Re: Sound Change Susceptibility

Quoting Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>:

> On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, at 12:27  PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > I was looking at a chart of reflexes of PIE and Proto-Semitic
> > consonants the
> > other day, and noted that while, say, the ancestral velar stops are
> > mangled
> > wantonly in many daughter languages, *m and *n are perserved in every
> > language
> > listed (in initial position at least).
> > Now, is this just a quirk of these particular families, or do
> > different sound
> > have differing "intrinsic" probabilities for changing?
> >
> >                                                               Andreas
>
> /m/ and /n/ seem to be very malleable in non-initial position, though;
> think about all the Latinate prefixes |in-|, |im-|, etc, where in
> different languages it can be /m/, /n/, /N/, (or others?) depending on
> the following sound.
>
> Also in Semitic, many languages have a plural marker |-in|, while
> Hebrew generally uses |-im|.
>
> Btw, are these charts you were looking at available online?
I nicked them from the American Heritage Dictionary's webpage, IIRC.

They've also got appendices with PIE and Semitic roots underlaying Modern
English words - no doubt highly interesting for a posteriori conlangers.

                                                              Andreas

Reply