Sound Change Quickie Thread

[Richard W]

x > k sounds difficult as well.

Many Shan dialects show a merger of /f/ and /pʰ/ in favour of the latter. A merger of /x/ and /kʰ/ seems to have happened in most Southwest Tai dialects, with White Tai being the only hold-out. (Li's Tai Lue example seems to be White Tai spoken by a group who were otherwise culturally Tai Lue.) The orthographic distinction lingered on until the arrival of mechanised writing. In this case, the result of the merger varies from dialect to dialect.

[Alces]

x > k is a common change in borrowings to languages without /k/, so it could plausibly happen due to imperfect learning during a language shift.

[Ahzoh]

Actually, this isn't really a "quick question" but I also feel like it's too small to be worth making a separate thread for.

So I want to have a sort of "consonant gradation" in my tricon language, except I want it to be non-productive and only occur with the "weak" consonants /w j h ħ/.

In general, it should work like this:

Code: Select all

weakened < normal > hardened
/iː/     < /j/    > /k/~/g/
/uː/     < /w/    > /p/~/b/
/ɒː/     < /h/    > /ŋ/
/ɛː/     < /ħ/    > /ŋ/

I don't really know how to go about justifying this, it's just that for some roots they have derived forms that are different than the rest of the verbal system. I have a general gist of how to achieve what I want. The weakening is a fairly simple diphthongization or compensatory lengthening. As for the hardening of these sounds, well I'm sure that's achievable through gemination e.g. /w: (> β) > b/ but there are also languages where /j w/ become /k p/ or /c k/ when they occur before other consonants.
Nonetheless, I feel like there are a lot of loose-ends that makes this system not feasable.

Anyways, I shall demonstrate with detail how this looks in practice:

For example, the causatives. Normally it's usually either taPRaḪ- or PaRRaḪ-, but for certain root sets you have this:
ī- (√ʾ-y-y) "go" > āg- (√ʾ-h-g) "drive away, cause to flee"
kū- (√k-w-w) "be" > kāb- (√k-h-b) "create, cause to exist, beget"
sā- (√s-h-h) "come" > sāñ- (√s-h-ñ) "cause to come, lead"
sē- (√s-ḥ-ḥ) "punish" > sēñ- (√s-ḥ-ñ) "cause to punish, offend
All of the double final-weak roots, few that they are, behave this way.

malī- (√m-l-y) "take" > malag- (√m-l-g) "cause to take"
malā- (√m-l-h) "heal" > malañ- (√m-l-ñ) "cause to heal"
Although final-weak roots usually use the taPRaḪ- pattern.

ūś- (√ʾ-w-ś) "burn, cook" > abaś- (√ʾ-b-ś) "burn cook"
zūl- (√z-w-l) "be red" > zabal- (√z-b-l) "redden"
ḫūn- (√ḫ-w-n) "be blue" > ḫaban- (√ḫ-b-n) "make blue, bluen"
Although, usually middle-weak roots simply reduplicate the second radical such as:
tīl- (√t-y-l) "perish > talal- (√t-l-l) "destroy, lay waste, make perish"

The aforementioned weak consonants are also vocalized when they are "middle radicals" or occur before strong consonants. Of course this is solely due to diphthongization or compensatory lengthening after elision.
dūl- (√d-w-l) "dig up, reveal"
rīb- (√r-y-b) "plant [seeds]"
ṣāb- (√ṣ-h-b) "kill"
lēb- (√l-ḥ-b) "yield, give up"

Nouns derived from weak roots also show a hard grade, but they are not voiced. These words are mostly doublets of words that didn't have this happen to them:
zūlum "soil, dirt"; zaplum "mud"
ūśim "fire"; apśum "heat, warmth"
ūlum "date"; aplum "fruit"
ḫūnum "sky"; ḫapnum "shroud, covering"
tīśum "tongue"; takśum "word"

There is also pitūm "daughter, girl" and kitīm "son, boy" which I want to have some relationship to the morphemes *wa "female" and *ya "male"

[Creyeditor]

An alternative idea, just of the top of my head: historically, weak grade in coda, normal grade intervocalically and strong grade after consonants. Would that work too?

[Ahzoh]

It wouldn't really work, because the weak consonants are supposed to elide post-consonantally as well, and essentially in every environment except word-initially (except for the laryngeals which elide there too) and so, the grades are less allophonic and more grammatic. w: > b works because intervocalic gemination is a grammatical feature.

yea, I guess it's basically:

malayya-na "I cause to take" > malag(a)-na (PaRaḪḪa- as an alternative to PaRRaḪ-)
ḫawwan-na "I cause to be blue" > ḫaban-na

I guess the justification of the grade is not that hard to do, and maybe does not have loose-ends as I thought.

I guess then, the problem then is how to justify a voiceless hard grade in the first position, e.g.
pitūm "daughter, girl" *wV "female and some morpheme like *iti
kitīm "son, boy" and *yV "male" and *iti
Perhaps there was a glottal stop? I don't know.
I wanted there to be other derived nouns where initial weak /j w h ħ/ may become /k p ŋ/

EDIT: actually this all is less "consonant gradation" more just plain old consonant mutation.

[Ahzoh]

I had asked a similar question on CBB but:
I know pharyngeals can front vowels (and had learned that palatalization is apparently a common phenomenon with pharyngeals) and had learned they can lower vowels. But I wonder if pharyngeals can alternatively raise vowels, specifically, non-high vowels into high vowels.

[Creyeditor]

EDIT: actually this all is less "consonant gradation" more just plain old consonant mutation.

Yes, I would definitely agree with that.

