Re: Some Sound Changes

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.

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