Re: Evolution of Romance (was: **Answer to Pete**)

On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 19:09:50 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>2008/2/1, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>:
>> On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 17:20:24 +0100, Benct Philip
>> Jonsson wrote:
>>
>> >The only thing I see speaking against a development g' >
>> >j > g' > dZ is Occam's razor! Clearly [g;] or [J\] and
>> >[j] can both develop out of and into each other, but to
>> >posit a to-and-fro development seems a bit suspicious.
>>
>> But you need to set up j >> dZ anyway, so then you have a
>> palatal > palatovelar > palatal to-&-fro development
>> there. And for the same, a continuant > stop > continuant
>> development is not only possible, but necessary!
>
>No, that would be a straight palatal fricative >
>palatal stop > alveopalatal affricate > palatoalveolar
>affricate shift.
...and then it decays to a fricativ in most branches. :)

Point being, I don't think back&forth developments are in principle
suspicious if there's sufficient time; no memory of sound change, right? See
also: u > U > o > ou > u in Portuguese, ts > s_m > T > in in Finnish, f > v
> f in German, oi > ui > oi in English...

>> However, it just occurs to me that starting from j > gj)
>> rather than j > J\ directly would be symmetrical with w >
>> gw)... or "/gj)/" could have been phonetically a simplex
>> [J\] since the beginning anyway...
>
>The possible distinction between [g;] and [J\] is academic.
>I doubt kids learning a language could distinguish them, so
>you may have /g;/ realized as [J\] and/or [J\] phonemicized
>as /g;/.
Oh, nobody's asking anyone to actually distingush them, the question is ...
well, nevermind. Doesn't really matter.


>> >The relative infrequency of dj compared to tj is probably
>> >a better and sufficient explanation why the voiceless
>> >palatals develop differently in Western Romance.
>>
>> I'm afraid I don't quite see the logic behind this
>> argument. It's a merger, not a chain shift, so there can
>> be no pull effect due to either palatalized coronal.
>
>No, but kids learning to speak would hear many more tokens
>of [t;] to confuse
>[c] with than they'd hear tokens of [d;] -- the frfequency
>of [d;] tokens was simply to low to make a mental
>imprint, or alternatively the few that appeared stood
>out enough to preserve their identity.
Still, if the system is in effect tj) kj) gj), how does kj) > tj) make the
system any more regular? Yes, the first two are close enuff to be confused,
but tj) > kj) should be just as likely then, no?


>Also it seems that [c] is more perceptually similar to [t;]
>than [J\] is to [d;] for whatever reason. The Hungarian
>spellings _ty_ for /c/ but _gy_ for /J\/ are probably
>significant for whatever reason.
Wikipedia says of the Hungarian alphabet that "denoting /&#607;/ by <gy> is a
remnant of (probably) Italian scribes who tried to render the Hungarian
sound", so we might need something more remote.

I agree, tho, that /ts tS/ are both about as easy, but /dz/ clearly harder
than /dZ/; then again, this could be because Finnish has /ts/ but no /dz/,
and English has /tS) dZ)/ but no /ts) dz)/. I get less practice on it. :)
Which also supports your point I suppose...


>Also /ts/ is more
>widespread crosslinguistically than /dz/. I'm not sure
>what's at work here, though something clearly is.Perhaps
>palatalization is more audible as such in voiced sounds,
>while in [t;] the frequent secondary affrication ([t;] >
>[ts;] > [ts]) is more salient?
No, that's not the thing; you need to consider that voiced obstruents are in
general rarer than their voiceless counterparts. The issue would be /dz/
being rarer than /dZ/ - which I gather does also seem to be the case. But is
it still rarer when one consider than palatoalveolar affricates are in
general more common than alveolar, ie. are there actual /dz/ *gaps* anywhere
else? I should do some checkup...


>> We all have our SAMPA idiolects, don't we?
>
>Sure. There have always been IPA dialects
>(diagraphies? :-) too.
>
>>  Like me with my preference to use ) not _ for an actual
>>  tie bar; tS_w_h would become thSw))) or maybe even
>>  tWS)) ;)
>
>Actually I think [tS_h_w], since labialization would persist
>through the aspiration phase! ;-)
>/ BP
Phonation before 2ndary articulation does make sense, but is there any
actual IPA/SAMPA standard on the order of diacritics?

John Vertical

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