Re: Word-initial sound changes

On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:

> Even taking Dirk's distinction into account, there do appear
> to be cases of word-initial lenition out there - at least in
> the realm of diachronic sound change.  There are numerous
> examples from Austronesian (e.g. */b/ became /v/ word-
> initially in Malagasy).  Here's an example from the Australian
> language Jajgir, culled from Terry Crowley's "An Introduction
> to Historical Linguistics".  In Jajgir, voiced stops became
> glides word-initially:
>
> */dja:lanj/     >       /ja:lanj/
> */ganja:mbil/   >       /janja:mbil/
Now that's just perverse. Of course, English underwent something
similar; OE /g/ became NE /y/ when followed by a front vowel:

        geard > yard

Just about anything goes with diachronic change, though. What
would be truly weird is to see this synchronically, when it
*isn't* morphologically motivated.

> I don't know what triggered this change in Jajgir, but I
> suspect that most of the Austronesian cases were
> extensions of intervocalic lenition:  */b/ became /v/
> intervocalically in Malagasy, and this was extended to
> cases where the /b/ was word-initial and the preceding
> word ended in a vowel.  (It's my understanding that that's
> sort of how mutation in Celtic got started...)
This sounds plausible. But notice that as soon as the
conditioning environment is deleted, it ceases to be lenition
by my definition.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu