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Re: Some Sound Changes

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Saturday, July 26, 2003, 19:20
Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:

> Rob Haden wrote: > > /¿E/* > /i:/ > > I *think* pharyngeals tend to *lower*, rather than *raise* vowels, but > I'm not confident.
Yes, and not just pharyngeals. Uvulars also tend to lower high vowels, e.g., in Aleut. (They do so in C'ali as well.)
> > /Vi:/ > /i:/ or /Vi/ (which one is more realistic?) > > Both seem probable.
The general tendency cross-linguistically is for bimoraic nuclei (whether long vowels or diphthongs) to have at least one [+high] element; e.g. Latin _ho:mo:_ > Italian _uomo_, MidE _la:t@_ > ModE leit 'late'. Both /i:/ and /Vi/ satisfy this constraint, so they are both unmarked in this respect.
> > /a:i:/ > /ai/ or /e:/ (" ") > > /e:i:/ > /ei/ or /i:/ (" ") > > /o:i:/ > /oi/ or /ö:/ > > /a:i/ > /ai/ or /e:/ > > /e:i/ > /ei/ or /i:/ > > /o:i/ > /oi/ or /ö:/ > > /a:u/ > /au/ or /o:/ > > /e:u/ > /eu/ or /ü:/ > > /o:u/ > /ou/ or /u:/ > > All of these seem probable. My preference would be to go with the > first, but that's just an esthetic issue, not a realism one.
All of these change the prosodic tier by reducing the number of moras from four or three to two, but they do so in different ways. All of these are very natural changes; there are only a handful of languages (e.g., Estonian) which have been analyzed as having prosodic feet with three rather than two moras.
> > /ha/ > /a:/ > > /he/ > /e:/ > > /ho/ > /o:/ > > These last three seem a bit unrealistic. /ah/, /eh/, and /oh/ to long > vowels would be plausible, but I can't see a syllable-initial /h/ > causing lengthening.
Right -- no language that I know of treats onsets as a weight-bearing unit. If a language treats codas as weight-bearing, then deletion thereof frequently results in compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel to preserve the prosodic superstructure. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637