Re: YACQ: Plausibility of a sound change

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, Tommaso R. Donnarumma wrote:

> This is very plausible, I think, but rather boring, so I
> decided to assign a three-way distinction to the proto-
> language:
>
>    PROTO-LANGUAGE  KLUNA      THE R. A. LANG.
>    voiceless       voiceless  voiced
>    glottalised     aspirated  voiced
>    aspirated       aspirated  voiceless
>
> Problem is, glottalised > aspirated doesn't seem very
> plausible to me.  My question is, how does it look like
> to you?  Is there any known example of this kind of
> change?
I agree that it doesn't seem very plausible, if only because
glottalization and aspiration involve antagonistic vocal fold
gestures. Glottalization involves constriction of the vocal
folds, while aspiration involves abduction of the vocal folds.

However, languages can change in some rather unintuitive ways.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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