[Raholeun]

I have been toying with a language and decided it has both /r/ and /ɽ/ [ɽ~ɻ]. Its proto-language, although not fully fleshed out yet, had only *r and no other retroflexes. The Index Diachronica has little information on this.

How would you evolve /r/ and /ɽ/ from *r?

You can be creative

[bradrn]

From what I can find online, there seem to be several cases of /l/ turning into a post-alveolar flap, or at least having a post-alveolar flap as an allophone. (It’s happened in Gokana and Swedish at least.) Another possibility I can think of is doing /r ɾ/ → /r ɽ/, though I’m not sure if this is actually attested.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

You could also do allophony — */r/ is [ɾ] initially, but [ɽ] medially, however the loss of certain initial syllables phonemicises the distinction between the two:

*/ra/ > [ɾa]
*/əra/ > [ɽa]

Or have */r/ in clusters become retroflex, and drop the earlier element; alternately, more complexly:

*/tr dr sr zr/ > [ʈɽ ɖɽ ʂɽ ʐɽ] > [ɖʐ ɖʐ ʐ ʐ] > [ɽ ɽ ɽ ɽ], but earlier */r/ > [ɾ] in non-clusters.

With Bradrn's example, you could do several chain shifts:

*/l/ > [ɾ] triggers */j/ > [l], triggers */g/ > *[ɣ] > [j] triggers */ŋ/ > [g], and so on...

[dɮ the phoneme]

Anyone know of cases were a sesquisyllabic language fully vocalized the minor syllables instead of eroding them?

[Nortaneous]

Anyone know of cases were a sesquisyllabic language fully vocalized the minor syllables instead of eroding them?

Tibetan preinitial g- is regularly borrowed into some Rgyalrongic languages as ʁ- > ɑ-

[Ahzoh]

Could this allophonic rule happen?

/m/ > [mᵖ] before /t tʼ k kʼ s sʼ x/
/m/ > [mᵇ] before /d g z ɣ/
/n/ > [nᵗ] before /p pʼ k kʼ x/
/n/ > [nᵈ] before /b g ɣ/
/ŋ/ >[ŋᵏ] before /p pʼt tʼ s sʼ/
/ŋ/ >[ŋᶢ] before /b d z/

The superscript indicates that it's shorter in duration than a full consonant, thus it's not quite the same as the omre > ombre change.

Also wondering if this kind of allophonic change breaks the fact that my conlang is a mora-timed language since the nasals in coda position would phonemically be only one mora in length but their post-stopped allophonic counterparts could possibly be one-and-a-half to two moras in length. Which is a problem because I don't allow syllables with more than three moras and the only trimoraic syllables I allow are (C)VVC ones.

[bradrn]

This seems totally plausible to me. It’s basically just regressive assimilation of nasality: you’re stopping nasality just before the end of the nasal rather than just after the end of the nasal.

[Creyeditor]

Also wondering if this kind of allophonic change breaks the fact that my conlang is a mora-timed language since the nasals in coda position would phonemically be only one mora in length but their post-stopped allophonic counterparts could possibly be one-and-a-half to two moras in length. Which is a problem because I don't allow syllables with more than three moras and the only trimoraic syllables I allow are (C)VVC ones.

The stop portions could easily be nonmoraic, if bimoraic codas are banned anyway. Non-moraic coda stops exist and I am pretty sure they are only non-moraic only in complex codas in some languages.

[bradrn]

Wrt moras keep in mind that [mᵖ] etc. are single phonemes rather than clusters, thus only count as one mora in the coda.

[Qwynegold]

I have been toying with a language and decided it has both /r/ and /ɽ/ [ɽ~ɻ]. Its proto-language, although not fully fleshed out yet, had only *r and no other retroflexes. The Index Diachronica has little information on this.

How would you evolve /r/ and /ɽ/ from *r?

You can be creative

r, r: → r\`, r

[StrangerCoug]

Given that [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] are attested as conditional allophones of /b d ɡ/ in Spanish (for example), is it attested to have [β̞̃ ð̞̃ ɣ̞̃] as conditional allophones of /m n ŋ/, perhaps as an intermediate step toward long nasal vowels or Portuguese-style nasal diphthongs?

[Man in Space]

Given that [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] are attested as conditional allophones of /b d ɡ/ in Spanish (for example), is it attested to have [β̞̃ ð̞̃ ɣ̞̃] as conditional allophones of /m n ŋ/, perhaps as an intermediate step toward long nasal vowels or Portuguese-style nasal diphthongs?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the first one (nasalized bilabial approximant) is basically what *M was in historical Irish, no? This doesn’t seem too far fetched to me.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

With some of the irregular innovations between Middle and Modern Japanese, I suspect Middle Japanese had some of that, especially with some sort of nasalised approximant or fricative being an allophone of /m/ in some environments; I think the older volitional ending was "amu", which shifted to "au" > "ō" (turning the quadrigrades into quintigrades), cf. Classical 書かむ (kakamu) v. Modern 書こう(kakō); eliding consonants from grammatical morphemes sporadically isn't uncommon in the shift from Middle to Modern Japanese, however — the adjectival ending -き (ki), probably shifting to something like [çi~ʝi] > [ji~i], to い (i); this also happened to the adverbial く (ku) > う (u) in some varieties, but not others, and the modern forms are a hybrid predicative/attributive in い, but with inflected forms in く. Some of the う forms, as ありがとう ("arigatō" — "thank you") and お早う「おはよう」("ohayō" — "good morning"), formerly ありがたく (arigataku)、お早く/おはやく (ohayaku).