Cyathea sp.)"; *pʷalaq "split (wood+)" > Pwapwâ ᵑgana. A lot of the forms look pretty weak to me though, and don't all have the same reflex all the time, so I dunno......

[Nortaneous]

Clicking around in ABVD, it looks like Hiw /kʷ/ corresponds regularly to Lemerig /kpʷ/, which is probably from an original rounded labial.

[bbbosborne]

can /ʃl/ -> /ɬ/?

[Whimemsz]

yes

[StrangerCoug]

How common is metathesis from fricative-stop to stop-fricative across syllable boundaries?

[Whimemsz]

It has certainly happened but it's not common, and I'm not aware of any examples where it happened for ALL instances of intervocalic F+S. Juliette Blevins and Andrew Garrett's chapter "The Evolution of Metathesis" in Phonetically Based Phonology (2004) lists several examples of (regular) stop and fricative metathesis, but only three examples actually involve original F+S sequences as opposed to original S+F sequences, and of these three, (a) all of them only apply to one specific fricative+stop cluster, and (b) only one of them actually occurs intervocalically, across a clear syllable boundary. (The example is Late West Saxon, which regularly metathesized OE -sk- to -ks- ... but not any other F+S sequences.) On the other hand, I note all their examples are from IE or Semitic languages, so it's certainly possible this has happened in less well-studied families. It's definitely not common though.

[Nortaneous]

iirc interchange between /st/ and /ts/ happens in NEC

[bradrn]

Would it be reasonable to have ʔ → k between vowels but ʔ → Ø everywhere else? e.g. maʔ → ma, amasʔe → amase, but paʔel → pakel.

[gestaltist]

Would it be reasonable to have ʔ → k between vowels but ʔ → Ø everywhere else? e.g. maʔ → ma, amasʔe → amase, but paʔel → pakel.

I've never seen the glottal stop to fortite to /k/ so not sure.