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Re: Language change that complicates the syllable structure

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Thursday, August 28, 2003, 4:50
JS Bangs wrote:
> * Japanese devoicing of final /u/, leading to the currently-ongoing loss > of those vowels. In a generation or two, expect Japanese to have coda > consonants, if not already.
And with other devoiced vowels, quite probably some complicated syllables, like tski*, "moon" (tsuki) or kchi "mouth" (kuchi)**. Also, it seems that an earlier period of Japanese permitted syllable-final voiceless stops and r, when followed by another voiceless sound, because (voiceless stop, r)-(i/u/)-(voiceless consonant) is the origin of geminates, thus, nitipon -> *nitpon -> nippon (while niti and pon on their own became nichi and hon due to later sound changes) *I once came up with a fictional descendant of Japanese spoken in certain lunar colonies called Tstsigo < *tsukigo (tsuki = moon, -go = language), with a /ki/ -> /tsi/ change, and loss of voiceless vowels. **Actually, I'm not sure if those particular examples would work, because there are restrictions dependant on pitch, but the idea still holds.
> This is pretty rare. I can't think of a single instance where > morphological considerations affected syllable structure.
English -ed, -es -> -d, -s (however, those might've been part of a larger change to be fair) -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

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JS Bangs <jaspax@...>