Sound Change Quickie Thread

[bradrn]

What's more likely in a word-final situation?

/(V) r p/ ---> /(V) r/

or

/(V) r p/ ---> /(V) p/

Assuming that Akangka’s interpretation of your changes is correct, I see both of these as being equally plausible. The first change can be justified as final consonant loss, which from the Index Diachronica seems to be fairly common for almost any type of consonant; the second change is just loss of /r/ after vowels, which famously happened in non-rhotic varieties of English. (I’m not sure why these changes would happen around /p/ specifically, but there’s probably some way to justify it.)

[Raphael]

Akangka: Yes, exactly! I'm sorry, I'm still relatively new to this whole terminology.

What's more likely in a word-final situation?

/(V) r p/ ---> /(V) r/

or

/(V) r p/ ---> /(V) p/

Assuming that Akangka’s interpretation of your changes is correct, I see both of these as being equally plausible. The first change can be justified as final consonant loss, which from the Index Diachronica seems to be fairly common for almost any type of consonant; the second change is just loss of /r/ after vowels, which famously happened in non-rhotic varieties of English.

Thank you!

(I’m not sure why these changes would happen around /p/ specifically, but there’s probably some way to justify it.)

Oh, they don't have to be specific to /p/. Right now, I'm at the stage where I'm trying to think of possible sound changes, and one way I'm doing that is by looking at specific proto-words, thinking about how I might want their derived versions to look like, and deriving regular changes that would lead to those results. And the first word I'm trying to use for that purpose ends in /rp/.

[Xwtek]

Well, is there any free books about sound change?

[bradrn]

Well, is there any free books about sound change?

I’d like to know this as well! I actually did ask for non-free books about sound changes earlier in this thread; I can find that post for you if you’re interested.

[linguistcat]

Not a book, but here is a searchable online resource someone on this board or the CBB suggested to me: here

[Xwtek]

Not a book, but here is a searchable online resource someone on this board or the CBB suggested to me: here

I already know that. And it's good for something that's actually attested. The problem is if the sound change is unattested, is it really unrealistic or it's actually doable.

[bradrn]

Not a book, but here is a searchable online resource someone on this board or the CBB suggested to me: here

I already know that. And it's good for something that's actually attested. The problem is if the sound change is unattested, is it really unrealistic or it's actually doable.

I asked this question earlier in the thread and got the following response which may be useful to you:

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.) 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, those books aren’t freely available online, but if you can get access to them they may be worth a read. (Disclaimer: I never actually ended up reading them.)

[akam chinjir]

Unfortunately, those books aren’t freely available online, but if you can get access to them they may be worth a read. (Disclaimer: I never actually ended up reading them.)

Both are on libgen, so free-as-in-beer, at least, for people who are okay with getting books that way.

[Xwtek]

Unfortunately, those books aren’t freely available online, but if you can get access to them they may be worth a read. (Disclaimer: I never actually ended up reading them.)

Both are on libgen, so free-as-in-beer, at least, for people who are okay with getting books that way.

Thank you for information about libgen.

[Raphael]

How plausible would a general merger of all the pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants in a language, into the voiced forms, be? Alternatively, how plausible would it be to merge some, but not all, pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants into the voiced forms? If it would be plausible, what other changes would be likely to result from the reduced number of consonants, and from the likely emergence of words with dual meanings?

Alternatively, how plausible would it be to leave a consonant unchanged for thousands of years? As in, something like the PIE-to-modern timespan? Would that be more plausible for some consonants than for others?

[holbuzvala]

How plausible would a general merger of all the pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants in a language, into the voiced forms, be? Alternatively, how plausible would it be to merge some, but not all, pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants into the voiced forms? If it would be plausible, what other changes would be likely to result from the reduced number of consonants, and from the likely emergence of words with dual meanings?

