Re: Questions about Japanese historical phonology.

Joe said:
> John Cowan said:
>>Take a look at Ringe and Warnow's stuff, which was briefly discussed
>>on the list in May 2003:  http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~histling/ et seqq.
>>A particularly interesting result, which certainly no one expected,
>>is that Germanic probably started out as a satem language that was
>>mugged by centum speakers later on, due to a migration into centum
>>territory.
>
> Either that, or the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages satemised
> independantly.  I can't see how a satem>centum change could really take
> place.

One language often spends a lot of time in contact with another language,
and this contact can lead to changes in one or the other or both. (Xhosa
and Zulu have clicks.) This is one of the things that variational
modelling is more likely to capture than is neogrammarian casuistry.


-- Mark