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Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Thursday, August 28, 2003, 11:28
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)

Replies

Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>