Sound Change Quickie Thread

[bradrn]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Are you saying that you want all of, say, /tærok/, /tærɒːk/, /tɑrek/ to go to /tærak/, with similar changes for all other verbs (i.e. not just tär-k)? Or am I misunderstanding?

Basically, yes. It's the beginning of a triconsonantal root system. That means I need to morphologically level the ablaut patterns and I want them to be leveled to CVCaC for passive voice and CVCuC for active voice. I suppose I could probably just hand-wave the active voice pattern into having the CVCuC pattern since most of them are statistically close to that pattern, but I'm not as sure about the pattern CVCaC for passive voice.

What exactly are the noun gender suffixes? Knowing them might make this easier to answer.

Just -e (masculine) and -a (feminine), they're rather inherent to the language's nouns like Spanish -o/-a are inherent to Spanish nouns. So they're kind of inert as far as grammatically-induced sound changes (like vowel mutation) are concerned.

Well, I'm not sure I can help with any of this then.

Slightly off-topic, but: if you're making a triconsonantal language, then I highly recommend The Unfolding of Language, by Guy Deutscher; it outlines in excellent detail the evolution of triconsonality. Although aimed at non-linguists, it's still one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read.

[bbbosborne]

how realistic is ɛ > e before velars and at the end of a word?

[StrangerCoug]

At least the latter I buy.

[missals]

how realistic is ɛ > e before velars and at the end of a word?

The former happens in contemporary American English: leg and egg, for example, historically end in /ɛg/, but many people in the Midwest (including myself) pronounce them with [eg].

As for the latter, you don't really need an excuse to raise or tense a vowel word-finally, that happens a ton. (compare English happY-tensing)

[das baron]

Say I have a system of tense/lax vowel harmony which I want to lose by merging the vowel pairs. Can the consonants be affected in some way by the tenseness or laxness of the following vowel?

[Vijay]

I think Kashmiri does that.

[das baron]

Say I have a system of tense/lax vowel harmony which I want to lose by merging the vowel pairs. Can the consonants be affected in some way by the tenseness or laxness of the following vowel?

Forgot to add: in what ways can tense/lax vowels affect consonants?

[Vijay]

Palatalization, velarization, etc.? In Kashmiri, it seems it's also possible to lose the vowel if it's lax but not if it's tense. (I may be totally wrong, but this is the impression I get from what I can remember of listening to songs in Kashmiri).

[Richard W]

Forgot to add: in what ways can tense/lax vowels affect consonants?

Final consonants, or obstruents at least, seem to be dropped more easily after long vowels.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Is there precedent for coda consonants resulting in tone when they follow another consonant, but (the same consonants) being maintained post-vocalically?

[Vijay]

Lhasa Tibetan:

ཁམ /kʰam/ [kʰám] 'piece'
ཁམས་ /kʰams/ [kʰâm] 'Kham'
ལྷ་ས /l̥asa/ [l̥á.sə] 'Lhasa'

[Pabappa]

What are the preexisting tones of this language? If none, I'd say don't do it, because you'd then have a language where tone contrasts only in closed syllables, which is unrealistic. I'd also say it's more likely that only certaincombinations would simplify. E.g. coda /mp,nt/ could change to /m,n/and high tone.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Lhasa Tibetan:

ཁམ /kʰam/ [kʰám] 'piece'
ཁམས་ /kʰams/ [kʰâm] 'Kham'
ལྷ་ས /l̥asa/ [l̥á.sə] 'Lhasa'

Ah, I meant post-vocalically in the coda. i.e. [taps] > [tâp] but [tasp] > [tāsp]. Does this happen in Tibetan at all?

[Vijay]

No, because only /s/ or /d/ could appear immediately after another consonant in coda position in Old Tibetan, and neither of those are pronounced after a vowel in any modern tonal variety of Tibetan I'm aware of at least.

[Nortaneous]

Ah, I meant post-vocalically in the coda. i.e. [taps] > [tâp] but [tasp] > [tāsp].

Could do this with enough intermediates. Maybe -P$ > -ʔP$, -Rs > -R̥, then s > 0 / C_, VʔP VR > V́P V́R. But I don't know if there's precedent.

[Zaarin]

What are the preexisting tones of this language? If none, I'd say don't do it, because you'd then have a language where tone contrasts only in closed syllables, which is unrealistic.

Move stress to closed syllables and you basically have Mohawk with mobile stress.

[dɮ the phoneme]

How does NP (> ⁿB) > B look?

edit: oh wait, doesn't Greek have this?

[Pabappa]

How does NP (> ⁿB) > B look?

edit: oh wait, doesn't Greek have this?

yes. the nasals are still there in intervocalic position. however, Japanese has done the complete shift .... http://enwp.org/Rendaku is the shift of /mp nt ns nk/ > /b d z g/, with some analogical forms later appearing where there had never been an /n/.

[bbbosborne]

how realistic does pr > ʙ̥ seem?

[Frislander]

how realistic does pr > ʙ̥ seem?

Hm, I mean I might buy it, but with some caveats.

Firstly bilabial trills are fairly uncommon, but we do have attestations from across the world, notably in parts of Oceanic, West Africa and even Tibeto Burman, with most cases showing a very limited distribution to the point that they're typically analysed as allophones. The common thread linking all of these that I can find is that they all seem to result from labial consonants before rounded vowels. The other source which does appear to crop up sometimes is from prenasalisation, as in Nias. As a result while the sound is definitely attested I don't think that particular change is.

The other thing I would like to note is that it's not entirely clear to me why a trilling action made by the tongue should "jump" to one made by the lower lip like this.

But either way that shouldn't top you from using this if you can find a phonetic justification for it.