Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Richard W]

And yes I expect they have the same length, because as I said, most English dialects don't actually have a significant "length" distinction between /ɪ/ and "/i:/" anymore. (Although I should temper that a bit, since /i/ is slightly longer than /ɪ/, though context matters: vowels are significantly lengthened before voiced coda consonants, which is why the vowels of /bit/ and /bɪd/ are, at best, about equal in length -- if anything, your "bid" vowel is probably slightly longer than your "beat" one.)

Forty or fifty years ago I concluded that I couldn't reliably rank them in length, and concluded there were three phonetic lengths before stops. Oddly, "beat" now seems slightly longer than "bid", whereas one would expect the intrinsic length difference to have decreased over the years. Perhaps I picked up more conservative habits at college - my sister claims it changed my speech a lot. I only noticed one vowel change. (I'm pretty poor at shifting register.)

[bradrn]

Well, reading up on the historical phonologies of some well-attested languages is useful (which the Index Diachronica can be one source for, but I agree it's not ideal, for multiple reasons), and note which changes and types of changes recur. For example, you might notice that fronting of [u] to [ʉ] or [ɨ] or [y] or [i] happens in most dialects of English, in Dutch, in Central and Southeastern Yiddish, in Icelandic, in Faroese (kind of), in French, in Greek, in Albanian, in Slavic, in Dhegihan, in Arapahoan and Cheyenne (kind of), in Dogrib, in Dena'ina, and in Tamil (kind of), among others [and according to the ID, in Rhaeto-Romance, Hiw, Caaàc, Nixumwak-Nêlêmwa, Nyelâyu, Tolomako, and Nisenan]. Once you look at enough you can generally get a decent intuitive feel for it, at least in my experience.

This is exactly my problem! In that list of languages, you've mentioned five IE branches, plus Siouan, Algonquian, Athabaskan and Dravidian languages, all presumably off the top of your head. How do you even learn about all the sound changes in these languages? What resources can I use?

I'd also suggest a basic book on historical linguistics that discusses common sound changes. Personally I really like Hans Heinrich Hock's book which goes quite in-depth on a lot of issues (not just common sound changes). You could also check out Juliette Blevins' Evolutionary Phonology which is partially predicated on determining which kinds of changes are more natural and common than others. (Some of her papers available online cover aspects of the theory.)

Interesting - I'll have to look at these!

Finally, I suggest just using common sense. If two sounds are very similar to one another, they can generally change to one another (with caveats!). Lenition processes occur most frequently intervocalically; lenition of any fricative to [h] or any stop to [ʔ] are always possible; long vowels can shorten, especially in checked or unstressed syllables; vowels or consonant series can undergo chain shifts; final consonants or vowels can devoice or be lost; vowels can change quality or rounding based on neighboring vowels (e.g. umlaut such as uCi > yCi).

Unfortunately, common sense works as often as not. For me, common sense seemed to indicate that ʔ > k would be a fairly plausible change, but it wasn't (as proved above in this thread). Conversely, I thought think that V > Ø / _# wouldn't be too plausible, but according to the ID it's actually fairly common. Hence my goal to rely less on common sense and more on knowing what actually works.

What do you mean by "impure"? And yes I expect they have the same length, because as I said, most English dialects don't actually have a significant "length" distinction between /ɪ/ and "/i:/" anymore. (Although I should temper that a bit, since /i/ is slightly longer than /ɪ/, though context matters: vowels are significantly lengthened before voiced coda consonants, which is why the vowels of /bit/ and /bɪd/ are, at best, about equal in length -- if anything, your "bid" vowel is probably slightly longer than your "beat" one.)

As a native English speaker, I can say that I definitely have my "beat" vowel longer than my "bid" vowel - it seems weird to me to have it the other way around! (Then again, I'm fairly sure that I speak Australian English, one of the few varieties with a phonemic length distinction, so that might change matters.)

[dɮ the phoneme]

What are some interesting vowel changes (preferably mergers) that are likely to occur within a five-vowel system /i u e o a/ adjacent to uvulars? How about adjacent to /ɻ/?

[StrangerCoug]

Vowels can retract adjacent to uvulars; as far as mergers go, I'd believe /i u/ → /e o/ in that environment.

