Re: THEORY: questions

Nik Taylor wrote:
> Rachel Klippenstein wrote:
>
>>Is there any sound that [h] is likely to change into?
>
>
> Well, there are a number of /h/ -> /k/ changes in borrowings from
> languages with /h/ to languages without, for example, Chinese _Han_ to
> Japanese _Kan_ (altho, Japanese later developed an /h/ of its own, but
> at the time of borrowing, there was no /h/), thus Mandarin Hanzi (Han
> Latters) -> Japanese Kanji.  /?/ seems reasonable, too.
Japanese (and I think Spanish?) has done /h/ > /f/ (hence ha hi fu he
ho). This seems to be an especially logical change around rounded vowels
(so presumably it happened before Japanese /u/ unrounded).

>>And suppose a language loses its markers for noun
>>plurality and verb past tense through a regular sound
>>change.  How is a language likely to deal with that?
>>Develop periphrastic constructions? Do without??
One could easily hypothesise an English that had no plural marker and
used 'did' (or something) to mark the past tense (nouns are hardly
changed at all at the best of times, and some EFL speakers, especially
those whose first language was east Asian, don't bother to pluralise the
nouns; however, English seem to love having phrases with subtle
mood/tense differences before our verbs...)

Tristan.

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