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Re: Sound changes

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Saturday, August 24, 2002, 12:17
John Cowan wrote:
> >JS Bangs scripsit: > > > I'm unsure, but are tones ever just "lost" that way? > >Definitely. The Qiangic group of languages, which is Tibeto-Burman, >plainly started out with four tones. Many languages in the group >have either two or three, however, and Northern Qiang has no tones at all. >This is not exactly likely to be influence from the surrounding Chinese, >nor is it plausible that all the other langs developed tone except NQ. > > > 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/ > >Mandarin changed ancestral /N/ in initial position to /w/, which is >really weird; if any two voiced sounds have less in common, I can't >think of them. (E.g. the Cantonese name Ng has the Mandarin equivalent >Wu.) >
The Cantonese name _Ng_? Please tell that there's a vowel missing here somewhere - a word [N=] ought to be illegal! Andreas _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

Replies

H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>