Likewise, vowels can be rhotacized before /ɻ/—English itself did this—and if you have a vowel length contrast you might go /aɻ oɻ/ → /aɚ oɚ/ → /aː oː/ at the very least, with /ɚ/ otherwise becoming /ə/. From there, you can turn /ə/ into whatever your "neutral" (read: most common) vowel in your language is. Another idea I had is leniting /ɻ/ → /w/ in syllable-final position and then monophthongizing /aw/ to /o/, though I'd expect an analogous /aj/ → /e/.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Vowels can retract adjacent to uvulars; as far as mergers go, I'd believe /i u/ → /e o/ in that environment.

I'm basically debating between this, and just centralizing or mid-centralizing everything, i.e. {i u} {e o} > ɨ ə, or {i e} {u o} > ə ɵ. Does anyone have any natlang references for any of these?

[bbbosborne]

inuit and other eskimo-aleut languages have it as allophonic variation. it doesn't seem farfetched for it to become phonemic.

[dɮ the phoneme]

inuit and other eskimo-aleut languages have it as allophonic variation. it doesn't seem farfetched for it to become phonemic.

The centralization or the lowering?

[bbbosborne]

sorry, yeah, it's the lowering that's allophonic.

[Tropylium]

Somewhat close to lowering: Southern Khanty has chainshift blocking triggered by uvulars: by default *a *o *u > o u y, but aQ oQ uQ all remain put. (There's also a more direct lowering shift where *ɯQ > *ɤQ > eQ, versus *ɯ > i by default).

(it may be interesting to note that the Proto-Khanty uvulars are themselves allophonic, conditioned by original back vowels and only phonemicizing after mergers like *ɯ > i/e)

A different direction entirely could be vowel breaking: iQ eQ > iəQ eəQ (similar to Old English), maybe with further phonemicizing development to rising diphthongs /je ja/. And if you then simplified your newfound Cj clusters somehow, the ultimate result would end up being that uvulars trigger front vowel lowering *i *e > e a, plus, counterintuitively, palatalization

[dɮ the phoneme]

A different direction entirely could be vowel breaking: iQ eQ > iəQ eəQ (similar to Old English), maybe with further phonemicizing development to rising diphthongs /je ja/. And if you then simplified your newfound Cj clusters somehow, the ultimate result would end up being that uvulars trigger front vowel lowering *i *e > e a, plus, counterintuitively, palatalization

That's a fantastic idea which I just might steal. This language already has phonemic palatalization, so this change would be right at home, so to speak.

[Zju]

I want you to poke holes at this:

Code: Select all

p t k
s ʃ
r l
m n

a o u e i

k > q / _{a, o}, {a, o}_
p t k q s ʃ r l m n > pʲ tʲ kʲ qʲ ɕ ɕ j j mʲ nʲ / _i
ɕ > sʲ
i > e / [+J]_
l > w
qʲ > cˠ > tˠ
t > ɾ / V_V
s n t > sˠ nˠ tˠ
w ʃ > wˠ ʃˠ > ʕ ħ
r q > z q > zˠ ʡ
j > ʝ > z
e o > i u
i u > e o / _Cˠ, Cˠ_
pʲ mʲ sʲ tʲ kʲ nʲ > p m s t k n

Code: Select all

m	n	nˠ
p	t	tˠ	k	ʡ
	s	sˠ		ħ
	z	zˠ		ʕ
	ɾ

a i u

[bradrn]

I want you to poke holes at this:

[...]

It occurs to me that I have much the same question with a set of sound changes I recently developed. Possibly there could be another thread for this, if enough people are interested?

[Nortaneous]

p t k q s ʃ r l m n > pʲ tʲ kʲ qʲ ɕ ɕ j j mʲ nʲ / _i

palatalized uvulars don't really exist outside Ubykh, and even there IIRC there's something different from plain palatalization going on articulatorily

qʲ > cˠ > tˠ

I don't think so either. if you want velarized t, Marshallese got it from fortition of s (and t > t_j, which is usually realized as a sibilant - so it *almost* had a reversal of /t s/ > /s t/)

e o > i u
i u > e o / _Cˠ, Cˠ_

can an /a e o i u/ system collapse like that? e o > i u is common in Japonic, but usually it's compensated somehow, and Japonic *i *u were probably 'super-high' / partially fricated anyway

[dɮ the phoneme]

Possibly there could be another thread for this, if enough people are interested?

I'm interested. This seems like a pretty common desire, so a dedicated thread may not be a bad idea.

[bradrn]

Possibly there could be another thread for this, if enough people are interested?

I'm interested. This seems like a pretty common desire, so a dedicated thread may not be a bad idea.

Alright then - I'll make it now.