I'm no expert, but I imagine it's possible to merge all voiced-voiceless pairs. However, this would probably have some push-pull chain effects. Do you have voiced stops as well as sibilants/liquids? What is your goal in losing all the voiceless consonants? Some things that spring to mind are:

1. gemination: /p b/ > /b bb/
2. acquisition of tone /ap ab pa ba/ > /áb àb bá bà/ (not too sure about which voicing would lead to which tone)
3. lenition push chain: /p/ > /b/, which causes /b/ > /v/, which causes /v/ > /w/ (etc. many possibilities here)
4. (pre)nasalisation: /p/ > /b/, /b/ > /ᵐb/ (maybe get some nasal vowels involved)
5. voicing consonants intervocalically and adjacent to voiced consonants; debucallising elsewhere: /pa apa pla ba aba bla/ > /ha aba bla ba aba bla/

You're probs gonna get some homophones (depending on how polysyllabic your lang tends to be). But if Chinese is anything to go by, it's not an issue. One way of disambiguating homophones (beyond context) is if, perhaps, they had a case system that yielded different results because the sound changes would affect the words differently. Or, you can do a Chinese strategy whereby words are clumped into obligatory pairs. I can't think of concrete examples, but I'll invent one. Imagine the word for 'hand' and 'foot' is 'da' (formerly /ta/ and /da/, now indistinguishable phonetically). Confusing, right? Well, fear not, for the word for 'leg' is 'gong' and 'arm' is 'fu'. Then we just slap them together.

This then creates the pair 'da gong' = foot (foot-leg); and 'da fu' = hand (hand-arm). Nice.

The forum might be able to help your question more concretely if you give us a phonetic inventory of your proto-lang, along with some grammar notes, and field some ideas as to your target inventory and why you want to lose all voicelesses.

EDIT: P.S. you could have it such that in your language there is no voiced-voiceless distinction, and that an underlying /p/ can manifest as [ b] or [p] depending on where it is.

Alternatively, how plausible would it be to leave a consonant unchanged for thousands of years? As in, something like the PIE-to-modern timespan? Would that be more plausible for some consonants than for others?

Arabic is renowned for its conservative phonology, resisting lots of the mergers that other Semitic languages have experienced. But this is across the board for the whole inventory. I think it's über unlikely that a single consonant would resist change while all the others mutate. However, sound change is usually environmentally conditioned, so you could define your diachrony rules so precisely that one consonant (in most environs, maybe not all) remains unchanged.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

How plausible would a general merger of all the pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants in a language, into the voiced forms, be? Alternatively, how plausible would it be to merge some, but not all, pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants into the voiced forms? If it would be plausible, what other changes would be likely to result from the reduced number of consonants, and from the likely emergence of words with dual meanings?

I'm no expert, but I imagine it's possible to merge all voiced-voiceless pairs. However, this would probably have some push-pull chain effects. Do you have voiced stops as well as sibilants/liquids?

I have /b/, /d/, and /g/ (paired with /p/, /t/, and /k/).

What is your goal in losing all the voiceless consonants?

Right now, I'm mainly trying to come up with any plausible sound changes at all - I'm very new to all this. I've read that voicing of voiceless consonants is one of the more plausible sound changes, and I assume that voicing all of them would be more consistent than voicing some of them and leaving others unvoiced.

Some things that spring to mind are:

1. gemination: /p b/ > /b bb/

Interesting.

2. acquisition of tone /ap ab pa ba/ > /áb àb bá bà/ (not too sure about which voicing would lead to which tone)

I think I'd rather keep my main languages tone-less.

3. lenition push chain: /p/ > /b/, which causes /b/ > /v/, which causes /v/ > /w/ (etc. many possibilities here)

Sounds very interesting, but as of now, I have no clue where most consonants would move under this.

4. (pre)nasalisation: /p/ > /b/, /b/ > /ᵐb/ (maybe get some nasal vowels involved)

Hm.

5. voicing consonants intervocalically and adjacent to voiced consonants; debucallising elsewhere: /pa apa pla ba aba bla/ > /ha aba bla ba aba bla/

I'm not sure what "debucallising" means.

You're probs gonna get some homophones (depending on how polysyllabic your lang tends to be). But if Chinese is anything to go by, it's not an issue. One way of disambiguating homophones (beyond context) is if, perhaps, they had a case system that yielded different results because the sound changes would affect the words differently. Or, you can do a Chinese strategy whereby words are clumped into obligatory pairs. I can't think of concrete examples, but I'll invent one. Imagine the word for 'hand' and 'foot' is 'da' (formerly /ta/ and /da/, now indistinguishable phonetically). Confusing, right? Well, fear not, for the word for 'leg' is 'gong' and 'arm' is 'fu'. Then we just slap them together.

I'm not sure how that would fit with my already existing vocabulary. But then again, the vocabulary isn't that important - I'm mainly working on naming languages for my conhistory.

The forum might be able to help your question more concretely if you give us a phonetic inventory of your proto-lang, along with some grammar notes, and field some ideas as to your target inventory and why you want to lose all voicelesses.

