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?
>
> 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.
The writing system could well be a later or borrowed feature.  Perhaps they
adopted a system that simply wasn't suited to expressing clusters.  Bugis
and Makassarese of Indonesia have such a system, Indic-derived, in which
e.g. the two characters "Sa.Pa" can be read as: sapa, sapa?, sampa, sampa?,
sappa, sappa?

> 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.
Two more that I like are (1) metathesis, which can often be random and
unmotivated (except by some vague concept of "euphony" or "difficult"
cons.clusters)-- Spaniards have trouble with the -tl- of "atlántico" etc.
(actually I think r's and l's are often the culprits.../r/+C metathesizes in
Kash) and (2) haplology*, the loss of a syllable in a sequence of 2
identical syls.  IIRC Engl. "nurse", via French, results from VL *nutrice-,
correctly a deriv. nutri-trix, though I don't know when the extra syl. was
lost (Classical or later Latin?).
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*In the "Dictionary of self-defining linguistic terms" we find haplogy,
along with such things as metasethis and rhotarirm.
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Reduction of unstressed vowels > @, with subsequent loss can of course play
hob with a phonology. Fast-speech rules in general are a good thing to play
around with.

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?
Yes.

> 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!
It has to be a little bit a priori.  Sometimes you create hints for
yourself-- for ex. the Kash triple series _fricative, vl.stop,
vd.prenasalized stop_ goes back to an original *vl.asp.stop - *vl. unasp.
stop - *vd.stop (which also merged with *nasal+vl/vd. stops at a later
stage)I also "knew" that the palatal series was not original, so had to
devise ways to derive /S, tS, NdZ/, generally from clusters of *t/d or *k/g
with *r, or preceding an unstressed *i (which meant reconstructing quite a
few 3-syl.bases and 4-syl compds that got reduced. For ex. Kash _"kowana"
/koana/ 'ghost'_ < *kawa+ana;  *ana is 'child', but I've not yet decided on
the meaning of *kawa...I suppose in a few hundred years, the word will be
/kwana/ vel sim.)
Related lgs. and dialects of course treat all these differently!

In general try to go backwards in small steps:  Modern A comes from
pre-modern B, which comes from even earlier C etc. etc. Eventually you'll
get to a stage that isn't too obviously related to the most recent one.