Re: Sound changes

At 14:45 20/08/2002 +0100, michael poxon wrote:
>I think there have to be some limitations; you can't, in all, honesty, have
>a sequence like /tu/ becoming /x/ or something like that, whereas /tu/ could
>conceivably become /dv/ or a host of other possibilities. I think working
>within the constraints is more interesting than introducing change for
>change's sake; and it'll also deepen your understanding and appreciation.
It depends on how much time changes are supposed to take ;). Within 1000
years, you can easily have :
/tu/ > /tsu/ (+/- Japanese) > /su/ (happened in French) > /Su/ (+/-
sanskrit, where /s/ becomes retroflex after, and not before, a back
vowel) > /xu/ : this happened in Spanish ( lj > j/ > d^Z > Z > S > x ;
example : tripalium > trabajo).

Here the only problem is that when you have derived /xu/ from /tu/, so many
changes **must** have happened elsewhere in the language which lead not to
a dialect, but to another language ;).