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)
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