Re: Language "laws"?

On Tuesday, October 12, 2004, at 09:41 , Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
>
>> I can think of languages that have /s/ but no other fricatives; but I
>> cannot think of any with just /T/. However, I don't see why at some stage
>> a lonely [s] could not have changed to [T] (maybe a monarch or ruler had
>> a
>> lisp, and courtiers/followers/sycophants copied him/her and then it
>> became
>> a mark of 'polite speech' and so eventually spread to all layers of
>> society) - in fact I would not be unduly surprised if a language were
>> found with /T/ as its only fricative.
>
> Is there a reason for /s/ being the typical choice of a lone fric?
The only thing I can think of is that /s/ has greater stridency than other
fricative. The sound is distinctive enough to have its own name: a
sibilant.

> I can't think
> of any single-fric language where the only fric is anything else than /s/
> .
There are some, e.g. Hawaian.
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On Tuesday, October 12, 2004, at 04:53 , Roger Mills wrote:

[snip]
> IIRC you or someone else mentioned Burmese, which has [T] reflecting *s;
> it
> may also have [s] from some other source, but I don't know.
It was me. Yes, I know very little about Burmese; but example with /T/ do
seem to correspond with /s/ in related languages.
3 = Mandarin: -san; Thai: /san; Tibetan: sum; Burmese: \Toun

> Apparently [T] is an acceptable pronunciation of /s/ in Acehnese, and
> characterizes at least one dialect thereof.
It doesn't surprise me.

[snip]
> Hawaiian has the sole fricative /h/, which is the merger of the same two
> earlier sounds, *f and *s.
There is certainly a tendency for [s] to become [h]. It happened to
prevocalic and intervocalic /s/ in proto-Greek and in the Brittonic
languages as well Persian in similar positions. In French /s/ between a
vowel & consonant became /h/ before disappearing; in many Spanish dialects
postvocalic /s/ is pronounced [h], and the soft mutation of /s/ in the
Gaelic languages is /s/ (spelled _sh_) etc.

In Umbrian we find in one inscription "trif sif kumiaf" for Latin 'tres
sues grauidas' (three pregnant sows) where final /s/ has become /f/.

To me /T/ is much closer to /s/ than /f/ is.

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
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as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]