Re: x > f sound change

Michael Poxon wrote:
> No, I don't think the difference is orthographical at all. The interesting
> thing that struck me the first time I heard it (I can remember it - it was
> only a few years back) was that it was a wonderful example of linguistic
> change in action across many simultaneous fronts: chiefly syntactic and
> phonologic. The syntactic stream phonologised as /Sud(schwa)v/ was not being
> analysed as verb+auxiliary, but instead verb+particle or preposition, in
> effect, similar to "phone up". Do we now see the auxiliary "have"
> metamorphosing into "of"? Will we be able to say "Of you seen my new car?"
> for instance, or will the change have /-v/ into of /-v/ remain only in
> unstressed positions?
Well, I think it's more that _Should've_ or _Shoulda_ is seen as a
single unit, so people don't know *how* to write it, just like my
example of the spelling "Ya'll" (which is a personal pet peeve of mine),
people've forgotten what it's a contraction of.

I think of it as being seen as a particle /@(v)/, I certainly agree that
people have ceased to see it as "should have", but I don't think that
that particle would ever become independent.  It's a clitic that has to
be attached to an auxiliary, like should or could.

I was merely disagreeing that it was seen as actually being the same as
"of", I think the spelling is used because "of" is the only word in
English pronounced /@(v)/.

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