Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:59 pm
Surely he was joking, right?
/pʷ/ > /kʷ/ is sometimes posited for Oceanic languages, but Im skeptical. It could have been the other way around, with the shift of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ occuring more than once. I'd think kʷ>pʷ twice, or even several times, is more likely than pʷ>kʷ once. There is /p/ > /q/ in a Native American family which is claimed to have lost its labial consonants as the speakers took to wearing elaborate lip jewelry. Perhaps a roundabout shift like /p > f > hʷ > kʷ/ would work, but youd have to have a conditioning environment for the last step or else explain why a fricative suddenly strengthened into a stop. (Not impossible but uncommon.)
Yeah, from the posts I quoted it looks like it's also attested in some Zapotecan varieties and in Tlapanec. (And Tohono O'odham, Mayo, Yaqui, and all of Muskogean except Creek come close, with b or bʷ as the result.) (Actually...checking the book chapter I have on Muskogean historical phonology, Creek has *kʷ > p intervocalically, it just has *kʷ > k initially, if I'm understanding the developments correctly. The wording isn't entirely clear.)Pogostick Man wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 10:48 pm I want to say that *kw > p occurred somewhere in Chibchan, so it’s attested in the New World too.
Wide is my aim. I'm trying to collapse a labial series. My current thought is this: /p p' f m/ > [kʷ kʷ' xʷ ŋʷ]. Then the labialization would be lost on the fricatives [x ŋ]. Then perhaps your proposed merger of /w j/ > /j/, resulting in /kʲ kʲ'/?Whimemsz wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:51 pm A general shift of /kw/ > /kʲ/ is possible. The Plains Algonquian languages merged */w/ and */j/ to /j/ to varying degrees, so you're basically talking about a change of /w/ > /j/ after /k/ (though you may want to have that semivowel merger happen more widely for it to be more plausible).
Well, many Oceanic languages develop a pʷ series, and I don't know of any examples of pʷ > k(ʷ) there, even though there are Oceanic languages with t > k.Whimemsz wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:51 pm I don't understand what's supposed to be implausible about /pʷ/ > /kʷ/. They're quite similar acoustically and not that different articulatorily, and you accept that the reverse is plausible (this isn't like a debuccalization change where the shift almost always goes in one direction, this is just an instance of two very similar sounds switching places, so the plausibility of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ implies the plausibility of /pʷ/ > /kʷ/).
There are supposedly a few examples; not many, since Proto-Oceanic didn't have many etyma with *pʷ, though it had plenty with *bʷ and in several languages this changed to gʷ or kʷ or a coarticulate:Nortaneous wrote: ↑Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:54 amWell, many Oceanic languages develop a pʷ series, and I don't know of any examples of pʷ > k(ʷ) there, even though there are Oceanic languages with t > k.Whimemsz wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:51 pm I don't understand what's supposed to be implausible about /pʷ/ > /kʷ/. They're quite similar acoustically and not that different articulatorily, and you accept that the reverse is plausible (this isn't like a debuccalization change where the shift almost always goes in one direction, this is just an instance of two very similar sounds switching places, so the plausibility of /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ implies the plausibility of /pʷ/ > /kʷ/).
Unfortunately Ross doesn't give any actual examples, and when I just searched through Ross, Pawley, and Osmond's The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: 2: The physical environment the words with *pʷ either lacked a reflex in one of the relevant languages, or the reflex was NOT /kʷ/. But the book was published in 2003, before Ross' article, and also the 2002 article by Lynch that he cites lists the reflex of *pʷ in Lau as "k,kʷ." Although Lynch's actual article shows that it's more complicated than that because *pʷ and *p merge before rounded vowels, plus additional complications ... there are still some examples in the appendix: *pʷake "k.o. green food" > Lau kʷake "greens," Kwaio kʷaʔe "tree fern (Cyathea sp.)"; *pʷalaq "split (wood+)" > Pwapwâ ᵑgana. A lot of the forms look pretty weak to me though, and don't all have the same reflex all the time, so I dunno......Malcolm Ross, "Proto-Oceanic *kʷ", Oceanic Linguistics 50(1), 2011 wrote: A number of Oceanic languages have rounded velars, like /kʷ/, /gʷ/, /ŋʷ/, or labiovelars, like /k͡p/, /g͡b/, /ŋ͡m/, but these have not been reconstructed for POc. One reason for this is that, in a number of languages, rounded velars or labiovelars reflect the POc rounded bilabials. In the northern Malaitan languages of Southeast Solomonic, namely North Malaitan, Kwara’ae, Lau, Kwai, Kwaio, and Dori‘o, /gʷ/ reflects POc *bʷ. In the northernmost of these languages, North Malaitan and Kwara’ae, /ŋʷ/ reflects POC *mʷ (in the others /w/ reflects *mʷ). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are also reflected as /gʷ/ and /ŋʷ/, respectively, in Western Fijian dialects and in dialects of southeastern Viti Levu (Geraghty 1983:42–50) and Beqa island, to the south of Viti Levu (Paul Geraghty, pers. comm.). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are reflected as /kʷ/ and /ŋʷ/ in the Torres Islands languages Hiw and Lo-Toga and the Banks Islands languages Lehali and Mwerlap of north Vanuatu; they are reflected as /k͡pʷ/ and /ŋ͡mʷ/ in other Banks languages (Alexandre François, pers. comm.). POc *bʷ and *mʷ are reflected sporadically as /ᵑg/ and /ŋ/, presumably from earlier /ᵑgʷ/ and /ŋʷ/, in Jawe of New Caledonia, and regularly as /gʷ/ and /ŋʷ/ in the New Caledonian language Pwapwâ. Firm reconstructions containing POC *pʷ are few (Lynch 2002:315), but its few reflexes indicate that it is at least sometimes reflected as /kʷ/ in northern Malaitan languages and in those Fijian dialects that have distinct reflexes of the POc rounded bilabials.