SCs needed... esp. fortitions, lengthening words

[zompist]

OK, my personal reserve of sound changes is not doing what I want. I looked at the correspondence library and made some notes, but I thought I'd ask more directly in case anyone has ideas.

For Hanying, I'm starting with short words, so most sound changes will make them even shorter. So, what ones do you know that add phonemes?

Also, I tend to end up with lots of fricatives, so I'd be interested in clever fortitions or other changes.

[JT the Ninja]

vowel diphthongization leading to intrusive approximants, maybe? Go full Coach Z on it?

[mèþru]

fortition of fricatives into stops before high vowels, fortition of word initial fricatives, fortition of voiceless fricatives into aspirated stops
unpacking diphthongs into separate vowels in hiatus, which can then have an epenthetic consonant
reduplication and derivation replacing regular forms, widespread compounding

[Zaarin]

Go full Coach Z on it?

/ʤɑb/ > /ʤijɛɪ̯ɔːːʊ̯wɹ̩b/ would be an impressive set of sound changes.


For lengthening words, epenthetic vowels between consonant clusters would be one option. Prothetic or paragogic vowels would also extend words. Combing prothesis and/or paragoge with excrescent consonants and that's more extension...

[missals]

From The Dialects of Italy by Martin Maiden and Mair Perry:

Insertion of a homorganic consonant after a final nasal, e.g. [sa’lamp] “salame”, [omp] “man” (Friulian)

All consonants except /ŋ/ lengthened after stressed short vowels - e.g. /mel/ > [ melː] but /meːl/ > [meːl] - including the first element of consonant clusters: ʙᴜsᴛᴜ(ᴍ) > [bosːt] (Bolognese)

Lengthening of all cases of word-initial /r/ (Calabrian)

Word-initial /b/ > /bb/ vs. > /v/ everywhere else (Northeastern Sicilian)

Epenthesis of /v/ or /g/ into an empty onset position: ʙʟᴀᴅᴀ(ᴍ) > /ˈbjeva/, ᴜᴜᴀ(ᴍ) > /ˈyga/ (Piacentino of Travo)

Addition of [jjə] to final stressed vowels and monosyllables: [saˈpere] > [saˈpe] > [saˈpejjə] “to know”, [me] > [ˈmejjə] (Abruzzese and Molisan)

[JT the Ninja]

Go full Coach Z on it?

/ʤɑb/ > /ʤijɛɪ̯ɔːːʊ̯wɹ̩b/ would be an impressive set of sound changes.

Maybe not full Coach Z xD...but at least full Southerner.

[mae]

-

[Kuchigakatai]

You could also simply add derivational affixes to make words longer, helpfully distinguishing homophones often... French is historically fond of that across time.

For example:

• Classical Latin pulvus 'dust'
  -> early Old French *[pols]
  -> Old French pous [pus] or (+ feminine -e) pousse [ˈpusə]
  -> (+ suffix -ière in feminine form, etymologically -i-āria) French poussière 'dust'.
  
  Classical Latin pedis 'louse'
  -> (+ masculine diminutive suffix -uculum) spoken Latin peduculum
  -> early Old French *[pəˈuʎ], plural *[pəˈoltz]
  -> 12th century Old French puil [pyʎ], plural poouz [poˈuts]
  -> (from plural) 13th century Old French singular pous [pus] (plural poux [pus])
  -> French pou [pu]

It seems to me that in the 13th century, le pous [lə ˈpus] could mean 'the dust' or 'the louse', but they didn't stay homophones for long.

Another example:

• Classical Latin sōlum 'alone (masculine singular); only'
  -> proto-French *[so:l]
  -> Old French seul [sewl]
  -> French seul [sœl]
  
  Classical Latin sōlem 'sun'
  -> proto-French *[so:l] (hypothetical form), (+ diminutive suffix -*[ˈeʎ], etymologically -iculum) *[soˈleʎ]
  -> Old French soleil [soˈleʎ]
  -> French soleil [soˈlɛj] 'sun'

Whereas both survived intact in Spanish as solo vs. el sol, if the intact descendant of Latin sōlem still existed in proto-French it would've been a homophone of Latin sōlum, not to stay a homophone for long either.

I am not saying this is *the* reason why suffixes got attached to those French words. In Italian and Portuguese, we find that Latin aurum 'gold' and aurem 'ear' would've remained distinct as oro vs. *ore, but nevertheless a diminutive form of aurem, auriculum/auriculam, is what survived: Italian orechio, Portuguese orelha. The existence of such homophones might have influenced things a bit in French though.

EDIT: Also, one route to reduce your [f]s and [s]s is to voice them and change them to something else... [f] > [v] > [w] and [s] > [z] > [r]. But you already knew this.

[missals]

Another morphological solution: If a definite marker becomes so weakened and semantically empty that it ceases to mean anything at all, the former definite form may simply become the default, unmarked form, with the definite marker simply glommed onto all nouns. This happened in Syriac, and I've heard people say that this is what's happened/happening with Basque.

[Kuchigakatai]

By the way, as this is Hanying, you are aware of fashionable morphological English borrowings in Mandarin, right? Like the use of -ing and -er.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35177 (contains links to various previous discussions of -ing in Mandarin)
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3111

Could be used aplenty as well.

[Xwtek]

OK, my personal reserve of sound changes is not doing what I want. I looked at the correspondence library and made some notes, but I thought I'd ask more directly in case anyone has ideas.

