Re: CHAT: Historical linguistics, and soundlaws

Let me add a couple of other changes.

Fricitivization.  Stops can become fricatives.  For example, in Spanish,
the voiced stops have fricative allophones.  These occur, IIRC, in
intervocalic position.  For instance, /dedo/, finger = [deDo]

Affrication.  Stops can also become affricates.  For instance, in
Japanese, /t/ has an allophone [ts] before /u/, and originally /tS/ was
an allophone of /t/ before /i/.  However, in Modern Japanese, /tS/ is a
separate phoneme.  I think that all instances of /tS/ before /a/, /o/,
and /u/ are borrowings, mostly from Chinese.  Another example is the
Romance languages.  Latin /k/ became an affricate before front vowels.
In French and Spanish, it became /ts/, while in Italian, it became
/tS/.  So, for instance, /fakere/ became /fatser/.

De-affrication.  Affricates frequently become fricatives.  An example of
this is Spanish, where /ts/ became /s/, so that /fatser/ became /faser/,
which later became /aser/ (hacer), due to a rule that initial /f/ became
/h/ (which was subsequently lost), except before, IIRC, /w/ and /r/

Approximatization?: I'm not sure if this is a real term, but fricatives
sometimes become approximates.  Most common is rhoticization, wherein
/z/ becomes /r/.  So that, for instance, pre-OE *waese became waere
(modern were).

The opposites sometimes occur.  For instance, Latin /w/ became, in
certain situations, /v/

Also, phonemes may change their place of articulation.  For instance,
Old Spanish /S/ became Modern Spanish /x/.  I don't know what rules
govern these, but I'm sure that certain changes are more likely.
Perhaps auditory similarity plays a role (i.e., sounds that sound
similar are more likely to be subject to this?)

Voicing is common in certain positions, e.g., between vowels.  For
instance, in Old English, /f/ had an allophone [v] between voiced
sounds.  Take _wulf_ ([wUlf], I think).  In the plural [wulvas].  Hence
the variation wolf/wolves in Modern English.

Similar phonemes often "collapse".  For instance, in some languages (I
think I remember reading that Swedish is an example), /S/ and /C/ ("sh"
and German _ich_) have collapsed into one phoneme, /S/.

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