Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

Quoting Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>:

> On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, JS Bangs wrote:
>
> > Arnt Richard Johansen sikyal:
> >
> > > What are some plausible diachronic processes that can expand the
> syllable
> > > structure of a language?
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > 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, which by the way are the only two
> > > syllable-complicating processes I know of.
> >
> > I would say that this is incorrect. It is not at all uncommon for vowels
> > to be reduced to schwa, then elided. Every language I can think of has
> > some process of vowel elision in its recent past. A quick rundown:
>
> While it hasn't had a recent past, my understanding is that Etruscan dropped
> non-boundary (initial and final) vowels, so that a word like 'understanding'
> would've become 'undstnding'. One would initially imagine that this was a
> typo, but no: I've seen it reproduced in a number of places with examples.
Given the ubiquity of vowel elision, consonant weakening and loss of
inflections, I sometimes find myself wondering why all human languages have
not long since devolved into Ugh ...

(Ugh is an IAL that have been suggested on this list. It's chief selling point
is simplicity (as well as bringing about world peace, universal happiness and
free internet access for all, of course); everything translates into it as
_ugh_ [@M\] (that's schwa followed by a velar approximant). In good IAL
tradition, it's a radical improvement on its best-forgotten ancestor, Uk. Uk
chiefly differs by having a velar stop instead of approximate, making it
unpronunceable for exactly 0.01034% of the human race - they were so
elitistically exclusive in the bad old days.

For those having difficulty with the unnatural complications of English
phonetics, syntax and vocabulary, or just can't stand the multitude of
mutually exclusive reprehensive ideologies built into its grammar, here's my
entire message in Ugh:

ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh [@M\] ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

ughugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh)

                                                           Andreas (ugh)

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