Re: Reasonable sound changes.

On Sunday, January 9, 2005, at 11:52 , Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On 9 Jan 2005, at 10.47 pm, Carsten Becker wrote:
>
>> Hey!
>>
>> On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 23:01:53 -0800, bob thornton <arcanesock@...>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> First great sound change:
>>> [...]
>>> /k_w/ -> /p/
>>
>> I don't know much about sound changes, but this feels a little
>> strange. "QU"
>> changes into "P", doesn't it?
>
> Perfectly normal, in fact. Happened in the P-celtic languages (hence
> the name), something similar happened in Greek, I think there were some
> Italic languages it happened it,
You think correctly - it certainly happrned in Oscan (still spoken in
Pompeii in 79 AD - graffiti preserved by the buried city are in Latin,
Oscan & Greek).  It is actually not an uncommon change.

> and it happened in Føtisk, too :)
>
>>> Second great sound change:
>>>
>>> Plosive clusters simplify, i.e /kt/ -> /k/, etc.
>>
>> Italian has it just the other way round as far as I know, i.e. [kt] ->
>> [t]
>> or maybe [?t].
No, no. The Italian is [tt], that is geminated _t_. It is the result of
regressive assimilation [kt] --> [tt], also [pt] --> [tt]. We find exactly
the same sound changes in some of the ancient Greek dialects of Crete.

> That doesn't mean it can't happen the other way round ;)
Certainly not. Progressive assimilation would give [kt] --> [kk]. The
geminated _k_ may well later become simple [t], so IMO [kt] --> [kk] -->
[k] is not all unreasonable. Likewise [pt] --> [pp] --> [p]. Indeed, I
suspect that such changes have actually occurred more than once somewhere,
  somewhen.

Ray
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