Maybe, but I'm trying to keep my posts in this thread in the spirit of the Sound Change Quickie Thread, so, I don't want to accidentally start something that leads to this thread being taken over by a lengthy discussion of my protolanguage.

Anyway, here's a blog post about the Protolanguage:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... ird-draft/

And here's the ZBB thread about my languages in general, if you want to avoid taking up too much of this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=237

Alternatively, how plausible would it be to leave a consonant unchanged for thousands of years? As in, something like the PIE-to-modern timespan? Would that be more plausible for some consonants than for others?

Arabic is renowned for its conservative phonology, resisting lots of the mergers that other Semitic languages have experienced. But this is across the board for the whole inventory. I think it's über unlikely that a single consonant would resist change while all the others mutate. However, sound change is usually environmentally conditioned, so you could define your diachrony rules so precisely that one consonant (in most environs, maybe not all) remains unchanged.

Again, for now, I'm mainly trying to come up with any plausible things to do with my protolanguage, and my ideas so far have been voicing and leaving sounds unchanged - not very creative, I know.

[Zju]

If voicing distinction is lost - which is perfectly natural under the right sub-, ad- and superstrate influence - it'd be the other way around. I'm not aware of any language that has only voiced stops, but there are plenty with voiceless stops, evein if only on phonemic level.

[Nortaneous]

How plausible would a general merger of all the pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants in a language, into the voiced forms, be?

If there's only one series of stops, the convention is to say they're voiceless, and in almost all cases they're voiceless at least word-initially.

This is just a notational convention, and graphical representations of phonemes are fake*, but "there is one plosive series and it's always voiced" is controversially claimed for a small handful of Australian languages and has no attestation other than that.

* to understand this point, try reading phonologies of Papuan languages, or meditate on Piraha allophony or something

Alternatively, how plausible would it be to leave a consonant unchanged for thousands of years? As in, something like the PIE-to-modern timespan? Would that be more plausible for some consonants than for others?

Even if a consonant "is unchanged", as with (say) *s > s, it'll still change in terms of how it fits into the overall phonological system, and its realization could change. PIE *s gives English /s/ in some environments, so is "unchanged", but in other environments it underwent either Verner's Law or intervocalic voicing, and due to pressure from the development of a postalveolar fricative it's shifted forward from apical alveolar (the value that's preserved in IE languages that never developed a sibilant POA contrast, like Icelandic and Greek) to laminal dentoalveolar.

[mae]

-

[Xwtek]

I saw an Australian language where all plosives are voiced.

[Man in Space]

I saw an Australian language where all plosives are voiced.

As I understand it that’s more of a representational convention than unilateral voicing.

[Ælfwine]

I am working on a descendant of Old Norse spoken in modern day Labrador and Newfoundland, with strong influence from Native American languages (largely Innu-aimun/Montagnais). I'm trying to determine the plausibility of a series of sound changes that cause the phonology to rapidly transform into something more akin to a Native American language, possibly as a result of a substrate (or superstrate?).

Anyway, on to my question:

Old Norse has the fricatives /f (v) θ (ð) s (ɣ) h/, where the ones in parenthesis are common allophones of /f/, /θ/ and /g/ respectively. Under influence from Innu-aimun, I need the phonemes /f (v) θ (ð) (ɣ)/ to merge with their plosive equivalents in order to both eliminate them and reintroduce voiced consonants as allophones between vowels (similar to the state of affairs in Innu). While I know /θ ð/ > /t d/ is well attested, and so is /ɣ/ > /g/, how likely is /f~v/ > /p~b/)/? Is it possible, under influence from Innu, a language that lacks /f/, for it to completely merge with /p/?

[Pabappa]

/v/ > /b/ happened in Spanish. /f/ > /p/ is sometimes claimed for early Semitic, but i suspect this sound change is very rare, so perhaps first /f/ > /v/, then /v/ > /b/. Youd still have /p/ from original /p/.

[Ælfwine]

/v/ > /b/ happened in Spanish. /f/ > /p/ is sometimes claimed for early Semitic, but i suspect this sound change is very rare, so perhaps first /f/ > /v/, then /v/ > /b/. Youd still have /p/ from original /p/.

That was quick!

Okay, that might actually work. I have also considered debuccalizing /f/ (potential Basque adstrate?) Though despite its rarity, I don't see much issue with /f/ > /p/ if my substrate in question simply pronounces all /f/ as /p/, although for that I'd like a second opinion.