Re: Sound changes

Herman Miller sikyal:

> I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention some of the sound
> changes in Hinate~, the Zireen language I've started working on.
>
> Bilabial and labiodental sounds in Simape~ (the ancestor language) end up
> as dental sounds in Hinate~.
>
> /p/ > /t_d/
> /p_h/ > /t_d_h/
> /f/ > /T/
> /v/ > /D/
> /m/ > /n_d/
Eh?  This is very, very, very odd, to the point that I would reject it as
unnatural. Consonants do not randomly change places of articulation (and
such a thing is prohibited under modern phonological theories), and you
reverse several well-attested phonological processes. /T/ > /f/ and /D/ >
/v/ are both plausible, but their reverses are essentially unknown.

> As a consequence, some of the alveolar sounds moved back to the retroflex
> position.
>
> /t/ > /t`/
> /t_h/ > /t`_h/
> /z/ > /r\`/
This is acceptable, since the sounds were pushed, but it's still odd in
conjunction with the other changes.

> Other changes include the spread of nasalization and loss of the low tone:
>
> /su_Hnda_M/ > /hu~_Hn`a_M/ "night"
> /ja_LzaR\_M/ > /ja_Mr\`a_HG/ "river"
I'm unsure, but are tones ever just "lost" that way?

Anyway, the strangest things in my lang's history are the nasal > glide
shift, which isn't even that weird and is attested (at least partly) in
the real world:

/m n N/ > /w r j/

And the later shift of /*lj/, which gives [Z] in Praci, [j\] (voiced
palatal fricative) in Yivrian, and [K\] (voiced alveolar lateral
fricative) in Tzingrizhil.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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