For Hanying, I'm starting with short words, so most sound changes will make them even shorter. So, what ones do you know that add phonemes?

Also, I tend to end up with lots of fricatives, so I'd be interested in clever fortitions or other changes.

Not phonological, but you may also use compounds to lengthen the world, or coin new word from deverbalized form of verb that ultimately is based on noun. For example, you may change all the adjective into participle version of its copulated form. For example, the original word for rice is forgotten and replaced by riceseed. The noun usage of plan is forgotten and replaced by planning, etc.

[Xwtek]

How about geminate vowel > geminate consonant > fortition.

[anteallach]

Manx pre-occlusion: adding a homorganic stop before a nasal in monosyllables.

Some Romansh dialects change a diphthong glide to [k]. Wikipedia gives the example of strousch [ʃtrokʃ]

[Salmoneus]

Damnit, only one person away from being the first to mention vershaerfung!

Yes, Verschaerfung is a thing in the alps - iirc it also applies in some Germanic dialects, as well as Romance ones. /j/, and sometimes /w/ > /G/, /g/ or /k/ before consonants. And those glides in turn are often created by vowel breaking.

Also in Romance: initial vowel epenthesis before sonorants.


So it would be entirely reasonable for there to be some Romance language that changes /rota/ > /rrota/ > /arrota/ > /arrouta/ > /arrokta/ > /yarrokta/ > /dZarrokta/ > /dZarrokita/ > /dZarrokkita/ (lengthen stops after short stressed vowels). From which we can likewise easily derive: /dZararokkita/ > /dZararoikkita/ > /dZararojikkita/ > /dZararojektSetsa/ > /dZararojjektSesta/ > /idZararojjekitSesita/ > (verschaerfung 2) /igdZararokjikiktSesikta/ > /iagadZarauroitSejitSiketSeisiakata/ (vowel affection and epenthesis).


Of course, what languages actually do to lengthen words is use derivation and/or compounding.

[Ælfwine]

Faroese has a similar process of sharpening calling skerping...essentially /jj/ and ww from diphthongs become /tS/ or /gv/

[JT the Ninja]

Actually I almost forgot my favorite example ever of something that at least presents as a prothetic consonant: some gaelic varieties apparently are inserting /f/ before initial vowels as a hypercorrection of the lenition rule that sends /f/ to zero. I can't remember whether the hypercorrected words actually tend to be in the same grammatical class but this is also an option.

That sounds antastic!

You could also simply add derivational affixes to make words longer, helpfully distinguishing homophones often... French is historically fond of that across time.

I can imagine that'd be useful when starting with short words, because it'd be easy to get homophones that way.

[quinterbeck]

Morphological rather than phonological: Chinese added clarifying morphemes to words which became homophones with each other as a disambiguation strategy

This phonological collapse has led to a corresponding increase in the number of homophones. As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary[71] lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí (tone 2): 十 "ten"; 实/實 "real, actual"; 识/識 "know (a person), recognize"; 石 "stone"; 时/時 "time"; 食 "food, eat". These were all pronounced differently in Early Middle Chinese; in William H. Baxter's transcription they were dzyip, zyit, syik, dzyek, dzyi and zyik respectively. They are still pronounced differently in today's Cantonese; in Jyutping they are sap9, sat9, sik7, sek9, si4, sik9. In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is; Yuen Ren Chao's modern poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi. As such, most of these words have been replaced (in speech, if not in writing) with a longer, less-ambiguous compound. Only the first one, 十 "ten", normally appears as such when spoken; the rest are normally replaced with, respectively, shíjì 实际/實際 (lit. "actual-connection"); rènshi 认识/認識 (lit. "recognize-know"); shítou 石头/石頭 (lit. "stone-head"); shíjiān 时间/時間 (lit. "time-interval"); shíwù 食物 (lit. "food-thing"). In each case, the homophone was disambiguated by adding another morpheme, typically either a synonym or a generic word of some sort (for example, "head", "thing"), the purpose of which is simply to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable should be selected.

However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, shí 石 alone, not shítou 石头/石頭, appears in compounds meaning "stone-", for example, shígāo 石膏 "plaster" (lit. "stone cream"), shíhuī 石灰 "lime" (lit. "stone dust"), shíkū 石窟 "grotto" (lit. "stone cave"), shíyīng 石英 "quartz" (lit. "stone flower"), shíyóu 石油 "petroleum" (lit. "stone oil").

[JT the Ninja]

Morphological rather than phonological: Chinese added clarifying morphemes to words which became homophones with each other as a disambiguation strategy

I was actually thinking of something similar to that earlier today, only more due to common stock phrasings than homophone distinction. Like if the word became bunnyrabbit instead of "bunny rabbit."

[dhok]

Given that Chinese compounding is head-final, you could get a return to Proto-Chinese's sequisyllabic structure where initial syllables lose their tone and simplify phonologically. As noted by other posters, you'd probably be looking at a lot of re-compounding. Say, for example, that 老师 (lǎoshì) went to something like ləʂɻ̀--then 人 gets resuffixed, so that you get a trisyllables like ləʂɻ̀ɻən.

In the process, you could get a return to pitch-accent, where only one syllable has phonemic tone.

[zompist]

Just to clarify, I haven't rejected morphological approaches. But I'm not asking about them, because I know the options there.