Re: /y/?

Henrik Theiling wrote:
>Yesterday I was wondering what interesting stuff could happen to an
>/y/ phoneme?  Same question about the lax variant /Y/.
>
>The only (boring) thing I could come up with was /y/ > /i/ unrounding
>as seen in so many languages (German dialects, Icelandic, Greek,
>Kreyol Ayisyen, to name only a few).
I suppose it should remain a high vowel... but with incomplete fronting or
rounding you might get u or i  > [1] (barred i), rounded or not; or  i or u
 > unrounded [M] or [U]  (a very indistinct sound to my ear).

I'm assuming some sort of umlauting or harmonizing env.; if it were just
some sort of systematic phoneme, with an historical origin no longer in
effect, then I suppose it could go anywhere in the high + tense/lax region,
front/central/back; by a series of changes you might shift it from
high/central to mid [@, 3, V] to low, and end up with [6]. If you keep it a
front V, you might be able to coerce it to [&], fun!! Or maybe it could
diphthongize > [oj] or [iw] ??? or reverse-diphthongize > [@w] or [@j]. Lots
of possibilities, though not limitless without a radical sound change
sequence.....:-)))))

The sort of speculation I love!!!