Re: Sound changes giving rise to dental fricatives

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 16:35:31 -0400, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       Rob Haden <magwich78@...>
> Subject:      Re: Sound changes giving rise to dental fricatives
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 04:50:15 -0700, B. Garcia <madyaas@...> wrote:
>
> >In Castillian Spanish you have /D/ and /T/
> >
> >For /T/ this came about in Spanish due to a palatalization of /k/
> >before front vowels. When a glide became involved, pronunciation moved
> >forward in the mouth producing /ts/. /t/ before front vowels with a
> >glide following also became /ts/. This /ts/ moved fully forward in
> >Castillian to /T/.
> >
> >For /D/ the situation is a bit simpler, intervocalically, written d
> >became /D/ as well as finally. You can even hear it happen when a word
> >with initial d (/d/) is pronounced after a word ending in a vowel, it
> >becomes spoken as /D/.
> >
> >It seems in Spanish, fricativization is highly common with voiced stops:
> >
> >Intervocalic b becomes /B/
> >Intervocalic d becomes /D/
> >Intervocalic g becomes /G/
> >
> >(and that my friends is key to sounding more like a native speaker...
> >fricativizing correctly :))
>
> It seems to me that Spanish has fricatized medial voiced stops due to the
> following:
>
> - Medial consonants are not as marked as initial or final consonants.
>
> - In an earlier period of Spanish, intervocalic voiced stops, being less
> marked than initial or final ones, were pronounced less distinctly in rapid
> speech.  That is, the flow of air came to cease being completely stopped,
> but rather merely constricted.
>
> Interestingly, the phonological development from Vulgar Latin to Modern
> Castilian Spanish includes consonant gradation, similar (but not the same)
> to that of Finnish: intervocalic VL /d/ >> 0, /g/ >> 0 (I think), /b/
> >> /B/ (or /v/?), /t/ > /d/ > /D/, /k/ > /g/ > /G/, /p/ > /b/ > /B/.
>
> - Rob
>
From what i've read, Castillian Spanish never had a /v/ sound as in
French or Italian. It still doesn't. All of my text books say it's
clearly wrong to use a /v/ when one is supposed to pronounce /v/.
However in practice Native speakers (who are probably just being
polite) never correct me. I'm sure it sounds odd when i do use a /v/
sound.

For me it does seem to be conditioned by the vowels. When i pronounce
them "correctly" it just seems to happen that my voiced stops all
fricativize.

In Montreiano I've made it so that /B/ changed to /v/, /d/ finally and
intervocalically drops, and /G/ turns into a full glide /j/.

"Lawyer"  /aBoGaDo/ > /avojao/ = avoyao

--
Something gets lost when you translate,
It's hard to keep straight, perspective is everything

- Invisible ink - Aimee Mann -