Re: [T] -> [f] (was: Chinese Dialect Question)

MJR = me
RB = Ray Brown

MJR> Oh, sure, but that's a historical change.  Seeing it happening
MJR> "in real time" in one's own language is different.

RB> How so?  Doesn't the fact that it can be seen to be happening
RB> confirm what was suspected about the situation in the past?
RB> Doesn't one give greater credence to the other?

I think we're talking past each other again. :)  I firmly believe
in linguistic evolution.  I have borne witness to it in many
respects in my relatively-short lifetime (I'm 35), but they have
all been somewhat minor things - words introduced or disappearing
from the common idom, changing slang meanings, changes in which of
two pronunciations of a word is more common ['hE`r\@s]/[h@'r\&s] (*),
etc.  However, an actual change in the quality of a phoneme seems more
drastic - I know it is constantly happening, really, but it's the sort
of thing that I tend to imagine taking place over vast historical time
periods, kind of like biological evolution, not something I
expect to see around me.

-Mark

(*) I really hate the X-SAMPA trailing-\ diacritic.  I always misassociate
it, having been trained by 15 years of UNIX experience to associate the
backslash with the FOLLOWING letter.

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