Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
>
> What are some plausible diachronic processes that can expand the syllable
> structure of a language?
Loss of vowels (e.g., in English /hElp@d/ -> /hElpt/, the new
pronunciation having been written {'d} during the transitional period),
loss of consonants (e.g., from Japanese, kakita -> kaita "wrote"),
borrowings from foreign languages that allow more complex syllable
types.  Epenthesis (e.g., Latin-to-Spanish famine -> famne -> famre ->
fambre -> hambre, "hunger")

> My main conlang, Ciktal, must at one time have had a very simple syllable
> structure, perhaps restricted to (C)V, due to its syllabic writing system
> that only really works well with simple syllables.
Another explanation could be that they acquired their writing system
from a foreign source.  Greek, for example, was once written in a
syllabry, which meant that there were a *lot* of "silent" vowels.

> What little I've read of historical linguistics suggests that weakening
> and elision of consonants is much more common than elision of
> vowels and epenthetical insertion
Elision of vowels is quite common.  French is a perfect example.  That's
the whole reason there are so many silent -e's in French.  English, too,
went thru a similar loss of final vowels, altho some of our silent e's
were added later for orthographic reasons.

> Can other kinds of language
> change (ie. non-phonological) influence the syllable structure in a
> complicating way? The arise of compounding? Cliticization of particles,
> and subsequent incorporation in an inflectional/derivational system?
Certainly those are possible.  Altho, compounding doesn't usually
immediately alter the syllable structure, since, for example, if words
such as _katap_ and _kito_ are compounded to form _katapkito_, it would
still be syllabified as ka-tap-ki-to.  However, compounding *can* often
lead to a situation where subsequent sound changes may make more
complicated syllables.  E.g., _kata_ + _kito_ -> _katakito_.  Lengthy
words may sometimes be subject to abbreviation, in this case, you may
get _katakito_ -> _katkito_

> I only know the history of one language that was mostly (C)V. That is
> Japanese. The only change in its syllable that I'm aware of, is the
> occasional loss of high vowels word-finally
Actually, high vowels are *never* lost, merely devoiced (tho it's quite
conceivable that a future form of Japanese might very well drop those
voiceless vowels).  And that devoicing can occur anywhere in the word,
provided that the vowel either A) follows a voiceless consonant
word-finally or B) is between two voiceless consonants.

Also, Japanese has closed syllables in the form of geminates and
syllable-final (but moraic) nasals (e.g., nippon).

Old Japanese, however, was rigidly CV.  Exceptions are due to borrowing
(mostly from Chinese) and phonetic changes (e.g., adjective suffix -ki
-> -i)

> Are simple syllable structures really that stable?
It all depends on the language.  Some languages will preserve the same
syllable type (whether simple or complex) for millennia, others may
rapidly change them, either making them simpler or more complex, or
often a mixture (e.g., English lost such possibilities as initial kn-,
but gained possibilities such as /t/ or /d/ following a consonant)

> I know many of you have started out with a present-time language, and
> worked youselves backwards to a proto-language. That seems difficult,
> almost impossible. Tell me how you did it!
I looked for patterns in my language that could possibly represent sound
changes.  E.g., a suffix which sometimes occured as -la, and sometimes
as (geminate consonant)-a.  So, I decided that there'd been a
sound-change /lC/ -> /CC/, with an earlier change of /Cl/ -> /lC/.  I've
also had to modify words to fit new ideas about the evolution of the
language.  At one point, I decided that the best explanation for /Cl/
and /lC/ clusters still existing was not lost schwas (tho that would
explain some), e.g., /k@la/ -> /kla/, but that the proto-lang had both
/l/ and /r/, and only /l/ underwent those metathesis and gemination
changes, but then /l/ and /r/ subsequently merged into /l/ (the modern
lang has only /l/)

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