EDIT: Now created at viewtopic.php?f=3&t=327.

[Tropylium]

qʲ > cˠ > tˠ

A bit unexpected, but good for "color". If I saw this as a correspondence in the wild, I'd assume something more breaking-like such as *qi > *qje > *qtʲe > *tˠʲe > tˠe though.

e o > i u
pʲ mʲ sʲ tʲ kʲ nʲ > p m s t k n

This is the main "shit goes down" stage. Summing up this and the above developments, you end up with:
– Ca >> Cˠa
– Ce >> Cˠi
- Ci >> Ci
- Co Cu >> Cˠu
(and the original o/u contrast only marginally retained as ok uk > uʡ uk).

i u > e o / _Cˠ, Cˠ_

As phrased, this sounds like an allophonic rule in your final phonology. But you have no source for nonvelarized consonant + /a u/! Velarization is only contrastive before /i/, and after this change you will have also the vowels in complementary distribution again: [Ti Tˠe Tˠa Tˠo]. In other words, there's no reason to treat velarized consonants as separate phonemes. Unless there have been e.g. loanwords coming in and messing up the system during its development, this actually instead adds up to a system with four vowels /a e i o/, alveolars being realized as velarized by default / nonvelarized before /i/, and /o/ being realized as [u] in the environment {# P}_{# Ti} (pu > [pu], uni > [uni], but e.g. tuni > tˠuni > [tˠoni] = /toni/).

[bradrn]

Let's say I have a language where vowels are not allowed to be next to each other (is there a technical term for that?); that is, no diphthongs or hiatuses. However, there is a glottal stop, so e.g. /gaʔen/ is allowed. If glottal stops are lost intervocalically (which seems fairly reasonable), what happens to the massive amount of vowels now in contact?

[náʼoolkiłí]

Let's say I have a language where vowels are not allowed to be next to each other (is there a technical term for that?); that is, no diphthongs or hiatuses. However, there is a glottal stop, so e.g. /gaʔen/ is allowed. If glottal stops are lost intervocalically (which seems fairly reasonable), what happens to the massive amount of vowels now in contact?

Well the world's your oyster. Any one of these, or conceivably more than one depending on the vowel sequence, might happen. There are probably other processes that could happen that I'm not thinking of, too.

• Vowel deletion (with or without compensatory lengthening): **gaʔen → *gaen → ga(ː)n, ge(ː)n
• Consonant (e.g., glide) epenthesis: **gaʔen → *gaen → gajen
• Coalescence (±compensatory lengthening): **gaʔen → *gaen → gɛ(ː)n
• Diphthongization/glide formaiton: **gaʔen → *gaen → ga͡ɪn, gajn
• Metathesis: **gaʔen → *gaen → gane (This one might be a little cooky)

[dɮ the phoneme]

If glottal stops are lost intervocalically (which seems fairly reasonable), what happens to the massive amount of vowels now in contact?

It depends. They could just stay in contact, and your language now has instances of hiatus. They could coalesce, forming long vowels or dipthongs. Another possible result is that where two vowels appear in hiatus, one of them simply deletes.

[bradrn]

Let's say I have a language where vowels are not allowed to be next to each other (is there a technical term for that?); that is, no diphthongs or hiatuses. However, there is a glottal stop, so e.g. /gaʔen/ is allowed. If glottal stops are lost intervocalically (which seems fairly reasonable), what happens to the massive amount of vowels now in contact?

Well the world's your oyster. Any one of these, or conceivably more than one depending on the vowel sequence, might happen. There are probably other processes that could happen that I'm not thinking of, too.

• Vowel deletion (with or without compensatory lengthening): **gaʔen → *gaen → ga(ː)n, ge(ː)n
• Consonant (e.g., glide) epenthesis: **gaʔen → *gaen → gajen
• Coalescence (±compensatory lengthening): **gaʔen → *gaen → gɛ(ː)n
• Diphthongization/glide formaiton: **gaʔen → *gaen → ga͡ɪn, gajn
• Metathesis: **gaʔen → *gaen → gane (This one might be a little cooky)

The problem I have is - exactly what happens? Take vowel deletion: if I have (say) 5 vowels, that makes 25 vowel pairs; which vowel gets deleted? What sort of rules have languages used to resolve this situation? (e.g. always delete first vowel, always delete second vowel, etc.) The same happens with epenthesis (which semivowel gets epenthesised?), coalescence (what do they coalesce to?), and diphthongization (it's unrealistic to have a diphthong for every vowel pair).